Retro POY '06-07 (Voting Complete)

[bastillon]

The Suns use Amare to get their inside points and Nash to get the 3pt ones. Lebron gives you both by himself. That's the difference to me. Duncan doesn't create as many 3s and he's not nearly as efficient within 5 feet as Lebron, the reason it's close is defense alone IMO

since when LeBron gives you 3s at the level even remotely comparable to Nash ?
if anything Nash gives you both and orchestrates the offense much better. look at Suns 06 - 2nd in ORtg which is better than ANY LeBron-anchored offense EVER.

[Prolific Scorer]

Tim Duncan
LeBron James
Steve Nash
Kobe Bryant
Dirk Nowitzki

[Silver Bullet]

I don't understand how people are putting Lebron so high, when Kobe put up better numbers, and his team was more successful, and Lebron himself time after time kept referring to Kobe as the best player in the game.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv37ykpYk84[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl_HbwnjHLI&feature=related[/youtube]

[Silver Bullet]

To his face

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSsi2NayD6o&feature=related[/youtube]

[ronnymac2]

A bit late to the party, but.....

I've read the thread and learned a lot. Especially about Duncan. In my head, I too had this year as Tim's last real "Tim Duncan" year. Many posters have confirmed this for me.

For me, this comes down to Kobe, LBJ, and Duncan. Kobe vs. LBJ imo this year is very close. I remember thinking that Kobe might be a slightly better player. However, James had an epic performance against Detroit, which I value a lot. I think Tim is at least the equal of James and Bryant as a player, and since he lead his team to a title, I'll take Timmy over them as a tiebreaker.

I was going to put LBJ ahead of Kobe, but....for some reason, I'm having a hard time with that now. I think I'm going to give it to Kobe. Lebron's usual statistical domination wasn't as pronounced this year, and Kobe wins in the accolades department. Since I think Kobe is a slightly better player at this point anyway, I'm going with Kobe. LBJ is great, but those Cavs weren't real contenders. They are like the Nets in 03 and 02. I don't know if that means James should get more credit for making the finals with those teammates or less credit for going through a weak east, but....

This will be odd, but I've got Kevin Garnett at number 4. I think he had bad teammates, and if you gave him amare and marion or Dirk's line-up or at least a decent supporting cast, you'll win 50. Hell, you give him a HOF or two, and I'd bet KG would win a title for you in the future......

Really, this is about who the better player is. Considering Nash and Dirk only have the advantage of having a superior supporting cast around them, I'm putting Garnett ahead of them. It wouldn't be right to penalize KG imo.

I disagree with the notion that Dirk's first round series shouldn't be held against him harshly. I make a big deal of a player being a playoff constant. Be a super-defensive anchor, show up for the big games/quarters/minutes, be a dominant force offensively. If a simple matchup problem (against a weak defensive team) is going to cause the Dirk of this season to not do any of the things I just mentioned, that's damning.

I'm thinking Dirk is a superstar here this season.....so those games aren't looking that great right now when comparing it to what I think a superstar should do to a team like the GSW. Dirk's individual playoff failure highlighted something that I had said about Dallas that whole season.....they have no true identity. Nothing to go to the well with when times got tough. I would have thought maybe Dirk could get it done offensively or in a big-game situation, but as was shown, a simple matchup problem could contain his offensive effectiveness to a decent degree.

I'll put Nowitzki ahead of Nash because I think he's a better player and had a superior regular season. Nash is great and had a good playoffs, but his playoff run doesn't jump out at me. Not enough to put him over Dirk.

Final ranking:

Tim Duncan
Kobe Bryant
Lebron James
Kevin Garnett
Dirk Nowitzki

[bballcool34]

Absolutely not. If you weigh playoff games just twice as much as regular season games- not crazily inordinate, but not just the same- the difference can clearly be seen. Dirk's 6 games against a team he already played poorly against is insignificant both in sample size and because it showed us what the regular season already told us: he wasn't very good against the Warriors.

