Retro POY '04-05 (Voting Complete)

[bastillon]

gonxi (I believe) made a provably incorrect statement about Nash. he argued that Steve wasn't the reason why they improved, because it was health. when Suns were healthy (Barbosa-JJ-Marion-Amare all playing) in the last 31 games of the 2004 season, they were abysmal 10-21.

I wonder if there was a midseason trade that totally changed the chemistry of the team, too?

If you're going to say something 'provably incorrect', you should probably, ya know, prove it incorrect.

well I proved it: your point was refering to Suns' health issues as the reason why they improved, but as aformentioned, it wasn't the case.

now, if you wanna claim that Marbury's trade screwed the chemistry that's your choice, but if anything lack of Marbury improved the chemistry as he's been always widely acknowledged as a cancer so that's kinda ludicrous to think it's the opposite and point to this as a significant factor against Nash.

I get that you don't like Nash. you showed this by not giving him any votes so far. I personally don't care whether you like/vote for him or not. I'm just arguing with your reasons that are clearly way off. Suns players may have been unhealthy, but it was NOT the reason they improved... and yes, this provably incorrect statement:

Suns were just terrible outside of Nash which was visibly seen to anyone watching Suns games. they were 10-21 with Amare-Marion-JJ-Barbosa-D'Antoni core the year before

[Gongxi]

Basically, in 04-05 Nash, Amare, JJ, Marion, and Q-Rich started 68 games together. None of them individually missed more than 7 games.

In 03-04, Marbury didn't play half the games, Amare only played 55, etc. They trotted out 26 different starting lineups, only three of which played more than 10 times, and none of which more than 15 times. It was a total **** of a roster for a variety of reasons.

Nash certainly helped that team turn it around, but it's not "Oh Steve, glad you're here! We're a 60 win team now that you strolled intro practice!"

[drza]

Oh yeah, and Dr. MJ, full disclosure: I don't plan to vote Nash first in '05 either. Some of that is my impressions/beliefs on the better players, some of it is that I do value the advanced stats, and I'm sure there are other factors as well. Again, I don't expect that either of us will completely change our thought processes with this side conversation. I'm merely interested in finding out where it is that we do diverge, from your POV. And I will admit that at this very moment, after following your post and then relating Nash's 05 to KG's '08, I am seeing '05 Nash in a more positive light than I ever have before and am considering moving him up my rankings. Not to first, but considering he was battling for 5th on my sheet when we began this year I see that as a significant change based primarily on the discussions here.

[bastillon]

Can someone remind me if the know off the top of thier head -

what changes did the Suns make, other than Nash ?

well, they added Q-Rich, but that's pretty much the only thing -Nash aside- that seperated them from '04 Suns post all-star. 25W pace (last 31 of '04) vs 65W pace (w/ Nash in '05) IS pretty significant.
clearly Q-Rich was the reason why they improved

Same situation. The Celtics before KG were visibly terrible as well, with a terrible record even with the Pierce/Rondo/Perk/Doc core the year before. I don't have to tell you how much this differs from the 66 wins that KG's team had while he was playing. This assumption that the Celtics were any good without KG is just provably wrong. You're better than to misread my post like that, Bastillion.

you didn't get it. I'm not arguing whether Steve Nash has similar impact to KG nor am I diminishing Garnett's impact. my point is that you refered to health as significant factor in evaluating Suns success, but it had no impact, as evidenced by their record in '04 when all were healthy. so I'm just saying that health was irrelevant here and using this as an argument is pointless in this case.

[Doctor MJ]

I'm sure you've figured out now where I'm going with this, but primarily I'm interested in your response. You voted Nash #1 "in a landslide", but you voted KG #4 against, as I pointed out, relatively similar caliber competition. Is that difference in your voting tied entirely into the Nash-less Suns playing 6/7 playoff teams while the KG-less Celtics played 7 super-scrubs? Is it just a case where your impressions are deeply enough seated that you really can't be convinced otherwise? Or would you disagree with my comparison above between the two, and if so, where? This obviously won't change anyone's vote, and the '08 thread is over anyway, I'm more curious as to your thought process, and whether the info/discussion found in these threads have any power to sway you or whether you're pretty set already based upon your previous thoughts.

