RealGM Top 100 List #9 -- Post Shot Clock Only (No Mikan)

[ronnymac2]

I'll save my Karl Malone argument for the next thread. In short, the guy had numerous EPIC chokes. 1990 and 1995 are exactly the same, his team builds a healthy lead at home and then essentially refuses to touch the ball, let alone score while KJ and Hakeem come back to take the lead for their teams. 1996? The 2 missed FTs, nothing in the 4th until a bucket shortly before those shots. 1997 Game 1 and 5 have been gone through ad nauseum. That's 4 guys (KJ, Hakeem, Kemp, Jordan) that punched the Jazz in the face while he didn't punch back, to win a series over him. I don't know much about the Portland and GS losses so there could be more. I respect the argument that 4th quarter points shouldn't be given heavier value than 1st-3rd, that Karl has ignored great games as much as bad ones. But I personally believe the hockey corrolary that you need to be a team who can win a 1-0 game and a 4-3 game applies to other sports too. The Jazz needed a Karl who could win in the 4th quarter and he didn't provide it on numerous occasions. Still enough for a top 15 career but not over Kobe

I don't believe 1995 was a choke job by Karl. IIRC, Malone actually played pretty well in that fourth quarter. Hakeem may have played better, but Malone did his job, too. I'm pretty sure Utah's players just didn't do any holding of the fort, while Hakeem's teammates gave him help.

[Dr Positivity]

Utah is leading by 7 with 5 minutes left. Hakeem goes off and Karl almost literally doesn't touch the ball until they're losing and all they can do is score and let Hou hit FTs, when he scores a basket. There can be some blame on Utah not being good enough to get him it, but you have to be the team leader and say the next play's for me, and it can be reflected as a weakness of big men that they have to be passed to in this instance

[Vinsanity420]

The dismissal of Kobe's scoring season is quite ridiculous.

i don't dismiss kobe's 35ppg season bc of "volume scoring" but rather that one season EVERYBODY experienced a scoring boom. there was clearly something in the drinking water that season.

This is true. It was the first season where the no hand-check rules were established, and practically every perimeter player went off that season.

[ElGee]

I'll save my Karl Malone argument for the next thread. In short, the guy had numerous EPIC chokes. 1990 and 1995 are exactly the same, his team builds a healthy lead at home and then essentially refuses to touch the ball, let alone score while KJ and Hakeem come back to take the lead for their teams. 1996? The 2 missed FTs, nothing in the 4th until a bucket shortly before those shots. 1997 Game 1 and 5 have been gone through ad nauseum. That's 4 guys (KJ, Hakeem, Kemp, Jordan) that punched the Jazz in the face while he didn't punch back, to win a series over him. I don't know much about the Portland and GS losses so there could be more. I respect the argument that 4th quarter points shouldn't be given heavier value than 1st-3rd, that Karl has ignored great games as much as bad ones. But I personally believe the hockey corrolary that you need to be a team who can win a 1-0 game and a 4-3 game applies to other sports too. The Jazz needed a Karl who could win in the 4th quarter and he didn't provide it on numerous occasions. Still enough for a top 15 career but not over Kobe

Sweet, this is exactly what I'm interested in from people.

Here, I think your brain is playing tricks on you. Not that you've incorrectly remembered, but that the sheer volume of big games Malone played is making you think "he's doing it *again.*" I believe that, and Winning Bias caused Malone to garner this reputation.

The reality is he's probably played somewhere between 25-50 big playoff games (depending on how strict we are with criteria) and may have something like 4 or 5 legit bad 4th quarters, or at least notable ones that stand out. You cite 1995 here, and I'm not even sure I agree with that. One of the downsides of a big is being team dependent -- sometimes you get the ball, sometimes you don't. I also believe Charles Barkley, slightly injured, had a whackadelic 4th Q again Houston in the next round - what do you call that? Cause it was worse than Malone's 4th IMO...

When you play more games, you will have more opportunities to blow it. Karl Malone never was a perfect basketball player. He never was one of the sacred peak guys. But he exists in the club right below them, with Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, Dwyane Wade and so on. That he did for so long is a GOOD thing, but here you are using micro-examples to make that into a bad thing.

Wouldn't you rather have 10 super duper awesome years and 5 super duper awesome years that ended with a single horrible 4th quarter (a better team covers it up) than just 10 awesome years?

[SDChargers#1]

You need to consider it from another angle as well though:

Basketball is a game of possessions. Take any given player out of the game, and unless they are an outstanding offensive rebounder, the number of shots per possessions will not be greatly changed. Hence, your direct impact is what you give your team in the shots you take compared to what others could have done.