I just finished evaluating their seasons using your method of weighing post-season games twice as more. This is what I found:

First Robinson/Olajuwon

Code: Select all

       PER,  WS,   WS48
DR:  27.56, 22.1, 0.247
HO:  26.27, 16.3, 0.167
Gap: 1.29,   5.8,  0.08

Now Dirk/Duncan

Code: Select all

       PER,  WS,   WS48
DN:  26.71, 17.5, 0.258
TD:  26.53, 19.9, 0.225
Gap: 0.18, -2.4,  0.033

Overall the statistical gap between DR/HO is larger than DN/TD (obviously total WS should be disregarded in DN/TD comparison because TD played a lot more games). This ignores the larger difference that exists defensively amongst TD/DN vs DR/HO. So yes, you are being inconsistent by favoring DR/HO and acting so strident in DN > TD.

A few possibilities

1. These aren't the stats you use to evaluate players. Fair enough, I would never base my player evaluations on these two stats. This is you know who style of evaluating players. Any idiot with access to B-R could do this. But based on these metrics Robinson > Olajuwon with regards to player production by a greater margin than Dirk > Duncan.

2. You weren't aware of statistical gap, and now would change your mind. Fair enough.

3. Even with this information, you still think HO > DR and DN > TD, based on your own personal evaluation that goes beyond looking at player production. That's fine, a good voter has to exercise judgment and not just mindlessly look up numbers. But if you are going to allow yourself the right to exercise judgment in evaluating players. If you are going to consider things beyond mere production, you should allow others the same right. Try to refrain from saying people are voting for players that aren't "nearly" as good as the player you favor unless it is really egregious. Because under this scenario you do deviate from just looking at player production.

Note, I like reading your posts and if my tone sounds harsh it is unintended. There are a lot of posters in this thread I wouldn't even respond to except to mock.

As a person whose been following these threads rather closely, this was some good work by Sp6rUnderrated...it was interesting to see the gaps between DR/Hakeem compared to that of Dirk/Duncan....

[Doctor MJ]

Times winding down on this one, and a quick count indicates a lot less people voting. Get your vote on folks!

[sp6r=underrated]

As a person whose been following these threads rather closely, this was some good work by Sp6rUnderrated...it was interesting to see the gaps between DR/Hakeem compared to that of Dirk/Duncan....

I should be clear I would favor HO over DR.

But I find it utterly bizarre that someone could be so up in arms, more or less openly saying were idiotic ring counters, for people voting for Duncan over Dirk, and then voting for HO over DR in 95. Almost every statistical measurement I have seen over the years favors DR over HO in 95 by a significantly larger margin than DN over TD in 07.

There is room for analysis beyond just looking up numbers on line and Gongxi, by his voting in 95, agrees with this. That is all I wanted to get across by comparing the gap between the two comparisons. It is basically impossible to be outraged over 07 and not be outraged over 95.

Like I said, I far prefer reading Gongxi posts over 90% of the board. He is smart, interesting, and brings a relevant perspective, I just felt he went too far in this thread. Of course my status as massive Duncan homer may be coloring my perspective.

[Silver Bullet]

1. Steve Nash -
For upping his game in the playoffs and playing a heck of a series. I didn't even bother looking at the stats for this one, cuz they very well might be down from his regular season numbers - but I think they had the Spurs series won, even after the bloody nose, chipped tooth and the hip check. It was only after the David Stern suspensions, that it became too much. If you remember, the game after the suspensions, with half the team suspended, they still gave the Spurs a run for their money.
Had all those guys not been suspended, the Suns would've come out pissed after the hip check game, taken Game 5 and then the Spurs would've had to take back to back games including game 7 in Phoenix.
Then, I don't think the Jazz had a chance in hell of beating the Suns, and I think the Cavs were just not ready for prime time. It was an easy road to the championship. So you'll excuse me if I am treating this as a Steve Nash Finals MVP - but I think were it not for David Stern cheating, it'd be Nash's ring.

