Retro POY '05-06 (Voting Complete)

[Doctor MJ]

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 best player seasons of '05-06. Some pointers:

-I will tally up the votes 3 days from now. I encourage people to wait to actually cast their votes until there's been some discussion - Ideally waiting until the 3rd day. However, I know everyone's schedule is busy - I'm not going NOT count votes just because they come in relatively early.

-The voting panel is not officially closed. However, if you'd like to be a part of it, contact me - more dedicated, knowledgeable voters will always be wanted.

-This includes both regular and post-season. You should be weighing both in to some degree, and should not be ranking one star over another just because of how far each got in the playoffs.

-Vote sincerely. Do not move a player down in your voting to give another player an advantage. I would encourage every voter to give some explanations while they do their voting - but particularly if you have a top 5 that deviates strongly with the norm and you haven't expressed your thoughts on it earlier in the thread. If I'm not satisfied, I may ask you for more of an explanation - and it may come to actually booting people out of the project.

Some things to start us off:

Season Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _2006.html
Playoff Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _2006.html
Award Voting http://www.basketball-reference.com/awa ... _2006.html

Regular Season Raw +/- http://82games.com/teams05.htm
Post-Season Raw +/- http://www.82games.com/0506/playoffs/playoffs.htm
Wages of Wins http://dberri.wordpress.com/nba-team-reviews-2005-06/
Regular Season Adjusted +/- http://82games.com/lewin2.htm

Questions for '05-06:

-So, Kobe, what do you think?
-Wade's playoff run?
-Is Nash more valuable than in the previous season?

[Optimism Prime]

Questions for '05-06:

-So, Kobe, what do you think?
-Wade's playoff run?
-Is Nash more valuable than in the previous season?

Prime's answers for 05-06:

-81 points, 35 ppg. Wow.
-Dallas was going 5-on-8 for a while there; hard to win when that's the case. Wade was phenomenal, but the refs helped.
-Previous season that we rated, or 04-05?

[bastillon]

Code: Select all

        +/-
Nash    8.3
Tim     4.6
LBJ    10.1
Kobe   12.4
Dirk    7.7
Wade   15.5

wow@Wade owning the rest.

despite the terrible star bonus, I think I'm going with Wade at #1. after all, you want to have refs on your side and it's part of his greatness. Wade doesn't get that many calls nowadays but back in the day you couldn't touch him. on other hand you couldn't touch James or Bryant either so I guess that evens out.

I don't really see much of an argument for Duncan being TOP5 this year. early exit while having better teammates than Nowitzki, lesser impact, injuries.

[Optimism Prime]

Code: Select all

        +/-
Nash    8.3
Tim     4.6
LBJ    10.1
Kobe   12.4
Dirk    7.7
Wade   15.5

wow@Wade owning the rest.

despite the terrible star bonus, I think I'm going with Wade at #1. after all, you want to have refs on your side and it's part of his greatness. Wade doesn't get that many calls nowadays but back in the day you couldn't touch him. on other hand you couldn't touch James or Bryant either so I guess that evens out.

I don't really see much of an argument for Duncan being TOP5 this year. early exit while having better teammates than Nowitzki, lesser impact, injuries.

Wait, what? Here's his FTA/game:

05-06: 10.7, 2nd in league (Iverson first)
06-07: 10.5, 1st in league
07-08: 9.2, 2nd in league (Howard first)
08-09: 9.8, 3rd in league (Howard first, Martin second)
09-10: 9.1, 4th in league (Howard, Durant, James)

He's gotten between 9-11 trips to the line for the past five seasons... and a top-5 FTA each year. Granted, his numbers have dropped off slightly there, which may be due to him saying "Hey, maybe if I keep driving to the hoop like this I'll get injured" but... he doesn't get calls? What?