A good thing to bring up.

Yes, it's partly due to the fact that Phoenix struggled more without Nash than Boston did without Garnett. I don't buy you can chalk it all up to strength of schedule - Boston sans Garnett certainly beat teams better than what Phoenix sans Nash was losing to.

Other factors:

-Boston added more than just Garnett. Allen should not be minimized.

-While Boston pre-Garnett was worse by W-L than Phoenix pre-Nash, they totally tanked the end of the year trying to get a good draft pick meanwhile Phoenix played hard through the end of the year and still sucked. You can rightfully point out that Phoenix had been decent the previous year, but I can also point out Boston's previous success. Peak Pierce plus blah was enough to get a club to 40+ wins on his own, and we were only a couple years removed from that.

-There's the factor that Phoenix' offensive success was primarily about letting Nash make decisions, whereas Boston's defensive improvement can't rely on one person like that. It was a combination of Garnett's skills, Thibodeau's brains, and a general adrenaline rush that Garnett's personality was certainly part of but was mostly about the recognition that it was "now or never".

-There's the matter of how Nash grew and showed us new things in the playoffs. He was clearly the most dominant performer in the whole league in those playoffs imho. Garnett didn't win Finals MVP, and was not considered as big of a part of his team as Kobe was for the Lakers.

-Finally there's the matter that I really don't think it was equal competition. I think Nash lucked out in terms of MVP/POY stuff is concerned. He didn't have to compete with '08 Kobe/Paul/LeBron, and I consider all three of those guys to be better than '05 Dirk who I ranked as #2.

[ronnymac2]

Glancing at people's lists so far.....Tracy McGrady is getting a little underrated imo.


I don't understand how Duncan vs. Ginobili is a legit debate.

I remember watching those finals. I hated the Pistons at the time and wanted SA to win badly. Throughout most of the series, I thought Manu should have been finals MVP. However, I wasn't a Duncan fan at the time.

Then gm 7 happened, and I had to recognize that Tim Duncan was a truly remarkable player with an effect on the game that few in history have. I admitted that as I disliked Duncan then, I feel that more strongly about it now as I admire Duncan's play. IIRC, his play in the 3rd qt of that game brought his team back into it, because DET was starting to pull away. In the 4th quarter, it was his passing that that allowed the perimeter guys to hit crucial threes. His D was integral as well.

Duncan took an uncharacteristic 27 shots that night, making ten of them. It was a game seven in the finals. Against the nasty defensive frontcourt of Ben and Rasheed, in a slow-paced, defensive series, Duncan took it upon himself to get his team the win. He knew it was on him. He had the balls to say "give me the **** ball."

TMACFORMVP and I were discussing Duncan's gm 7. He said something to the effect of "Manu had a more efficient gm 7 with his scoring, but DET scored 74 points and shot 42%. Manu is a good defender, but DET sure as hell didn't struggle that much because of him." No, no they didn't.

I respect Manu's game alot and think he is generally underrated. But...there is no question who the man on that 05 team was. No question.

[Gongxi]

I get that you don't like Nash. you showed this by not giving him any votes so far. I personally don't care whether you like/vote for him or not. I'm just arguing with your reasons that are clearly way off. Suns players may have been unhealthy, but it was NOT the reason they improved... and yes, this provably incorrect statement:

Huh? I know that statement is incorrect.

Anyway, I don't have anything against Nash at all. I just don't think he's a top 5 player any of these years. Is that so shocking? Do I dislike Luol Deng too? I haven't put him in here at all, either.

[Gongxi]

Another huge change between 03-04 Suns and 04-05: NBA hand-check rules.

[bastillon]

Basically, in 04-05 Nash, Amare, JJ, Marion, and Q-Rich started 68 games together. None of them individually missed more than 7 games.