2. Kobe Bryant
In all honesty, this should be Dirk - and this probably is. I can't penalize him for one bad matchup. But at the heels of the previous years Finals, he had something to prove and unfortunately he couldn't get it done.

3. Dirk Nowitzki
Best regular season performer by far.

4. Tim Duncan
Solid Campaign. Penalized a bit, because in my mind, Bruce Bowen was the MVP of the Suns series. I don't usually penalize guys for having help, but Duncan and Kobe was a virtual tie for me - Kobe had the better stats, Duncan took his team 1 round farther.

5. Lebron James
I wouldn't have had him on here, had he not scored that 26 in a row. Showed to me he's a big time player. But taking your team to the Finals so they can be fodder for real teams is not really an achievement in my book.

This will continue to be a theme in my voting - I don't think I'll have anybody from the East on any of my lists from 2000 to 2004.

[Gongxi]

As a person whose been following these threads rather closely, this was some good work by Sp6rUnderrated...it was interesting to see the gaps between DR/Hakeem compared to that of Dirk/Duncan....

I should be clear I would favor HO over DR.

But I find it utterly bizarre that someone could be so up in arms, more or less openly saying were idiotic ring counters, for people voting for Duncan over Dirk, and then voting for HO over DR in 95. Almost every statistical measurement I have seen over the years favors DR over HO in 95 by a significantly larger margin than DN over TD in 07.

There is room for analysis beyond just looking up numbers on line and Gongxi, by his voting in 95, agrees with this. That is all I wanted to get across by comparing the gap between the two comparisons. It is basically impossible to be outraged over 07 and not be outraged over 95.

Like I said, I far prefer reading Gongxi posts over 90% of the board. He is smart, interesting, and brings a relevant perspective, I just felt he went too far in this thread. Of course my status as massive Duncan homer may be coloring my perspective.

Well spr6, I already said that Dirk's playoff experience counts less than Olajuwon's for me because the sample size- both in games played and match ups presented- for him so much lower. As I said, all the Warriors series really showed us is that he wasn't good against Golden State. If I was going to punish him for that, I'd have done it with regards to the regular season: six games in the playoffs only reinforced what we already knew, and was otherwise limited in scope.

In other words, Nowitzki's playoff was simply less influential upon his total production on the court than both of Olajuwon and Robinson.

And besides all that, Duncan didn't routinely and convincingly show himself to be the better player in games where they were responsible for defending each other.

[Doctor MJ]

Hey Gongxi, a couple thoughts:

1) While I think the regular season matchup is something that should be considered when predicting and reviewing playoff series, there's a pretty big difference between struggling against a team in two games at two different parts of the season, and struggling against them over a best of 7 series. Very hard for me to imagine making any dramatic MVP voting decisions based on two games - and in this case, Dirk put up big numbers in one of the two regular season games, so we're really just talking about 1 bad game. Really hard for to fathom that anyone would consider what happened in the playoffs the expected performance. It was a disappointment, and so I'd think you'd have to the punish the guy at least some.

2) Does it bother you at all that Dirk's offensive fall came against the Warriors? I mean, the Warriors were not a good defensive team. They were clearly an offense-first team coached by a guy known for not being good at strategy on defense. Do you believe that no other defense would have been able to make Dirk struggle there?

[mysticbb]

2) Does it bother you at all that Dirk's offensive fall came against the Warriors? I mean, the Warriors were not a good defensive team. They were clearly an offense-first team coached by a guy known for not being good at strategy on defense.

Seriously, Don Nelson was the head coach of one of the best defensive teams from the early 80's to the mid 80's. Nelson knows more about a good strategy on defense than you might think. It also happens that he clearly outcoached Avery Johnson and Nelson was the former headcoach of exact this team. He knew everything about that team and he was aware that taking out Nowitzki will be the key for that. He centered the whole defensive scheme around that. Watch the games and you will see that this is not just Nowitzki struggleing.

