Offensive peak: Giannis vs Duncan

[Jaivl]

It was a good comparison in 2022.

Come 2025, Giannis is clearly better I think. And not by a small margin.

Duncan clearly. He's a better scorer and playmaker in the HC. The only argument for Giannis is transition, which he is only moderately above league average in scoring.

read: "moderately" as in 69 FG% at the highest volume in the league. And 80% in the playoffs against Indiana, if one cares about such an small sample.

[One_and_Done]

D-Rob in 99 alone is better than all MIL squad...

D.Rob in 99 is one of the more overrated Robins of all-time.

Playoffs

D.Rob on +20.3 on/off +35.0
T.Duncan on +10.4 on/off -3.6

It's a good example of how inaccurate those stats can be.

[penbeast0]

D.Rob in 99 is one of the more overrated Robins of all-time.

Playoffs

D.Rob on +20.3 on/off +35.0
T.Duncan on +10.4 on/off -3.6

It's a good example of how inaccurate those stats can be.

Facts will never change some people's opinions. This number is a small sample size and affected by things like lineups but it's not inaccurate. It's completely accurate in what it is measuring; only some people interpretation is inaccurate and those that dismiss data are probably further from any understanding of the truth than those who attempt to understand and adjust their personal bias to take data into account.

[One_and_Done]

Playoffs

D.Rob on +20.3 on/off +35.0
T.Duncan on +10.4 on/off -3.6

It's a good example of how inaccurate those stats can be.

Facts will never change some people's opinions. This number is a small sample size and affected by things like lineups but it's not inaccurate. It's completely accurate in what it is measuring; only some people interpretation is inaccurate and those that dismiss data are probably further from any understanding of the truth than those who attempt to understand and adjust their personal bias to take data into account.

It measures something, but whether that thing is indicative of certain outcomes is another matter.

Advanced stats think D.Rob was amazing in his final year too, and the Spurs were 15-3 in games he missed. D.Rob looked invisible at times in his later years, and even in 99 he was very overrated, which I've discussed at length before.
viewtopic.php?t=2424823#p116090755

In the Lakers series in 99 D.Rob put up 13-6 and only played 28mpg. He could have been replaced with a pretty average 5 and the Spurs still would have won.

[lessthanjake]

It's a good example of how inaccurate those stats can be.

Facts will never change some people's opinions. This number is a small sample size and affected by things like lineups but it's not inaccurate. It's completely accurate in what it is measuring; only some people interpretation is inaccurate and those that dismiss data are probably further from any understanding of the truth than those who attempt to understand and adjust their personal bias to take data into account.

It measures something, but whether that thing is indicative of certain outcomes is another matter.

Advanced stats think D.Rob was amazing in his final year too, and the Spurs were 15-3 in games he missed. D.Rob looked invisible at times in his later years, and even in 99 he was very overrated, which I've discussed at length before.
viewtopic.php?t=2424823#p116090755

In the Lakers series in 99 D.Rob put up 13-6 and only played 28mpg. He could have been replaced with a pretty average 5 and the Spurs still would have won.

The problem with your arguments that Robinson was not extremely impactful in those years is you never actually identify any actual reason that the data would be “wrong.” Importantly, the idea that Robinson was really impactful in those years is not something that’s actually reliant on small sample sizes. He does look amazing in small playoff samples, but he also looks fantastic in larger samples. For instance, NBArapm has him at 6th in the NBA in 1999-2002 four-year RAPM and 8th in the NBA in 1999-2003 five-year RAPM (RS+playoffs for both). Those are 325-game and 412-game samples. Those are large samples! And, while samples that large are generally not particularly noisy, they’re probably *even more* reliable for Robinson in those periods than for other players, since his relatively low minutes load makes the “off” sample quite big (and the “off” sample is generally the noisiest aspect of things). Notably, the RAPM data fully accounts for what happened in those games the Spurs went 15-3 without him, so that’s really not much of a valid counter. Basically, we have very reliable data telling us that Robinson was an extremely impactful player in that era. Furthermore, to a lesser extent, your position also requires you to ignore box data, which for instance includes Robinson being 4th in the NBA in BPM in 1999. Unsurprisingly, box-impact hybrid data also is very high on him—for instance, EPM has Robinson ranked 6th in the league in 2001 and 9th in the league in 2002 (though he was down to 30th in 2003; note: EPM doesn’t exist prior to 2001, so that’s why I’m not listing previous data). He’s also #1 in xRAPM in 1999, #5 in 2000, #4 in 2001, 10th in 2002, and 20th in 2003. In the interests of time, I won’t list other things like RAPTOR and DPM, but suffice to say that everything is pretty similar and all looks very impressive for Robinson.