There's not one clear way to calculate this, but the most obvious way is to simply take the difference in efficiency of the player compared to the league. In '05-06, Kobe averaged 55.9% TS and the league average was 53.6%. The same shots taken with league average efficiency would yield 33.9 points which was 1.5 points less than what Kobe did.

Understand? The direct advantage gained either by bumping up volume or efficiency is not huge.

Now, the natural rebuttal to that imho is "But Kobe's effects as a scorer go beyond that!", to which I wholeheartedly agree with. The point is though that there isn't a huge natural edge just because a guy scores in droves, which is why Dantley and early Wilt had not just less impact than you have thought, but literally only a small fraction of the impact that others achieved with similar volume.

OK, I see what you are saying and in a vacuum you would be correct. However, there are things to take into account.

League Average TS% - Is heavily influenced by the stars of the NBA. Take out the stars of the NBA and the league average TS% would almost certainly drop.

If you replaced Kobe's shots with average players? - The Lakers weren't filled with average players as has been shown by previous posts. They were Lamar Odom and a bunch of scrubs who are essentially out of the NBA at this point. If Kobe wasn't taking those shots, who would?

Odom has proven not to be able to handle an offensive load, and he was producing at about his career average, so it isn't like Kobe was preventing him from getting his shots.

So who else would have been getting these points on THIS SPECIFIC Lakers team. Smush, Cook, and Mihm had career years and were taking more shots than they should have been already. So who exactly should have been taking those shots on that Lakers team?

Or let's think of it in a different way, where do those 35 ppg come from if Kobe isn't there?

Are Odom, Smush, Cook, Mihm, Walton, George, Sasha, and Kwame going to be able to muster up an extra 35 ppg compared to what they did with Kobe there? I find it very unlikely. In fact I imagine it would hard for them to muster up an extra 20 ppg never the less 35 ppg.

People tend to forget that Phil Jackson himself was the one who told Kobe to score like that because he knew no one else on the team could.

[Dr Positivity]

Ok I just rewatched the 95 4th quarter to check my facts. They pass to Malone and try to go through him more than I remember (think it might be 1990 where he's not touching it, it's a very similar meltdown for the Jazz). But 1 FGA and none for 4 minutes after he misses a fallaway as Hou has a 10-0 run to turn 75-82 into 85-82. The basket to break the run is with a 1 minute 20 left so still time left but Hou is winning at that point. Overall whether it's a criticism of his post game or aggresiveness compared to Hakeem's, it's not a good 5 minutes for Karl

[rrravenred]

Utah is leading by 7 with 5 minutes left. Hakeem goes off and Karl almost literally doesn't touch the ball until they're losing and all they can do is score and let Hou hit FTs, when he scores a basket. There can be some blame on Utah not being good enough to get him it, but you have to be the team leader and say the next play's for me, and it can be reflected as a weakness of big men that they have to be passed to in this instance

INteresting question there (and it is a question) is how many fiery individuals Sloan coached, and whether or not they would have been given the scope to provide that leadership on the court.

No disrespect intended to Sloan, but his teams rarely surprised me with a fantastic performance above what they were capable of (which is something you CAN say about Carlisle, Jackson, Riley, etc).

[Black Feet]

I'll save my Karl Malone argument for the next thread. In short, the guy had numerous EPIC chokes. 1990 and 1995 are exactly the same, his team builds a healthy lead at home and then essentially refuses to touch the ball, let alone score while KJ and Hakeem come back to take the lead for their teams. 1996? The 2 missed FTs, nothing in the 4th until a bucket shortly before those shots. 1997 Game 1 and 5 have been gone through ad nauseum. That's 4 guys (KJ, Hakeem, Kemp, Jordan) that punched the Jazz in the face while he didn't punch back, to win a series over him. I don't know much about the Portland and GS losses so there could be more. I respect the argument that 4th quarter points shouldn't be given heavier value than 1st-3rd, that Karl has ignored great games as much as bad ones. But I personally believe the hockey corrolary that you need to be a team who can win a 1-0 game and a 4-3 game applies to other sports too. The Jazz needed a Karl who could win in the 4th quarter and he didn't provide it on numerous occasions. Still enough for a top 15 career but not over Kobe

Sweet, this is exactly what I'm interested in from people.