Do you believe that no other defense would have been able to make Dirk struggle there?

Depends on the coach, as I pointed out there was also something else behind the scene which caused Nowitzki not being as focussed as he usually is/was. But overall he struggled like that only once for a whole playoffs series, a series in which T-Mac defended him and Don Nelson was a visitor in the first row.

Again, not that it seems to mean much here, Nowitzki is usually a 30/12 on 64 ts% performer in playoffs elimination games, he has a 11-8 record. Use some common sense here. I also SHOWED that even with a normal efficient Nowitzki the Mavericks would have lost that series. They lost the games due the Warriors outside and transition game, and the inability of Johnson to adapt to that. Even with Nowitzki struggleing the offense with him on the court was at 108.9 (without him it dropped to 95.7), even if he would have played all minutes that wouldn't be enough to counter the 112.8 of the Warriors. Nowitzki would have needed a GOAT like performance to overcome this. Would you still punish Nowitzki, if he would have 30/12 on highly efficient scoring and the Mavericks would still have lost the series (which, btw., is possible)?

[Wile E. Coyote]

1. Tim Duncan
2. Steve Nash
3. Dirk Nowitzki
4. Kobe Bryant
5. LeBron James

HM: Gilbert Arenas

[ElGee]

Before I vote, I'd like to say that I see 2006 and 2007 as intertwined, and there are number of peaks overlapping here. Consider:

KG 06 and 07 is a somewhat similar animal, in terms of stats, recognition and team failures. I think 2007 is a bit different, as I'll explain.

Duncan is basically at the end of his peak in 06 and 07. One year he has a better regular season and less panache in the playoffs, the other an injury-plagued regular season and an "I still own this league" playoffs.

Dirk in 06 and 07 is at his absolute peak to me. Again the contrasts between regular season and playoffs.

Kobe 06 and 07 are so similar -- not the transitional struggles of 05, not as polished as 2008. Huge production. Also some red flags.

And Nash is at his all-time peak in 06 and 07.

That's 5 players and I haven't even mentioned LeBron James.

My Ballot for 2007 POY:

1. Tim Duncan
2. Steve Nash
3. DIrk Nowitzki
4. Kobe Bryant
5. LeBron James

I'll start with KG because he was most difficult to omit. I see this as his weakest season during this period of his career, and I'm penalizing him because he wasn't completely healthy. whether Garnett officially had an injury that season or not, he seemed hobbled down the stretch (from what I saw). Then he sat out the final 2 weeks due to a “strained quad.” So, assuming if his team was 10 wins better and in the playoffs, KG wouldn't have been to able to play (or if he did, wouldn't have been right). Drza has addressed a coaching deficiency that season for Minnesota, and I'm not sure how to completely reconcile that. We'll run into this in other seasons, but I imagine 2004 Nash won't finish in the top 5 based on the argument that Nellie missused him.

To me, a healthy Duncan was the best big man in basketball in 2006 (we'll cross this road), so he gets a boost for his regular season dominance. Big advanced stats, best shooting numbers of his career. Easy to build around. Reliable as usual.

Nash – career peak in WS's, Ortg and TS%. Just absolutely amazing. I've been sold in the last few months on how just how good he is, and have come around to the conclusion that his defensive shortcomings are barely even an issue. I used to think in these years he was in the 4-6 range, but everything I read/research/study indicates that what he does for other players is absolutely unparalleled. He basically did what Deron Williams did for 6 games against a shoddy Nuggets defense...only all the time and with a higher TS% (.654!).

His offensive dynasty has been well documented, but consider this:

In 2006 (when Nash was also amazing while healthy), Phoenix finished second in Ortg at 111.5. The Suns eFG% was .537 (best in the league by a full 2.0%) all without much interior presence and ranking dead last in offensive rebounding by a mile.

In 2007, Phoenix posted a 113.9 (nearly 3 points better than the next team!). It's eFG% was .551, 3.0% better than second. Again, without offensive rebounding. I'd say that's fairly remarkable. Duncan gets the nod because he still carries tremendous defensive value.