In 03-04, Marbury didn't play half the games, Amare only played 55, etc. They trotted out 26 different starting lineups, only three of which played more than 10 times, and none of which more than 15 times. It was a total **** of a roster for a variety of reasons.

Nash certainly helped that team turn it around, but it's not "Oh Steve, glad you're here! We're a 60 win team now that you strolled intro practice!"

so explain this:

1.Suns went 10-21 in last 31 of '04.
2.Suns went 2-5 without Nash in '05.
3.Suns went 0-3 without Nash in '06.
4.Suns went 2-4 without Nash in '07.

also what happened in '05 season exactly:
+15.5 with Nash... leading the league
on court: 121.7 off, 108.4 def
off court: 104.1 off, 106.3 def

[NO-KG-AI]

Tim Duncan is one guy that people will give him credit and make it a GOOD thing when he is 10-27 from the field.

[bastillon]

Then gm 7 happened

there would be no game #7 hadn't Dunca been struggling so much in those finals. I mean you can re-watch them and it was like... blatantly obvious that Manu was the man. you know, kinda like you're watching Utah Jazz and you know that Karl Malone was FAR better than John Stockton despite equal win shares. and I'm not talking about the difference between Manu/Duncan, but the visual experience - watching those finals gives an impression that Manu was clearly better player at the time.

[bastillon]

another important thing to note about Nash:
http://www.82games.com/04PHO2D.HTM
Phoenix dominated so much while being totally terrible on the glass. 47.9% is Warriors ballpark. imagine if they actually had a rebounder like David Lee or even Murphy.

[ronnymac2]

^^^But then they wouldn't be as good on offense.....

[ronnymac2]

I remember that game pretty well.....a very good example of watching the game being more important than just looking at raw production.....

[ronnymac2]

Oh....and without Duncan, SA wouldn't have been in the finals. Being defended by Rip Hamilton makes your job easier. Being guarded by Ben and Sheed is difficult.

[Gongxi]

Basically, in 04-05 Nash, Amare, JJ, Marion, and Q-Rich started 68 games together. None of them individually missed more than 7 games.

In 03-04, Marbury didn't play half the games, Amare only played 55, etc. They trotted out 26 different starting lineups, only three of which played more than 10 times, and none of which more than 15 times. It was a total **** of a roster for a variety of reasons.

Nash certainly helped that team turn it around, but it's not "Oh Steve, glad you're here! We're a 60 win team now that you strolled intro practice!"

so explain this:

1.Suns went 10-21 in last 31 of '04.

They didn't even know each other! 26 different starting lineups. Their best player traded midseason. Amare is an injured rookie.

2.Suns went 2-5 without Nash in '05.

Against teams with an average win total of 47, with 4 of them on the road, missing their best player. Yeah, that'll happen. That doesn't mean that that best player is the only reason they're a good team and that doesn't mean that the best player is top 5 in the league.

3.Suns went 0-3 without Nash in '06.

Two of which were on the road. Average win total for those three teams: 47.

4.Suns went 2-4 without Nash in '07.

And half those games were on the road- and one of those was on the second night of a back to back. Those aren't games that teams win without their best player. I don't know what the proves for you, though. I mean, they also went 1-3 without Amare that year. Is that supposed to prove something? That they were a 27 win team with Amare but without Nash but a 20 win team with Nash but without Amare? Do you think either of those things are true?

also what happened in '05 season exactly:
+15.5 with Nash... leading the league
on court: 121.7 off, 108.4 def
off court: 104.1 off, 106.3 def

So you're saying these stats saying Nash being on the court helped the Suns' defense are relevant? Do you think Nash helped the Suns' defense?

Look, apparently I stumbled into somehow insulting your sacred cow and for that I'm sorry. But just because you want something to be so doesn't make it so.

[Sedale Threatt]

I already know the answer, but I'm going to ask anyway: Do you think Garnett deserves criticism for relying so heavily on jump shots/fadeaways, and not drawing many fouls for a player of his size and skill level? Do you think it's a legitimate observation that he wasn't the type of player to consistently shoulder the scoring load down the stretch?