Your response on all this is basically to say that all data is wrong and Robinson looked stiff to you so the data is wrong and he wasn’t very good. It’s really not convincing. You do not even attempt to identify flaws in the data, to explain why it might be biased in Robinson’s favor. You essentially just say that data isn’t perfect and since you don’t like what it tells you then it must be “wrong” in this case, without any explanation as to how that might have happened. And let’s remember that this isn’t some random scrub that data tells us was great. It’s an all-time great in the latter stages of his career, in a set of years where his team did really well. Our baseline assumption should probably be that he was still really good, so there’s not a lot of reason for skepticism, unless we’ve simply decided that we really want to maximize the credit given to Duncan and that that requires downplaying his teammates.

[One_and_Done]

I have raised before many reasons impact data can be wrong, e.g. subpar back-ups, coaches using you in favourable match ups, the teams scheme, 'one guy carrying everyone', random variance, etc. I don't really care too much about the specific reason the data isn't accurate, we have no way of knowing. All I feel confident about is that it is not accurately capturing the impact of D.Rob, and I feel confident about that based on both inference from the facts and from watching the games and seeing how overrated late career D.Rob was. Peak/Prime D.Rob was superb of course.

[lessthanjake]

I have raised before many reasons impact data can be wrong, e.g. subpar back-ups, coaches using you in favourable match ups, the teams scheme, 'one guy carrying everyone', random variance, etc. I don't really care too much about the specific reason the data isn't accurate, we have no way of knowing. All I feel confident about is that it is not accurately capturing the impact of D.Rob, and I feel confident about that based on both inference from the facts and from watching the games and seeing how overrated late career D.Rob was. Peak/Prime D.Rob was superb of course.

Okay, so your argument is affirmatively just “It is possible for impact data and box data to both be biased in favor of a player, and I don’t know how or why it was biased in favor of Robinson, but I am confident that it was because I think Robinson looked a bit stiff.” You’re welcome to your own conclusions, of course, but I think that’s really unconvincing.

[One_and_Done]

I have raised before many reasons impact data can be wrong, e.g. subpar back-ups, coaches using you in favourable match ups, the teams scheme, 'one guy carrying everyone', random variance, etc. I don't really care too much about the specific reason the data isn't accurate, we have no way of knowing. All I feel confident about is that it is not accurately capturing the impact of D.Rob, and I feel confident about that based on both inference from the facts and from watching the games and seeing how overrated late career D.Rob was. Peak/Prime D.Rob was superb of course.

Okay, so your argument is affirmatively just “It is possible for impact data and box data to both be biased in favor of a player, and I don’t know how or why it was biased in favor of Robinson, but I am confident that it was because I think Robinson looked a bit stiff.” You’re welcome to your own conclusions, of course, but I think that’s really unconvincing.

Impact data is often wrong. There is no presumption that it is correct. At best it gives a signal that something might have been happening... but also might not have been.

[penbeast0]

It measures something, but whether that thing is indicative of certain outcomes is another matter.

Advanced stats think D.Rob was amazing in his final year too, and the Spurs were 15-3 in games he missed. D.Rob looked invisible at times in his later years, and even in 99 he was very overrated, which I've discussed at length before.
viewtopic.php?t=2424823#p116090755

In the Lakers series in 99 D.Rob put up 13-6 and only played 28mpg. He could have been replaced with a pretty average 5 and the Spurs still would have won.

This post I have no issues with. You gave actual reasons and evidence. Whether people think an 18 game regular season team record is better evidence than +/- for an entire playoff series or whether raw points/rebounds for a single series is better than the +/- for the entire playoff run may be questioned but at least you gave them something to interact with.

[Cavsfansince84]

I'd say that Giannis stands out a little more in his era on that end. though if I am picking a player to be my offensive hub before 2014 I'd go with circa 99-07 Duncan.