Dirk is the odd man out of the top 3, so he's slotted into 3rd. Creates less on offense than Nash and is less valuable on defense than Duncan.

James and Kobe are close – with most advanced metrics barely going LeBron's way. He had 25 in a row against Detroit...but I think you can make a case that 2006 LeBron was better in the playoffs and the postseason. In 2007, his shot just wasn't there. All of his numbers regressed across the board. His shot was ridiculously streaky that season for some reason – note his 3 pt shooting and free throws dropped sharply (.698% from the line).

For Kobe, these years are some of my least favorite of his. For 06 and 07 I've tried to balance all the positive production and on-court value with some of his shortcomings. Here, he gets the tiebreaker over James because LeBron's shooting was not to be trusted that season.

[FJS]

1. Tim Duncan
2. Dirk Nowitzki
3. LeBron James
4. Kobe Bryant
5. Steve Nash

[sp6r=underrated]

As a person whose been following these threads rather closely, this was some good work by Sp6rUnderrated...it was interesting to see the gaps between DR/Hakeem compared to that of Dirk/Duncan....

I should be clear I would favor HO over DR.

But I find it utterly bizarre that someone could be so up in arms, more or less openly saying were idiotic ring counters, for people voting for Duncan over Dirk, and then voting for HO over DR in 95. Almost every statistical measurement I have seen over the years favors DR over HO in 95 by a significantly larger margin than DN over TD in 07.

There is room for analysis beyond just looking up numbers on line and Gongxi, by his voting in 95, agrees with this. That is all I wanted to get across by comparing the gap between the two comparisons. It is basically impossible to be outraged over 07 and not be outraged over 95.

Like I said, I far prefer reading Gongxi posts over 90% of the board. He is smart, interesting, and brings a relevant perspective, I just felt he went too far in this thread. Of course my status as massive Duncan homer may be coloring my perspective.

Well spr6, I already said that Dirk's playoff experience counts less than Olajuwon's for me because the sample size- both in games played and match ups presented- for him so much lower. As I said, all the Warriors series really showed us is that he wasn't good against Golden State. If I was going to punish him for that, I'd have done it with regards to the regular season: six games in the playoffs only reinforced what we already knew, and was otherwise limited in scope.

In other words, Nowitzki's playoff was simply less influential upon his total production on the court than both of Olajuwon and Robinson.

And besides all that, Duncan didn't routinely and convincingly show himself to be the better player in games where they were responsible for defending each other.

I'm not trying to be rude here but this is more or less a concession in a backhanded way that I was right. You don't weigh the GS match-up that much because if you do the gap between DN/TD becomes almost non-existent when you factor in defense.

You are weighing the PS games more for DR than the two times difference and less for Dirk. I showed that by just running the numbers (twice as much as PS) which showed a large gap between DR/HO even after weighing the PS by your standard.

The only way to justify HO over DR is to weigh the PS games and head to head in RS a lot more than two times.

It is inconsistent.

Now you gave good reasons for this inconsistency, part of analysis is evaluating situations in context. This will always result in inconsistency, but as we all know consistency is the hobgoblin of feeble minds. You have explained your vote in both areas fine.

But this is a deviation from your production mantra and the RS will be a majority of what you are basing your vote on. Perhaps you should be more open minded to other views because you have shown that you simply don't count up production in the RS and PS and weigh the PS twice as much. For instance you seem to put a lot of stock in head to head games.

[drza]

Times winding down on this one, and a quick count indicates a lot less people voting. Get your vote on folks!

I can't speak for everyone, but for me I have a lot more trouble spending time on here on the weekends than during some work weeks. At work I'm often super busy (in which case I can't post), but when I'm not I can spend some time on things. At home, there's almost never a time I can get on unless it's in the middle of the night. Since I like to discuss more than just vote, I decided to wait until this morning to put my final thoughts for this year up.