I'll answer your two questions separately

1) I think this is a case where the "how" of something is given too much emphasis with respect to the results. I had a long Garnett vs Duncan debate with someone last year, and one of the results was that we ended up crunching a lot of numbers. His stance was that Duncan was inherently better than Garnett on offense because of his more post-oriented game, that efficiency and fouls drawn advantages for Duncan were one of the reasons that the Spurs had been more successful than KG's teams. But when we actually looked at it, from 2002-03 (when Garnett made the final full-time transition to power forward) until 2008, Garnett and Duncan's efficiencies looked very similar. To whit, over that time period:

Duncan: 20.6 points, 50.6% FG, 4.7/7.1 FTs, 1.31 pps
Garnett: 22.1 points, 50.5% FG, 4.8/6.1 FTs, 1.30 pps

2) Again, when the actual results are looked at as opposed to the perception, there doesn't seem to be much difference between Garnett and Duncan as clutch scorers. 82games.com started keeping track of their clutch stats (last 5 minutes of a close game, within 5 points) in 2002-03, and I went back and averaged the points/48 minutes and average EFG% for both Garnett and Duncan over that time period (not mathematically rigorous because I didn't have the raw numbers, but it still should get the general point across):

Duncan: 30 points on 47% EFG
Garnett: 29 points on 48% EFG

Now before anyone gets up in arms about numbers not being everything, I agree. This line of arguments came up in the past because my perception from watching the two was never that Duncan was so much more efficient or more clutch, so I ran some numbers as a sanity check and it just so happens they seem to really support my observations.

In the final wash, yes, I think there are areas where you can criticize Garnett's game. He's not a perfect basketball player. But I think that Garnett tends to get an excessive amount of criticism with respect to his caliber-peers for small weaknesses in his game, because 1) his game isn't traditional so it has few if any good historic stylistic comps and 2) he hasn't had the level of team success that other players of his caliber have enjoyed, which tends to stick in people's craw. And the "look at his teammates and situation" response isn't fully satisfying, because it smacks of excuse, so therefore people want to find more fault in his game to explain his team results. I understand that line of thought, I just don't think it's correct. But that's why we have wonderful message boards and threads like this for me to make my case. Now, whether anyone agrees with me (or even decides to read my book-like posts) is another question entirely

Good post, good information. Those numbers don't match what I think I've seen, but that's the point of stats. Thanks for the effort.

[Sedale Threatt]

Good posts on Nash as well. This is going to be a tougher decision than I thought.

A question: How do some of you reconcile Nash's defense in the whole equation? Bastillon basically disregarded Kobe as a viable option during the 06 thread, I believe, based on his lackluster defense. Shouldn't that same standard apply to Steve, then?

Perhaps he was THAT good on offense, and made that much of a difference. It just seems like a bit of a double standard to me.

[tha_rock220]

1. Tim Duncan
2. Steve Nash
3. LeBron James
4. Shaq
5. Wade

I'm not sure how LeBron didn't make it on the NBA 1st team. He was 20 years old averaging 27-7-7. Up to that point the only other guys who had done that were Bird, Jordan, and Oscar Robertson. Yeah, LeBron has done it multiple times since, but it was astounding that a kid could put up numbers like that. I think given how awesome he has become, what LeBron did that year has kind of been forgotten.

[drza]

I'm sure you've figured out now where I'm going with this, but primarily I'm interested in your response. You voted Nash #1 "in a landslide", but you voted KG #4 against, as I pointed out, relatively similar caliber competition. Is that difference in your voting tied entirely into the Nash-less Suns playing 6/7 playoff teams while the KG-less Celtics played 7 super-scrubs? Is it just a case where your impressions are deeply enough seated that you really can't be convinced otherwise? Or would you disagree with my comparison above between the two, and if so, where? This obviously won't change anyone's vote, and the '08 thread is over anyway, I'm more curious as to your thought process, and whether the info/discussion found in these threads have any power to sway you or whether you're pretty set already based upon your previous thoughts.