[Dr Positivity]

This is where stuff gets a bit more difficult for me because I actually haven't been a "basketball NERD" since 06-07... when the Raptors got Bargnani/Colangelo and had their 47 win year, I jumped on the NBA bandwagon. Until then I saw basketball the same way I do baseball now... follow the standings and major players/teams, but not watching all too much until the playoffs and mostly a noob when it comes to knowing more than ppg/ast/rbs and the top 2 or 3 guys on every team

But maybe that's better... gets the subjective out

[bastillon]

by +/-, Kobe was a monster offensively but sucked badly on defense. +18.9 offense, +6.5 (negative) defense. pretty consistent with what you saw. Bryant coasted on defense and wasn't focused. I believe this is the year Tex publicly critized him for gambling and not giving a damn on def.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Rank     Player     Age     Tm     First     Pts Won     Pts Max     Share
1     Steve Nash     31     PHO     57.0     924.0     1250     0.739
2     LeBron James     21     CLE     16.0     688.0     1250     0.550
3     Dirk Nowitzki     27     DAL     14.0     544.0     1250     0.435
4     Kobe Bryant     27     LAL     22.0     483.0     1250     0.386
5     Chauncey Billups     29     DET     15.0     430.0     1250     0.344
6     Dwyane Wade     24     MIA     0.0     87.0     1250     0.070

Nash won MVP pretty comfortably. after all, taking Diaw-Marion-James Jones-Bell team to 2nd seed and WCFs is amazing.

when healthy, with Kurt-Diaw-Marion-Bell-Nash and Jones/Barb/Jackson, Suns were 28-10, on pace for 60.4W.

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         ORtg               DRtg
114.5 (1st of 30) 107.1 (17th of 30) =7.4
111.5 (2nd of 30) 105.8 (16th of 30) =5.7
113.9 (1st of 30) 106.4 (13th of 30) =7.5

I think their efficiency differential might have been better than of average 54W team.

Nash missed three games, they lost all three scoring 94,67 and allowing 112. they played 48-13 Spurs, 32-47 Warriors and 44-37 Lakers.

Nash vs Kobe 1st Rd:

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         PPG   TS%   APG   TOV   RPG   SPG   BPG
Nash    22.1  0.63   9.6   3.9   4.3   0.3   ---
Kobe    27.9  0.59   5.1   4.7   6.3   1.1   0.4

noteworthy: Kobe scored 50 in game #6, when Bell was suspended for clotheslining Kobe. without it, his avg PPG is ~24.2 on 56% TS.

Nash quite easily outplayed Kobe in that series.

Nash vs Dirk WCFs:

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         PPG   TS%   APG   TOV   RPG   SPG   BPG
Nash    21.0  0.62  10.4   3.2   2.8   0.2   0.6
Dirk    28.8  0.59   3.6   1.6  13.8   1.0   0.4

MVP-worthy matchup. Nowitzki had a huge game #5 with 50 pts. Nash had a huge game #1 with 27/16/5 and some clutch buckets IIRC.

[bastillon]

Optimism Prime, I'm talking about the finals.

[bastillon]

Kobe missed 2 games. they lost both scoring 87 and allowing 94. both came against 15-16 Utah on back2back set. they lost by 4 pts at home and by 10 pts in Energy Solutions.

[bastillon]

Wade missed 7 games. Miami was 4-3. 95.57 scored/97 allowed in those games. pretty much mediocrity without Wade.

[ElGee]

Wade is a monster - going to be tough to top his MJ-impression in the Finals (ECF was ridiculous too - 66% TS%).

Didn't Kobe have a bunch of points in that 50-game in overtime when Phoenix had a big lead (they weren't garbage points per se, but it didn't have the feel of some dominant offensive performance). And I for one loved how he played for much of that series -- sacrificing shots to set up teammates and buying into the plan of attacking Phoenix inside. I, and many of the team's writers, would have rather seen that style for 82 games, even if the results were comparable.

re: Nash, I do think he was more valuable than he was in 05, but some of that is Ceiling Effect. This came up in 08 with regards to Garnett adding value to a team a poster thought would win ~50 games. But there is a Ceiling Effect in the NBA: good players can have a greater effect on weaker teams, but add a good player to a great team and the raw number of wins won't be as great. It's a lot harder to go from 60 wins to 75 wins than from 30 wins to 45 wins.