I'll start with KG because he was most difficult to omit. I see this as his weakest season during this period of his career, and I'm penalizing him because he wasn't completely healthy. whether Garnett officially had an injury that season or not, he seemed hobbled down the stretch (from what I saw). Then he sat out the final 2 weeks due to a “strained quad.” So, assuming if his team was 10 wins better and in the playoffs, KG wouldn't have been to able to play (or if he did, wouldn't have been right). Drza has addressed a coaching deficiency that season for Minnesota, and I'm not sure how to completely reconcile that. We'll run into this in other seasons, but I imagine 2004 Nash won't finish in the top 5 based on the argument that Nellie missused him.

It's certainly fair to omit KG for this season, and I didn't expect him to figure prominently on many ballots. That said, I wanted to clarify...I would stake a lot of money that his "injury" was entirely due to the Wolves needing to lose to keep their draft pick. Well, let me rephrase...I don't doubt that his knees were sore as he had tendonitis off-and-on in that period. But it causing him to miss games was entirely due to team placement. Consider, between '06 and '07 Garnett played in 152 out of 164 games...ALL 12 of the games that he missed were at the end of those two seasons, when Minnesota conveniently needed to lose to keep their draft spot.

Also, it was pretty clear from the rumblings at the time that Garnett wasn't on board with the tanking strategy and that was causing problems. Two weeks before playing his last game of the year, Garnett won a game in Portland with a buzzer-beating jumper and he celebrated the win. The next day there was at least one article in the Minnesota papers razzing him for that, suggesting that he didn't realize that the team objective at that point was to lose. The next week, Garnett won another game at the buzzer in overtime with a blocked shot on the other team's last shot. More rumbling. A couple of games later, in a game the Wolves would lose, Garnett scored 5 points in the last minute to bring a 6-point deficit down to 1 point with a couple of seconds left and give the Wolves a shot for the win with time running out. Within 2 days he was shut down for the season with his sore knee.

Coincidentally, Ricky Davis also developed a "sore knee" that only allowed him to play a half in the first game after Garnett was shut down. The rumor at the time was that the Wolves also wanted Garnett to only play in halves so they could lose, he refused and said that if they weren't trying to win and he couldn't play the whole game he would just sit out. This bone of contention became heated enough that even after the trade Minnesota owner Glen Taylor was still taking shots at KG about it.

I'm just saying. I think it was pretty clear to all that were really watching what was going on at the time. KG's knee may have been sore, but that's not why he sat out and I really doubt the knee would have impaired his performance under normal circumstances (and by normal, I simply mean a team that actually wants its players to try to win).

[drza]

Alright, I haven't got to spend as much time in this thread as I did the others, but I have been thinking about it and I've come to some decisions. As I said, my 6 finalists were Duncan, LeBron, Dirk, Garnett, Kobe and Nash. This is the hardest year we've done so far, to me, because there was so very little to separate the candidates. It wasn't like '09 with a clear-cut #1 or '08 with a definite foursome above the rest. Even in the first two I've had difficulty choosing how to gauge "great player/poor situation" vs "best player on good team", but I'm starting to get a feel for my process. Essentially, I look at two basic questions:

1) Who was the best player?
2) Who did the best job of maximizing their team?

I look at the advanced stats, I pull from my recollections, I read everyone's arguments. But in cases like this, where there's just no clear separation, I have to start pulling out my hypotheticals (like I've done in each of the first two years, when in doubt) and figuring out what I really believe. For this year, the easiest way for me to do it was to pick one player and compare him to all of the others individually to make my first cuts. Since he's the oddball in this thread, as well as the one I know the best, I chose to make my comparisons to KG.