A good thing to bring up.

Yes, it's partly due to the fact that Phoenix struggled more without Nash than Boston did without Garnett. I don't buy you can chalk it all up to strength of schedule - Boston sans Garnett certainly beat teams better than what Phoenix sans Nash was losing to.

By the same token, Phoenix sans Nash won a game on the road against the 58-win Mavs, a better team than any that the Celtics beat even at home. In fact, the best team that Boston beat on the road was the 36-win Bobcats. And the Suns didn't even play anyone with fewer than 37 wins, teams against whom the Celtics went 7 - 0. :Shrugs: When taken in conjunction with all of the other factors (yes, including the big advantages Garnett had in both APM and postseason net +/-) I just don't buy that you can ignore the strength of schedule and sample size in concluding that Nash was more crucial to the team.

Other factors:

-Boston added more than just Garnett. Allen should not be minimized.

-While Boston pre-Garnett was worse by W-L than Phoenix pre-Nash, they totally tanked the end of the year trying to get a good draft pick meanwhile Phoenix played hard through the end of the year and still sucked. You can rightfully point out that Phoenix had been decent the previous year, but I can also point out Boston's previous success. Peak Pierce plus blah was enough to get a club to 40+ wins on his own, and we were only a couple years removed from that.

-There's the factor that Phoenix' offensive success was primarily about letting Nash make decisions, whereas Boston's defensive improvement can't rely on one person like that. It was a combination of Garnett's skills, Thibodeau's brains, and a general adrenaline rush that Garnett's personality was certainly part of but was mostly about the recognition that it was "now or never".

-There's the matter of how Nash grew and showed us new things in the playoffs. He was clearly the most dominant performer in the whole league in those playoffs imho. Garnett didn't win Finals MVP, and was not considered as big of a part of his team as Kobe was for the Lakers.

-Finally there's the matter that I really don't think it was equal competition. I think Nash lucked out in terms of MVP/POY stuff is concerned. He didn't have to compete with '08 Kobe/Paul/LeBron, and I consider all three of those guys to be better than '05 Dirk who I ranked as #2.

Other responses:

-True, Allen should not be minimized. Then again, Nash was added for nothing while KG came at the cost of Al Jefferson. It the context of player addition/subtractions, I think the loss of Jefferson shouldn't be minimzied either.

-I see your tanking argument. But again, the '08 Celtics improved by 9 more games than the '05 Suns. Even if you chalk up a handful of games to potential tank and another handful for if you believe Allen to be better than Jefferson, that still leaves about equivalent improvement to be attributed primarily to Nash and Garnett.

-I'm not sure that the Celtics' defensive improvement can't be tracked more closely to Garnett, but that ties into the difficulty in evaluating defense vs offense. I'll give you that. At the same time, I don't think you can ignore vice-versa that Garnett made a much bigger offensive impact for the Celtics than Nash did defensively for the Suns. Even if you believe Nash's offensive impact was larger than Garnett's defensive impact (debatable IMO, but I'll stipulate for now), Garnett was also the leading postseason scorer at every point in the game as well as a key frontcourt distributor on offense in addition to his runaway win as Defensive Player of the Year. Again, once factoring in the advanced stats (which admittedly I seem to value more than you do) I don't see the argument for Nash's individual impact overall being larger than Garnett's.

-We hashed out the postseason stuff in the '08 thread, so I guess that's just an 'agree-to-disagree' thing. If Garnett wasn't playing at an impact level as good as any in the NBA (including Kobe) in the postseason the Celtics never even make it to game 7 of the second round (since Pierce and Allen combined to average 13 points on 35% shooting in the first 6 games of that series). But again, I'll back away and just tip my hat to a difference in opinion.

-Re: competition, I do think Nash lucked out in the MVP voting because of perceived flaws in what (to me) should have been his competition. But the way I'm evaluating the POY contests, I certainly think there is quality here that competes well. I think '05 Duncan has a great case against '08 Kobe, that '05 Garnett has a great case against '08 LeBron, etc.

Thanks for your responses.