[TMACFORMVP]

I'm real interested to see how Wade fares here. He often gets underrated for his regular season, because many people claim it was his post-season that made him a top player. While that's true in some regard, Wade was still 26/6/7 on nearly 50% from the floor. He was All-NBA 2nd team, and finished 6th in MVP Voting. His contemporaries are both LeBron (31/7/7), and Kobe (35/5/4.5). I'd say both definitely had the statistical advantage, but enough of one to outweigh the fact that Wade put up 28/6/6 on 50% in the playoffs and 35/8/4 with 3 steals on 47% in the finals? It wasn't even just the finals, in the ECFs against the Pistons, he averaged 26.6 / 5.1 / 5.5 on an unreal 61% from the field. And to think if you don't include that final game, he was shooting 66% from the floor. I remember being in awe watching the course of that entire playoffs.

I LOVE what Nash did that season as well, nearly 19/10.5 on 51/43/92. Dirk was great, but because of what Wade did in that finals, I'd rank him over Dirk for POY honors. But man, he was awesome throughout, especially in that series against the Spurs. Duncan wasn't as prevalent suffering from some injuries this season, but as always, an absolute beast in the post season (26/10.5 on 57%). But I don't think he makes the cut here. Brand is interesting, but I think there are better candidates. I kind of feel Billups is in the same boat, he was terrific individually and fared good team success, but they didn't reach the finals, and wasn't dominant enough over the other candidates for the top 5. Garnett was great as usual, but his team sucked, and Shaq missed too many games to be in real consideration.

So you come to the conclusion that the top 5 will be in no specific order Nash, Kobe, Wade, Bron, and Dirk. Kobe's season scoring the ball was amazing, arguably the greatest all time in that regard. And with the supporting cast given, 45 games won was rather impressive. In the playoffs they took the Suns to seven, but it hurts that he lost a 3-1 lead. I'm not sure, despite the supporting cast, if the absolute best player in the league would have lost such a lead (not to mention, IIRC he threw up a clunker in that second half of Game 7). But, again, I'm not sure how much I blame him for that. Smush Parker logged in the third most minutes on the team and shot a horrible 33% from the floor and 15% from distance.

Nash actually advanced, and completely overachieved in the regular season. I remember many people expecting the Suns to completely fall off without Amare, instead they still win over 50 games, and Nash was dominant, both in the playoffs, and in the regular season. He did have 5 other players average over double digits, but honestly speaking, I'd proportion alot of that BECAUSE of Nash. Just look at what Marion, Diaw, Thomas and Bell have done after leaving Phoenix. I'd definitely have him over Kobe.

I'm wavering back and forth on him and Dirk. I think Nash had the more impressive regular season, but Dirk advanced further, with a pretty nice playoffs. But it's hard to shake off that finals, in which he DID do 23/11, but only 39% from the field, and 25% from distance. And not to mention, that's blowing a 2-0 lead. I mean, if I'm going to knock Kobe slightly for that, then Dirk deserves the same criticism as well. To be fair, he too also didn't have that much help (though Terry did 22 PPG on 48%), but certainly more than what Nash had. I value team success, and due to the virtue of Dirk getting to the finals, I'd want to put him over Nash, but I don't think I can because I believe Nash was just that much better that season.

As for Kobe v. Dirk, I think I'd place Dirk higher, because of that team success. And Kobe's main edge would be points wise. In the playoffs, for more stretch of games, Dirk averaged over 27 PPG. That's how much Kobe averaged in the series against the Suns.

Now LeBron, I feel he was statistically more superior to Kobe. He scored roughly 2-3 less which is significant, but lesser when we're talking about both being 30 PPG scorers. He was impressive in the playoffs as well, in fact scoring more over a larger duration of games. I feel wrong about putting such a historic season with the 62 in three quarters, the highest scoring average since MJ, and of course 82 points in a game so low, but it's slowly coming to a point where I think he'd be the last player on my list.

Is it that much statistically better than Dirk's now to the point it overweighs that he went to the finals, with a great WCF, and overall playoff run, despite the choke in the Finals?