Here, I think your brain is playing tricks on you. Not that you've incorrectly remembered, but that the sheer volume of big games Malone played is making you think "he's doing it *again.*" I believe that, and Winning Bias caused Malone to garner this reputation.

The reality is he's probably played somewhere between 25-50 big playoff games (depending on how strict we are with criteria) and may have something like 4 or 5 legit bad 4th quarters, or at least notable ones that stand out. You cite 1995 here, and I'm not even sure I agree with that. One of the downsides of a big is being team dependent -- sometimes you get the ball, sometimes you don't. I also believe Charles Barkley, slightly injured, had a whackadelic 4th Q again Houston in the next round - what do you call that? Cause it was worse than Malone's 4th IMO...

When you play more games, you will have more opportunities to blow it. Karl Malone never was a perfect basketball player. He never was one of the sacred peak guys. But he exists in the club right below them, with Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, Dwyane Wade and so on. That he did for so long is a GOOD thing, but here you are using micro-examples to make that into a bad thing.

Wouldn't you rather have 10 super duper awesome years and 5 super duper awesome years that ended with a single horrible 4th quarter (a better team covers it up) than just 10 awesome years?

I don't see a strong case for Malone at 10, he is ahead of Wade for sure and in the same tier as West but clearly behind Bryant.

[Fencer reregistered]

I'm going to make the general argument that how guys play at deal-sealing time SHOULD get substantial weight.

Playoffs are a match of endurance and adjustments. The guy who plays well last is likely to be the guy who had more bullets in his gun in the first place.

Now, if the other team over-adjusts so consistently that Larry Bird has a mortal's numbers and Cedric Maxwell is Finals MVP, so be it. But when Michael Jordan ripped the ball from weight-room-stronger Karl Malone's hands and took it to the other end of the court to score, that said a lot.

That said, everybody should be allowed a few stinker games, if only because these guys are always trying to play through undisclosed injuries, and it's forgivable that they don't always succeed. That's a light in which we'll need to view Mailman and Logo alike, not to mention Kobe, Dirk and a whole lot of others ...

[Gongxi]

Awesome posts by ElGee and Doctor MJ re: the ability to judge supporting casts and the historian's fallacy. Loved it.

That's why I try to minimize the role that I allow teammates (team success) to have when judging players: not because it's not important to see how a player plays in the context of the team around him, but because it's extremely difficult to judge individual players with their peers anyway; no reason to complicate and diffuse the effectiveness of the process by trying to judge 11 other guys at the same time.

[Dr Positivity]

I respect the argument in favor of judging 1st-3rd quarter points as much as 4th, thus giving big credence to a game like Malone's G5 in 95 where he was overall statistically fine. I'm looking forward to ElGee's Karl Malone case in the next thread

But my vote will be based on believing the star's job is to what your team needs, when it needs it.. which includes critical junctures. And while I've warmed up to Karl as a possible top 13 guy in light of this project, when it's bad for him, it's really bad, for reasons that go beyond 'just a bad day, statistically it will happen'. I consider a statistical bad day Dirk missing his shots in the first half of G6, or Ray Allen's 0fer 3pter day last year. Karl has a history of not taking FGA, taking bad fadeaways, clearly choking FTs, etc. in the 4th of his biggest games which is more in the Wilt/Drob/Lebron zone for me of this guy is probably thinking too much

[mysticbb]

-Is it different? Sincerely asking here. I do know that the scale of RAPM varies with the lambda used, however Engelmann is making player graphs showing how a player's RAPM changes from year to year, and is not indicating that he's changing the lambda each year. I presume he's being consistent, and thus RAPM's would be roughly the same each year. What I can tell you though is that Nash's APM (not just his RAPM) increases after '05-06 as well.

It is indeed different. The scale also changes with a different amount of data behind it. In each season he is using the rating from the previous season as a prior in order to gain a small advantage in predictive power for out of sample data. RAPM used in that way is more a tool to predict than to evaluate. In 2006 he used less data than in 2009, thus the values aren't comparable per se from year to year. He writes that the best method to predict the 2011 out of sample data is by calculating the ratings based upon the priors with starting in 2005/06 (http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ranking_rec). In that dataset he only uses data until February for the 2010/11 season. He isn't saying that the prediction based upon that dataset for March, May, June is closer to results than the full 2010/11 dataset while using 0 as prior for each player he also presents (http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ranking11). As you can see the seperation from the mean is bigger in the first link than in the 2nd link (average absolute value is 1.2 vs. 2.1).