[Djoker]

Might as well post this Timbit in this thread:

Read on Twitter

[lessthanjake]

Might as well post this Timbit in this thread:

Read on Twitter

It’s really one of the best sustained runs in sports history. That said, I do want to note that, based on PBPstats data, the Spurs were +2.70 in Duncan’s 23,284 minutes off the court from 2001-2016. PBPstats doesn’t go prior to that, but Basketball Reference has them as +1.1 without Duncan in 2000, +6.4 without him in 1999, and -5.1 without him in 1998, so adding those years surely wouldn’t move the top-line number much. The overall picture is that the Spurs genuinely played like a ~48 win team even without Duncan over the course of almost two decades. And they did actually win at a 49-win pace in the 128 games he missed.

It’s honestly incredible stuff at the team level. Even really stacked teams don’t tend to do that well without an all-time-great player, let alone doing so over so many years. For instance, the 2015-2019 dynasty Warriors were -1.80 with Steph off the court. The Heatles were -1.68 with LeBron off the court. In the near-complete 452-game sample we have of Jordan’s Bulls just in the six title years, the Bulls were -2.20 per 48 minutes with Jordan off the court. Basketball-Reference has the 2000-2002 Lakers at -2.4 with Shaq off the floor. The 2008-2010 Lakers were -1.69 with Kobe off the floor. The data we have at the moment definitely suggests the Showtime Lakers were significantly negative with Magic off the floor. The data on this is all pretty similar. Really talented multiple-title teams basically all seem to have been slightly negative (i.e. in the -1 to -3 zone) over multi-year spans without their best player on the court (with the Showtime Lakers numbers looking even worse than that). So I’d say the Duncan Spurs were genuinely quite incredible at a team level to be able to do so well with Duncan off the court, and I think that that was a massive contributor to the team doing so consistently well. Credit there has to go to guys like Ginobili, Popovich, and various really solid bench players they had over the years.

None of this is to be critical or downplay Duncan. I’m very high on him. But what the Spurs did was really incredible from the whole organization IMO.

[Djoker]

Might as well post this Timbit in this thread:

Read on Twitter

It’s really one of the best sustained runs in sports history. That said, I do want to note that, based on PBPstats data, the Spurs were +2.70 in Duncan’s 23,284 minutes off the court from 2001-2016. PBPstats doesn’t go prior to that, but Basketball Reference has them as +1.1 without Duncan in 2000, +6.4 without him in 1999, and -5.1 without him in 1998, so adding those years surely wouldn’t move the top-line number much. The overall picture is that the Spurs genuinely played like a ~48 win team even without Duncan over the course of almost two decades. And they did actually win at a 49-win pace in the 128 games he missed.

It’s honestly incredible stuff at the team level. Even really stacked teams don’t tend to do that well without an all-time-great player, let alone doing so over so many years. For instance, the 2015-2019 dynasty Warriors were -1.80 with Steph off the court. The Heatles were -1.68 with LeBron off the court. In the near-complete 452-game sample we have of Jordan’s Bulls just in the six title years, the Bulls were -2.20 per 48 minutes with Jordan off the court. Basketball-Reference has the 2000-2002 Lakers at -2.4 with Shaq off the floor. The 2008-2010 Lakers were -1.69 with Kobe off the floor. The data we have at the moment definitely suggests the Showtime Lakers were significantly negative with Magic off the floor. The data on this is all pretty similar. Really talented multiple-title teams basically all seem to have been slightly negative (i.e. in the -1 to -3 zone) over multi-year spans without their best player on the court (with the Showtime Lakers numbers looking even worse than that). So I’d say the Duncan Spurs were genuinely quite incredible at a team level to be able to do so well with Duncan off the court, and I think that that was a massive contributor to the team doing so consistently well. Credit there has to go to guys like Ginobili, Popovich, and various really solid bench players they had over the years.

None of this is to be critical or downplay Duncan. I’m very high on him. But what the Spurs did was really incredible from the whole organization IMO.

I just want to point out that the numbers in the tweet are based on WOWY samples, not ON-OFF data.

While the numbers you posted are correct, I'd caution that the career WOWY sample without Duncan is heavily skewed by his late career numbers. From 2012-2016, the Spurs played on a 58-win pace (+6.1 MOV) without Duncan in 55 games but from 1998-2011 they played at a roughly 43-win pace (+0.8 MOV) in 63 games without him.