I'm going to refrain from voting right now, but as of now, I'm sort of leading towards Wade being the best player, which kind of hurts me to say, since I don't really want this to become a sort of best player on championship sort of thing. But in this case, I think it'd be justified (as will Duncan and such next season) with that historic finals performance, and underrated regular season. Following Wade would likely be Nash, then Dirk, LeBron and Kobe.

That will probably be my final vote in the end, but I've loved the discussion from the other threads, and am interested to see what the arguments are for the placement in the top 5, since I'm not completely SOLD.

[Doctor MJ]

-Dallas was going 5-on-8 for a while there; hard to win when that's the case. Wade was phenomenal, but the refs helped.
-Previous season that we rated, or 04-05?

Responding on these two:

Re: 5-on-8. You're welcome to look at it however you want, here's how I look at it: There is no conspiracy to make a #5 pick from Marquette into a superstar. Wade gets the calls because his strategy as a basketball player is drive, drive, drive, which forces opponents to foul, and also creates impossible to ref situations where the benefit tends to go to the aggressor (and nobody's more aggressive than Wade). I lament along with everyone else that both the lack of perfect officiating and the amount of time I spend guys standing around while Wade shoots free throws, but in rating him as a player I've got nothing here to knock him for.

Re: Previous. Talking about '04-05. Nash probably got the MVP because voters were surprised at how well Nash and the Suns did without Amare even though they had just seen his capabilities in winning the first MVP. So, was Nash actually more valuable this year despite the inferior record, or not?

[Doctor MJ]

Didn't Kobe have a bunch of points in that 50-game in overtime when Phoenix had a big lead (they weren't garbage points per se, but it didn't have the feel of some dominant offensive performance). And I for one loved how he played for much of that series -- sacrificing shots to set up teammates and buying into the plan of attacking Phoenix inside. I, and many of the team's writers, would have rather seen that style for 82 games, even if the results were comparable.

re: Nash, I do think he was more valuable than he was in 05, but some of that is Ceiling Effect. This came up in 08 with regards to Garnett adding value to a team a poster thought would win ~50 games. But there is a Ceiling Effect in the NBA: good players can have a greater effect on weaker teams, but add a good player to a great team and the raw number of wins won't be as great. It's a lot harder to go from 60 wins to 75 wins than from 30 wins to 45 wins.

Cool, getting into this stuff now.

So thoughts on the Kobe & the Lakers in the Phoenix series:

-Obviously the Lakers decided to go with a very different strategy against the Suns then they'd been playing in April. They tried to play more team ball where they had been relying on Kobe to score 40 points.

-The Lakers almost won the series, so it was must have been a good strategy right? Well, maybe, but it's not that clear cut. Thing is, this wasn't really the Lakers going up against a team that had been playing at an elite level. Phoenix had been playing .500 ball for the past 20+ games ending the season (and remember Lakers finished the season on a hot streak). Just a coincidence? Well, remember that Kurt Thomas got hurt. That might not sound like much, but when the result is that Boris Diaw becomes your starting center, this is far from your ideal team. The Suns were outrebounded in the playoffs at absolutely epic levels.

All this is to say that you can't really look at the Lakers as having clearly improved with this new strategy. You might personally conclude they improved, but there are strong arguments to the contrary.

So yeah, the relationship between Kobe & Phil must have been very interesting at that point, and I don't for a minute by that his disappearing act in the second half of Game 7 was what Phil wanted. Kobe liked the way things were going heading into the playoffs, he reluctantly played it Phil's way in the series, and when it become clear that the series was probably a loss he was very angry. I blame Kobe for pouting, but I'm really not sure that Phil's strategy was the right one.

(Realistically though, I think Phil has always been trying to get to the happy medium where Kobe first works to get the team offense flowing, and then takes over in accordance to how hot he is relative to the team, so when the team seems to take an abrupt turn possibly skipping over that happy medium, pretty good chance it went further in that direction than Phil intended.)

Re: Ceiling effect. I think you're technically right, but I try to be more fluid than that in my judge of value. Logically, lifting a team from 20 to 30 wins isn't going to be as hard as lifting them 40 to 50. Better talent, better operation, the harder it is to improve. This is one of the reasons that when I look at +/- stats, I always mentally curve the data to help guys on better teams (should be noted that there are factors at times in the opposite direction that must be accounted for before the curving is done).