The point is: the 2006 data is based upon the ratings calculated before, the same goes for 2009. When we look at the normal APM data, we get the highest for Bryant in 2006, he has a clear higher APM in 2006 than in 2009 and 2010. His APM for 2008 is also higher than in 2009 and 2010. If we rank his APM (Winston's version) for each years:

2006
2008
2007
2010
2009

In fact he has the lowest APM in 2009. For RAPM we get:

2009
2010
2008
2006
2007

The two weakest years in APM are his strongest in RAPM. Why? Well, because the prior in 2006 was the rating of 2005, +1.4 for Bryant. For 2007 it is 4.9, for 2008 it is 2.8 and so on.

Engelmann hasn't shown that the use of the prior actually improves the evaluation, but the prediction of out of sample data for 2011.

When we use RAPM for a whole year we are getting better results than using normal APM for the same dataset. But using different priors for different years will throw us off and we can't compare the data achieved from year to year anymore, the seperation from the mean will increase from season to season and we can't say for sure anymore that a higher RAPM in 2008 means that a player was really better in 2008.

All we can use is RAPM in a way that we assume that this is an average for the player.

[Doctor MJ]

-Is it different? Sincerely asking here. I do know that the scale of RAPM varies with the lambda used, however Engelmann is making player graphs showing how a player's RAPM changes from year to year, and is not indicating that he's changing the lambda each year. I presume he's being consistent, and thus RAPM's would be roughly the same each year. What I can tell you though is that Nash's APM (not just his RAPM) increases after '05-06 as well.

It is indeed different. The scale also changes with a different amount of data behind it. In each season he is using the rating from the previous season as a prior in order to gain a small advantage in predictive power for out of sample data. RAPM used in that way is more a tool to predict than to evaluate. In 2006 he used less data than in 2009, thus the values aren't comparable per se from year to year. He writes that the best method to predict the 2011 out of sample data is by calculating the ratings based upon the priors with starting in 2005/06 (http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ranking_rec). In that dataset he only uses data until February for the 2010/11 season. He isn't saying that the prediction based upon that dataset for March, May, June is closer to results than the full 2010/11 dataset while using 0 as prior for each player he also presents (http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/ranking11). As you can see the seperation from the mean is bigger in the first link than in the 2nd link (average absolute value is 1.2 vs. 2.1).

The point is: the 2006 data is based upon the ratings calculated before, the same goes for 2009. When we look at the normal APM data, we get the highest for Bryant in 2006, he has a clear higher APM in 2006 than in 2009 and 2010. His APM for 2008 is also higher than in 2009 and 2010. If we rank his APM (Winston's version) for each years:

2006
2008
2007
2010
2009

In fact he has the lowest APM in 2009. For RAPM we get:

2009
2010
2008
2006
2007

The two weakest years in APM are his strongest in RAPM. Why? Well, because the prior in 2006 was the rating of 2005, +1.4 for Bryant. For 2007 it is 4.9, for 2008 it is 2.8 and so on.

Engelmann hasn't shown that the use of the prior actually improves the evaluation, but the prediction of out of sample data for 2011.

When we use RAPM for a whole year we are getting better results than using normal APM for the same dataset. But using different priors for different years will throw us off and we can't compare the data achieved from year to year anymore, the seperation from the mean will increase from season to season and we can't say for sure anymore that a higher RAPM in 2008 means that a player was really better in 2008.

All we can use is RAPM in a way that we assume that this is an average for the player.

Huh. Thanks mystic!

[lorak]

But my vote will be based on believing the star's job is to what your team needs, when it needs it.. which includes critical junctures.

So why you voted Duncan before Hakeem?

[TMACFORMVP]

Vote: Hakeem
Nominate: Nowitzki

[penbeast0]

. . . then do understand that +/- stats are really orthogonal to the rest of statistics, and the rest of statistics are not only weighed more heavily, but are much more widely known among this group.

Oh thanks, Doc, that's really helpful to those who aren't really into statistics.

[penbeast0]

INteresting question there (and it is a question) is how many fiery individuals Sloan coached, and whether or not they would have been given the scope to provide that leadership on the court.

No disrespect intended to Sloan, but his teams rarely surprised me with a fantastic performance above what they were capable of (which is something you CAN say about Carlisle, Jackson, Riley, etc).

I've always wondered if the guys whose playoff stats stay flat or slide are the guys who bring it full speed all through the regular season and the guys whose playoff numbers go up are the guys who often coast because the season is such a long grind.