My first hypothetical questions are: if you swapped players, would either team benefit or fall off. I feel like if I swapped Nash and Diaw for Garnett and Randy Foye the Suns would have still been in the 60-win range with a potent offense, but a much better defense. This is the time period when Garnett had averaged 6 assists to lead his team in 2 of the 4 previous years (both times for top-6 offenses), and I think he would have fit great offensively on a D'Antoni-led offense with frontcourt finishers like Amare/Marion and backcourt combo guards like Barbosa and Foye. I think that team is built more for the playoffs and maybe takes the title. The Wolves, I don't know if they even win 25 games. Nash's gift is making teammates better, but running the Casey/Wittman rudimentary offenses with headcases like Mark Blount and Ricky Davis? Not seeing it.

Similarly, if we swapped out Kobe/Kwame for Garnett/McCants I see the Lakers at the least maintaining their record/position and likely improve. Garnett would fit well as one of the points on the Triangle on offense, I think he and Odom would make a matchup nightmare for opposing frontcourts, and I think Odom, Smush and Bynum all fit in better next to Garnett than they do to Bryant. On the Wolves, playing in that environment with that coach next to Ricky Davis and the other Wolves...I honestly have no idea how that could possibly work. I could believe that Kobe might have gone for 100 in a game that year, but I don't think the team wins 30 games.

Those were the only two cases where I could play it out in my mind and see a clear difference, though, in how I think the season would have played out. I think any of Duncan, KG or Dirk as the focal point of the Spurs or Mavs would have resulted in a top-3 seed for those teams, and I think any of those guys as the focal point of Minnesota leaves the team in the 30s-win range. I'm not convinced that LeBron maximized the regular season wins available for those Cavs, but not by enough to really preclude him from this conversation. In the postseason, however, I think that any of the 3 others on the Mavs and they get past the Warriors in the first round.

That leaves Duncan, Garnett and LeBron as my 3 finalists. And here, it just gets too murky for me to feel with any confidence that swapping any of them out would have significantly changed the outcome. Given that, I can't in good conscience swap anyone's order based on this method. Thus, at the end of my exercise, I'm left with this order:

1) Duncan
2) LeBron
3) Garnett
4) Dirk
5) Kobe. I didn't put it on here, but I went through a similar two question evaluation with Kobe and Nash. I could convince myself that the Lakers may have performed better with Nash at the reigns if D'Antoni came with him to coach the team, but in the structured Triangle I don't necessarily see Nash having the freedom that would allow him to have a bigger effect than Kobe. Plus, I think Kobe was just the better player between them.

[Silver Bullet]

drza, can you explain how KG is ahead of Kobe when he won a paltry 32 games, with a supporting cast, that is at best, slightly worse than his. Was significantly worse statistically and was 9th in MVP voting behind stalwarts such as Chris Bosh and Carlos Boozer.

[drza]

drza, can you explain how KG is ahead of Kobe when he won a paltry 32 games, with a supporting cast, that is at best, slightly worse than his. Was significantly worse statistically and was 9th in MVP voting behind stalwarts such as Chris Bosh and Carlos Boozer.

I have a short/moderate post on page 3 of this thread and two posts on pages 17 and 18 of the 2007-08 thread that introduces and begins to develop my views on this topic (you should remember the posts from the 2008 thread especially, as me and you were responding directly to each other and I sorely questioned your analysis when you stated and repeatedly emphasized that Mark Blount was a "defensive specialist" on the 2007 Wolves).

But the best post to read for my analysis/opinion on this subject is on page 8 of this thread. I was exceedingly detailed in my analysis of Garnett's supporting cast, Kobe's supporting cast, and what I saw as the differences in level between the two. If you're really interested in my explanation and not merely being argumentative, that would be the place for you to read.

As for the second part of your question, Garnett wasn't "significantly worse" statistically than Kobe. If anything, there's not enough separation between them across the body of stats we have available. That's why my conclusion post focuses more on how I viewed things in context than a numbers war. The stats aren't enough to determine a case either way, here. And the MVP votes are historically extremely reliant on team record, so I'm not really sure I see the relevance in these types of threads whose main goals are to go beyond the surface and really get at the heart of our player evaluations.