Circling back to the Kurt Thomas situation and Nash's value. There've been threads on the PC board recently talking about goodness vs irreplaceability. The '06 Suns may have been a situation where the two were actually split - at least after Thomas was gone. The Suns became so short on big men that I'd wonder if the team would have completely fallen apart without Marion. As it was, the team really struggled to get by without Thomas. All this to bring up the question - does that hurt Nash's value for this year in your mind?

[mysticbb]

I value team success, and due to the virtue of Dirk getting to the finals, I'd want to put him over Nash, but I don't think I can because I believe Nash was just that much better that season.

Nowitzki has the better boxscore metrics AND better +/- numbers. How is that possible that Nash was MUCH better? That is impossible. If Nash was better than Nowitzki is should have at least showed up somewhere, but it didn't.

Knocking Nowitzki for his rather poor finals performance, in which he still had 23/11/3 on 53 ts% seems ok in comparison to the rest of his playoff performances. Nowitzki in this series still scored more efficient than his teammates and the Heat, and as usual had a way lower turnover rate.

Nowitzki led the league that season in PER and Win Shares, he posted the 2nd highest amount of Win Shares in playoff history in that year!
I say it rather blunt here: Nowitzki was the MVP of the regular season 2006, not Steve Nash. Nowitzki is better in every advanced metric that season. Nowitzki had 27/9/3 in the regular season, 27/12/3 in the playoffs. He set a new All Time record in the playoffs with 203 free throws made (with less FTA than others who are close to that value).

Best +/- numbers in the regular season had James ahead of Bryant, then Nowitzki, Nash and Wade. Tim Duncan had very unimpressive +/- numbers, Garnett is ahead of him in that category. Best boxscore metrics: Nowitzki, James, Bryant, Garnett, Wade, Nash and Duncan. Duncan had a very unimpressive season for his standards. In the playoffs he played indeed better and had an awesome series against the Mavericks. For the playoffs overall I have Nowitzki as the 2nd to Wade ahead of Nash, Duncan, James and Bryant.
Bryant, even though he had a great regular season with those 35.4 ppg, he had a huge drop in the playoffs. His PER went down from 28 to 20, his WS/48 from 0.224 to 0.087. I can't ignore that completely which gives James and Wade, both where close to Bryant anyway, the edge here. Nash while being great, wasn't as good that season as in other seasons. His APM, which reflects his impact usually better than boxscore metrics, was lower than that of James, Bryant and Nowitzki and similar to Wade. Wade had the best playoffs of all candidates due to his great performances in the Conference Finals and in the Finals, he was for sure better than Nash. Nash being better than James and Bryant in the playoffs doesn't make up for the difference in the regular season. I can't justify putting him ahead of either of those.

That makes:

1. Dirk Nowitzki
2. Dwyane Wade
3. LeBron James
4. Kobe Bryant
5. Steve Nash

HM: Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett

[Gongxi]

Just for posterity's sake, I'm going to say that throughout this thing I'm going mostly by on-court production, with games in December mattering as much as games in March, and games in the playoffs meaning only about 50% more than games in the regular season. Which is to say: if you play 20 playoff games and 82 regular season games, your regular season still accounts for roughly 2/3rds of where I'm placing you. Why? Because a 20 game sample size pales in comparison to 82 or, together, 102 games.

Also, I don't much care about how well your team did. It's basketball, not ping pong- one player can't dictate whether an entire team wins or loses. That said...

A very tight year. At the end of the regular season, I had/would've had Bryant decently ahead of Nowitzki, James, Garnett, and Wade (no particular order). Not enough changed in the postseason to move any of those five out of contention, especially with Duncan having one of his worst years as a pro (although great in the playoffs, that was only 13 games of his season), so those are my five and- with Kobe having an edge going in- the playoffs defining where they fall in.