Jordan I know had a tough time getting up for regular season games so he was always looking for an excuse to get a chip on his shoulder to elevate his intensity (Hello LaBradford Smith); maybe the David Robinsons of the NBA are playing at the top of their game in the regular season and don't have that extra gear to kick it into.

Just an idea, no basis for it.

[mysticbb]

Jordan I know had a tough time getting up for regular season games so he was always looking for an excuse to get a chip on his shoulder to elevate his intensity (Hello LaBradford Smith); maybe the David Robinsons of the NBA are playing at the top of their game in the regular season and don't have that extra gear to kick it into.

I would rather say that had more to do with the differences in opponents strength. Robinson was maybe pretty good against weaker teams, while playing at a lower level against better teams. But during the regular season he faced weaker teams more often. That increased his overall stats.

Additional to that we know that Robinson's elimination game numbers are worse than the rest of his numbers during the playoffs. We have a clear drop in his performance level in more pressure situations. The explanation by Oliver makes a lot of sense, in more pressure situations Robinson was forced to do more in order to get his team on the winning road. That brought his efficiency numbers down. Instead of picking the shots more like in the regular season, Robinson was forced to take tougher shots during the playoffs. That can explain his drop and makes a lot of sense too.

The thing Oliver discovered was a pretty good correlation between team performance and individual performance for the most important players. We see that for Malone, who is closer to the team than Stockton. We see that for Jordan, who was closer than Pippen. We see that for Nowitzki, who was closer than Nash or Finley. And we see it for Duncan, who was closer than Robinson. Robinson was not impacting the game as much as he should, and due to that his regular season boxscore numbers were inflated (or suggested a higher impact than it really was).
The interesting thing regarding this point might be two seasons by Kevin Garnett. We know Garnett had massive +/- numbers in 2003 and 2004, then his +/- numbers dropped in 2005 despite playing rather similar in terms of boxscore stats as in 2004. We also see only a small drop in boxscore numbers for Garnett in 2006 and better +/- numbers. BUT, in 2007 Garnett's boxscore numbers were clearly worse while his +/- numbers went up by a lot again. In 2003, 2004 and 2007 Garnett was closer to the team in terms of boxscore numbers, while his +/- numbers were incredible. In 2005 and 2006 it wasn't the case. With an increased usage Garnett would likely suffered in terms of efficiency, but would lilely helped his team more in order to win games, because the rest of the team was just not capable of shouldering that load. We see a similar thing for Bryant in 2006 and 2007, his +/- numbers went down even though his scoring effiency went up. An increased usage for the rest of the team wasn't quite a good idea, because the Lakers overall became worse.
The last example would be Dirk Nowitzki. Having great boxscore numbers in 2007, we see him dropping in those values after that. What happened? Well, his teammates overall performed worse and forced him to take tougher shots. His efficiency went down, his boxscore numbers became worse, BUT his +/- numbers stayed rather constant. It wasn't until last year when Nowitzki started to make those tougher shots at a higher rate that his +/- numbers went up again. In the last season he was so incredible at converting tough shots, that his +/- numbers basically peaked again and reached a level of peak Garnett and Duncan.

And that explains too, why Nowitzki can keep his level or increase it boxscore-wise in the playoffs while Robinson or Garnett couldn't. We see a massive drop for Malone, Garnett and Robinson (according to Elgee) in playoff performance level, while the rest of the players basically stayed equal (if we account for raising playing time). And that is why Olajuwon has such a great case over the remaining players, he increased his level in the playoffs as the only top player. It didn't hurt him to take tougher shots, the complete opposite of Karl Malone, Kevin Garnett and David Robinson.

[Vinsanity420]

INteresting question there (and it is a question) is how many fiery individuals Sloan coached, and whether or not they would have been given the scope to provide that leadership on the court.

No disrespect intended to Sloan, but his teams rarely surprised me with a fantastic performance above what they were capable of (which is something you CAN say about Carlisle, Jackson, Riley, etc).

Sloan has been exposed multiple times - he isn't all that great IMO. He imposes an inflexible, rigid system to produce winning basketball. If opposing coaches find a way around it, (like Nellie did, and whoever the Blazers coach was did) he wasn't all that great at making the proper adjustments, and that's why the Jazz failed multiple times. Not all the blame goes to him, but that needs to be taken into account when looking at Jazz playoff failures.

[Dr Positivity]

Jordan I know had a tough time getting up for regular season games so he was always looking for an excuse to get a chip on his shoulder to elevate his intensity (Hello LaBradford Smith); maybe the David Robinsons of the NBA are playing at the top of their game in the regular season and don't have that extra gear to kick it into.