And during the Duncan-led dominant Spurs years from 2003-2007 they played at a roughly 40-win pace (-0.4 MOV) in 34 games without him. With him, they played at a 62-win pace (+7.8 MOV) over 376 games. There is definitely evidence of a massive lift in his prime years while Old Duncan was more so along for the ride so to speak.

[lessthanjake]

Might as well post this Timbit in this thread:

Read on Twitter

It’s really one of the best sustained runs in sports history. That said, I do want to note that, based on PBPstats data, the Spurs were +2.70 in Duncan’s 23,284 minutes off the court from 2001-2016. PBPstats doesn’t go prior to that, but Basketball Reference has them as +1.1 without Duncan in 2000, +6.4 without him in 1999, and -5.1 without him in 1998, so adding those years surely wouldn’t move the top-line number much. The overall picture is that the Spurs genuinely played like a ~48 win team even without Duncan over the course of almost two decades. And they did actually win at a 49-win pace in the 128 games he missed.

It’s honestly incredible stuff at the team level. Even really stacked teams don’t tend to do that well without an all-time-great player, let alone doing so over so many years. For instance, the 2015-2019 dynasty Warriors were -1.80 with Steph off the court. The Heatles were -1.68 with LeBron off the court. In the near-complete 452-game sample we have of Jordan’s Bulls just in the six title years, the Bulls were -2.20 per 48 minutes with Jordan off the court. Basketball-Reference has the 2000-2002 Lakers at -2.4 with Shaq off the floor. The 2008-2010 Lakers were -1.69 with Kobe off the floor. The data we have at the moment definitely suggests the Showtime Lakers were significantly negative with Magic off the floor. The data on this is all pretty similar. Really talented multiple-title teams basically all seem to have been slightly negative (i.e. in the -1 to -3 zone) over multi-year spans without their best player on the court (with the Showtime Lakers numbers looking even worse than that). So I’d say the Duncan Spurs were genuinely quite incredible at a team level to be able to do so well with Duncan off the court, and I think that that was a massive contributor to the team doing so consistently well. Credit there has to go to guys like Ginobili, Popovich, and various really solid bench players they had over the years.

None of this is to be critical or downplay Duncan. I’m very high on him. But what the Spurs did was really incredible from the whole organization IMO.

I just want to point out that the numbers in the tweet are based on WOWY samples, not ON-OFF data.

While the numbers you posted are correct, I'd caution that the career WOWY sample without Duncan is heavily skewed by his late career numbers. From 2012-2016, the Spurs played on a 58-win pace (+6.1 MOV) without Duncan in 55 games but from 1998-2011 they played at a roughly 43-win pace (+0.8 MOV) in 63 games without him.

And during the Duncan-led dominant Spurs years from 2003-2007 they played at a roughly 40-win pace (-0.4 MOV) in 34 games without him. With him, they played at a 62-win pace (+7.8 MOV) over 376 games. There is definitely evidence of a massive lift in his prime years while Old Duncan was more so along for the ride so to speak.

Yeah, this is a good thing to point out. The Spurs basically stayed about equally good the whole time, so we would expect that the Spurs without Duncan did better in later years when Duncan was older and therefore not providing the same lift as before. That said, even in his best years, the Spurs did a bit better with him off the court than the dynasty teams I mentioned in my above post did without their star on the court. So I’d say that the rest of the Spurs organization did a great job in this regard even then, and then later did an absolutely incredible job when Duncan was declining—with the overall result being a crazy amount of sustained excellence for the team. Honestly, I think a lot of this comes down to Ginobili. I really think the Duncan+Ginobili combination was one of the best duos a team has ever had. They were really great on the court together, but part of what made it great is that both of them were capable of leading the team to do really well while the other was off the court. Of course, eventually Kawhi added to this further (and in the very early years, Robinson was basically the Ginobili in this scenario). Another aspect is that over time the Spurs just kept getting very good role players (guys like Horry, Brent Barry, Danny Green, Splitter, Diaw, etc.). I hated the Spurs (but not actually Duncan) for this entire timespan, but in recent years I’ve really grown to appreciate what they did. It was just incredible from pretty much everyone.

[SHAQ32]

I'd trust Tim against anybody in a big game 7. I wouldn't trust Giannis at all against a legit defense, let alone an all-time-level defense.