Since KG didn't participate, he can't move down, but also can't move up. Since no one really played poorly....sorry Kev, that's where you go. I thought you'd move up from my last list, but I guess not. Nowitzki had a great playoff run, what can you say? I find as I'm doing these, I continually seem to be giving props for great seasons to some of these guys with nothing much else to add, but that's how it goes I guess. Awesome season, but eclipsed by even more transcendent ones. LeBron had two amazing series against the Wizards and the Pistons and that's what catapulted him to #3 in my eyes. And, as I said, if the whole thing ended with the regular season, Kobe would have this, but because Wade put on a convincing Jordan impression in the ECF and Finals...this is Dwayne's year.

1- Dwayne Wade
2- Kobe Bryant
3- LeBron James
4- Dirk Nowitzki
5- Kevin Garnett

So where's the MVP? I'm just not a believer guys. Best PG? Yes. Excellent peak? Yes. But, for the 2005-2006 season, would I take him over any of the above? No. But, because of Nash, at least we have a great idea of what happens when the best PG plays on a very offensively talented team playing at a much higher pace than virtually any other. So, thanks for that Steve. I'll give him an honorable mention, though, he really is just outside these five.

[ElGee]

Didn't Kobe have a bunch of points in that 50-game in overtime when Phoenix had a big lead (they weren't garbage points per se, but it didn't have the feel of some dominant offensive performance). And I for one loved how he played for much of that series -- sacrificing shots to set up teammates and buying into the plan of attacking Phoenix inside. I, and many of the team's writers, would have rather seen that style for 82 games, even if the results were comparable.

re: Nash, I do think he was more valuable than he was in 05, but some of that is Ceiling Effect. This came up in 08 with regards to Garnett adding value to a team a poster thought would win ~50 games. But there is a Ceiling Effect in the NBA: good players can have a greater effect on weaker teams, but add a good player to a great team and the raw number of wins won't be as great. It's a lot harder to go from 60 wins to 75 wins than from 30 wins to 45 wins.

Cool, getting into this stuff now.

So thoughts on the Kobe & the Lakers in the Phoenix series:

-Obviously the Lakers decided to go with a very different strategy against the Suns then they'd been playing in April. They tried to play more team ball where they had been relying on Kobe to score 40 points.

-The Lakers almost won the series, so it was must have been a good strategy right? Well, maybe, but it's not that clear cut. Thing is, this wasn't really the Lakers going up against a team that had been playing at an elite level. Phoenix had been playing .500 ball for the past 20+ games ending the season (and remember Lakers finished the season on a hot streak). Just a coincidence? Well, remember that Kurt Thomas got hurt. That might not sound like much, but when the result is that Boris Diaw becomes your starting center, this is far from your ideal team. The Suns were outrebounded in the playoffs at absolutely epic levels.

All this is to say that you can't really look at the Lakers as having clearly improved with this new strategy. You might personally conclude they improved, but there are strong arguments to the contrary.

I agree with this. As I mentioned, the Lakers had some strength inside and rebounded well and Phil Jackson should get credit for a clear strategy shift from the outset.

Now, I don't think that series is ample evidence to show that type of strategy was "better." (As I mentioned previously, Kobe-ball, if you will, still yielded some impressive results.) However, I do think there is ample evidence in the history of the sport that playing a team game is better than relying on an individual. This might be as simple as statistical variance; LA goes as Kobe goes, so when he's off they lose, versus attacking with 7 players, so 6 can pick up the slack if the 7th is off. But there might something more to it, such as preparing other players for certain situations they will face later on ("experience," if you will) and allowing for a singular defensive formula to slow down the individual in critical moments.

So, the results may have been the same if they played like that all season. They may have been even slightly worse in the regular season. But perhaps the team would have been better for it in the long run. Again, regarding Kobe as an individual and in this ranking, I'm not sure how to factor that in. Then again, there may be something bigger here which I'll get to...

So yeah, the relationship between Kobe & Phil must have been very interesting at that point, and I don't for a minute by that his disappearing act in the second half of Game 7 was what Phil wanted. Kobe liked the way things were going heading into the playoffs, he reluctantly played it Phil's way in the series, and when it become clear that the series was probably a loss he was very angry. I blame Kobe for pouting, but I'm really not sure that Phil's strategy was the right one.