I would rather say that had more to do with the differences in opponents strength. Robinson was maybe pretty good against weaker teams, while playing at a lower level against better teams. But during the regular season he faced weaker teams more often. That increased his overall stats.

Additional to that we know that Robinson's elimination game numbers are worse than the rest of his numbers during the playoffs. We have a clear drop in his performance level in more pressure situations. The explanation by Oliver makes a lot of sense, in more pressure situations Robinson was forced to do more in order to get his team on the winning road. That brought his efficiency numbers down. Instead of picking the shots more like in the regular season, Robinson was forced to take tougher shots during the playoffs. That can explain his drop and makes a lot of sense too.

The thing Oliver discovered was a pretty good correlation between team performance and individual performance for the most important players. We see that for Malone, who is closer to the team than Stockton. We see that for Jordan, who was closer than Pippen. We see that for Nowitzki, who was closer than Nash or Finley. And we see it for Duncan, who was closer than Robinson. Robinson was not impacting the game as much as he should, and due to that his regular season boxscore numbers were inflated (or suggested a higher impact than it really was).
The interesting thing regarding this point might be two seasons by Kevin Garnett. We know Garnett had massive +/- numbers in 2003 and 2004, then his +/- numbers dropped in 2005 despite playing rather similar in terms of boxscore stats as in 2004. We also see only a small drop in boxscore numbers for Garnett in 2006 and better +/- numbers. BUT, in 2007 Garnett's boxscore numbers were clearly worse while his +/- numbers went up by a lot again. In 2003, 2004 and 2007 Garnett was closer to the team in terms of boxscore numbers, while his +/- numbers were incredible. In 2005 and 2006 it wasn't the case. With an increased usage Garnett would likely suffered in terms of efficiency, but would lilely helped his team more in order to win games, because the rest of the team was just not capable of shouldering that load. We see a similar thing for Bryant in 2006 and 2007, his +/- numbers went down even though his scoring effiency went up. An increased usage for the rest of the team wasn't quite a good idea, because the Lakers overall became worse.
The last example would be Dirk Nowitzki. Having great boxscore numbers in 2007, we see him dropping in those values after that. What happened? Well, his teammates overall performed worse and forced him to take tougher shots. His efficiency went down, his boxscore numbers became worse, BUT his +/- numbers stayed rather constant. It wasn't until last year when Nowitzki started to make those tougher shots at a higher rate that his +/- numbers went up again. In the last season he was so incredible at converting tough shots, that his +/- numbers basically peaked again and reached a level of peak Garnett and Duncan.

And that explains too, why Nowitzki can keep his level or increase it boxscore-wise in the playoffs while Robinson or Garnett couldn't. We see a massive drop for Malone, Garnett and Robinson (according to Elgee) in playoff performance level, while the rest of the players basically stayed equal (if we account for raising playing time). And that is why Olajuwon has such a great case over the remaining players, he increased his level in the playoffs as the only top player. It didn't hurt him to take tougher shots, the complete opposite of Karl Malone, Kevin Garnett and David Robinson.

Good post

For me I would guess skill is the biggest indicator. (though KG dropping? I'm still a bit fuzzy on what your overall conclusion was there, would buck it a little). You're better off having Hakeem's post game than Malone's for reasons that go beyond points scored there on average. IMO the more you rely on power over finesse and unpredictability, the more liable you are to a team figuring you out. You can see Malone going to his post game all the time in his most infamous losses, it just gets shut down. (not to keep bagging on Malone, but anyways)

Likewise Bryant is likely less liable to have what happened to Lebron in 2011, happen to him. The Mavs figured out that if you take away Lebron's drives, you force him to shoot or pass - assist to the Heat's poor spacing. Most of the season Lebron has been confidently taking that shot, but in the Finals I believe he lost confidence in it after Game 2's collapse. This wouldn't happen to Kobe because he has shoot, drive, post up, off ball play in his arsenal. You take away the drive and he gladly shoots on you. You put a small guy on him like they did to Lebron and he posts you up. Etc. Kobe has had his bad shooting games, but 04 aside, I'd say his overall playoff performance record is fine and I'd forgive him for getting his regular game off down the stretch and the ball not going in sometimes, more than I would a Lebron/Malone/Robinson where they're not getting their game off like they normally do when it matters most, because of weaknesses in their game. By my books Bryant is a better scorer than Lebron by a clear margin, for the same reason Hakeem and Dirk are better scorers than Robinson by a clear margin.