(Realistically though, I think Phil has always been trying to get to the happy medium where Kobe first works to get the team offense flowing, and then takes over in accordance to how hot he is relative to the team, so when the team seems to take an abrupt turn possibly skipping over that happy medium, pretty good chance it went further in that direction than Phil intended.)

Here. Essentially, this is a period (03-07?) where there are other things to consider with Kobe Bryant besides ability. What I want to know is

(1) How much does that matter on the court?
(2) How likely is it to matter off the court?

I remember a number of incidents where he would just lay into his teammates on the court (sometimes for not very good reasons -- Mark Jackson reminded me of 06 last night when Kobe yelled at Gasol because Kobe turned it over, and Jackson basically said Pau should tell Kobe to not leave his feet, instead of looking apologetic because Pau didn't do anything wrong. Unlike, say, Walton, Pau doesn't wilt to that criticism, he yearns to please Bryant. His personality meshes very well with Kobe's. Anyway...) I don't think his teammates at the time responded well to that. Again, he did so much on the court that carried value I'm not sure how much any of this matters...

Other than the larger lingering issue of "will he be a malcontent?"

To me, he's the most talented player in NBA history to not "get it" - that perfect balance between owning the game, creating for teammates, and scoring when the moment demands it. So, if we put him in on a team in a good situation at that point in time, would this be an issue? Would he need to be a certain level of alpha? Would he need certain plays for him at the end of games? A certain coach? Etc.

I think the byproduct of all this is captured in the 82games last-second shot study. Anyone who's followed him since 2000 knows Bryant has the ability and the mental focus to absolute drill a quality last-second shot. The problem was, defenses just keyed on him at the end of games and he shot anyway instead of trusting his teammates. And that's where not giving teammates that experience makes it easier for defenses. Maybe Nash doesn't take a free run at Kobe on his series-winning attempt in G6 knowing he might pass it...Maybe.

Re: Ceiling effect. I think you're technically right, but I try to be more fluid than that in my judge of value. Logically, lifting a team from 20 to 30 wins isn't going to be as hard as lifting them 40 to 50. Better talent, better operation, the harder it is to improve. This is one of the reasons that when I look at +/- stats, I always mentally curve the data to help guys on better teams (should be noted that there are factors at times in the opposite direction that must be accounted for before the curving is done).

Circling back to the Kurt Thomas situation and Nash's value. There've been threads on the PC board recently talking about goodness vs irreplaceability. The '06 Suns may have been a situation where the two were actually split - at least after Thomas was gone. The Suns became so short on big men that I'd wonder if the team would have completely fallen apart without Marion. As it was, the team really struggled to get by without Thomas. All this to bring up the question - does that hurt Nash's value for this year in your mind?

This doesn't hurt Nash's value in my mind because it's such an extreme situation. Pretty much any big in history would be in a nightmare situation if his team completely ran out of guards and ball-handlers. So if a guard like Nash runs out of bigs and they just plug in a guy who at least has offensive talent (Diaw) and Nash still keeps them afloat, that's pretty darn impressive.

[ElGee]

Just for posterity's sake, I'm going to say that throughout this thing I'm going mostly by on-court production, with games in December mattering as much as games in March, and games in the playoffs meaning only about 50% more than games in the regular season. Which is to say: if you play 20 playoff games and 82 regular season games, your regular season still accounts for roughly 2/3rds of where I'm placing you. Why? Because a 20 game sample size pales in comparison to 82 or, together, 102 games.

Also, I don't much care about how well your team did. It's basketball, not ping pong- one player can't dictate whether an entire team wins or loses. That said...

A very tight year. At the end of the regular season, I had/would've had Bryant decently ahead of Nowitzki, James, Garnett, and Wade (no particular order). Not enough changed in the postseason to move any of those five out of contention, especially with Duncan having one of his worst years as a pro (although great in the playoffs, that was only 13 games of his season), so those are my five and- with Kobe having an edge going in- the playoffs defining where they fall in.

Since KG didn't participate, he can't move down, but also can't move up. Since no one really played poorly....sorry Kev, that's where you go. I thought you'd move up from my last list, but I guess not. Nowitzki had a great playoff run, what can you say? I find as I'm doing these, I continually seem to be giving props for great seasons to some of these guys with nothing much else to add, but that's how it goes I guess. Awesome season, but eclipsed by even more transcendent ones. LeBron had two amazing series against the Wizards and the Pistons and that's what catapulted him to #3 in my eyes. And, as I said, if the whole thing ended with the regular season, Kobe would have this, but because Wade put on a convincing Jordan impression in the ECF and Finals...this is Dwayne's year.

1- Dwayne Wade
2- Kobe Bryant
3- LeBron James
4- Dirk Nowitzki
5- Kevin Garnett

So where's the MVP? I'm just not a believer guys. Best PG? Yes. Excellent peak? Yes. But, for the 2005-2006 season, would I take him over any of the above? No. But, because of Nash, at least we have a great idea of what happens when the best PG plays on a very offensively talented team playing at a much higher pace than virtually any other. So, thanks for that Steve. I'll give him an honorable mention, though, he really is just outside these five.

I'm stuck in this conundrum as well. Feels like 7 guys for 5 spots to me (I include Duncan, who confirmed despite a rugged regular season that he was still ridiculously good), although I imagine most people will just discard Garnett because of team failures. I'm wondering what drza has to say about that, as I don't remember thinking in 06 "KG's really slowed down" and there's ample statistical to indicate he belongs as well.

[ElGee]

To follow up on the case for Duncan for a minute, the Spurs went 63-19 that year with a 99.8 DRtg. That was with Rasho starting 51 games.

You can then make the case that the playoffs were Duncan's best ever (certainly only behind 03 from a statistical perspective). His series against Dallas:

32.3 ppg 11.7 rpg 3.7 apg 61.5 TS%.

That series was a war. One of the better ones of the decade, and both teams were championship caliber. I wonder if Duncan did that in the Finals if he'd be getting more love...

[lorak]

Code: Select all

        +/-
Nash    8.3
Tim     4.6
LBJ    10.1
Kobe   12.4
Dirk    7.7
Wade   15.5

I don’t know where did you get this numbers but APM that year is different:
(http://www.82games.com/lewin2.htm)
1. Rasheed 20.2
2. LeBron 19.59
3. Ben Wallace 17.92
4. Kobe 14.34
5. Kirilenko 13.83
6. Ming 13.63
The rest was below 12.

Other interesting results:
Artest 11.83
Iguodala (!) 11.6
Dirk 10.52
Paul 10.22
Ray Allen 9.84
Nash 9.63
Wade 9.57
Shaq 9.12
KG 8.05
TMac 7.83
Duncan 3.35

Wow, Duncan is really low here, but other metrics shows that his regular season was better. And - what's the most important - in playoffs he was great: Dirk, Wade and Duncan, they all three played on the amazing level in the playoffs. They separated themselves from the rest and I think they should be in top 5. Also LeBron, Kobe and Garnett are in discussion – of course IMO, but some voters may want Nash, but I’m with Gongxi and ElGee on this: So where's the MVP? I'm just not a believer guys. Best PG? Yes. Excellent peak? Yes. But, for the 2005-2006 season, would I take him over any of the above? No.

So far Dirk, Wade and Duncan are my top 3 (In no particular order) and LJ, KB and KG are In discussion for spots 4-5.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I think I'm going to go with:

1. Dirk Nowitzki - Led NBA in PER, Win Shares, Playoff Win Shares, 3rd in MVP voting, 1st-Team All-NBA
2. Dwyane Wade - Finals MVP, fourth in PER, 2nd-Team All-NBA
3. Steve Nash - MVP, Lead NBA in assists, APG, and TS.
4. LeBron James - 2nd in MVP voting, 2nd in Win Shares, 1st-Team All-NBA
5. Tim Duncan - Led NBA in Defensive Rating, Defensive Win Shares, 2nd-Team All-NBA, 2nd-Team All-Defensive

HM: Kobe Bryant - Led NBA in PPG, Points, 3rd in PER, 1st-Team All-NBA, 1st-Team All-Defensive