Re-post from last thread, since by the time I posted it the thread was over. Ray is in now, but he still makes a reasonable foil for Ginobili...
Snakebites wrote:I'm not really seeing the case for Ginobili over Ray Allen. Anyone care to enlighten me?
lukekarts wrote:I agree I can't see a case for Manu over Ray; the latter has a higher peak and greater longevity; the only knock against Ray is he didn't play alongside Duncan.
I hate that I've been so busy lately and unable to participate in the discussion as much as I'd like. I know this thread is already decided, but I did want to address this.
I thought Lukekarts' point was interesting: "the only knock against Ray is he didn't play alongside Duncan." The opposite side of the coin is true too, though...the reason that Manu isn't thought of as being as good as Ray is that he DID play next to Duncan. One of the goals of this project as I saw it was to try to ignore a player's situation to the best of our abilities, and to cut to how good the player was at what HE was doing. If that's true, and I brought this up many threads ago back when we were talking about Mchale or Pippen, but if that's true then we can't hold a player's role against him.
Ray had years when he was on teams where he was the best player, and he showed that he could be a 25 ppg player on good efficiency with 5 rebounds and 4 assists. And that's to his credit. But in his lead role he didn't exactly set the bar out there as an elite first option...he led his teams to the playoffs 4 times in 11 years and his teams had a career losing record. And to show that it wasn't JUST that his teams weren't that talented, his APM scores were merely solid but not great (+3.1, good for 55th in Ilardi's '04 - '09 study).
Manu, on the other hand, never had the chance to be the Man on a less talented team. So he never got the chance to show what he might or might not be able to do in that situation. He's had durability issues in his career, so I can certainly entertain the argument that he wouldn't have been able to hold up to those minutes. But we don't KNOW. What we DO know is that during the same time period when Ray was flirting with 25/5/5 on good efficiency...Manu was putting up better per-minute numbers (slightly higher PER, much higher WS/48) for around 30 min/game.
In fact, in the years leading up to Ray going to Boston in 2007, Manu averaged more Win Shares per season once he hit his prime (9.9 WS/year from '04 - '07) than Ray did once he hit his prime (9.4 WS/year, 2000 - 2007). Again, this is total win shares, minutes included. And though I'm having trouble finding it at the moment, I'm pretty sure that according to Berri's wins produced Manu also tended to outperform Ray. This would indicate that, despite Ray playing more total minutes, Manu tended to have a bigger impact on games in his limited minutes than Ray was in his heavier minutes according to the box score stats.
And in the APM stats, the gap was wider. While Ray was a pedestrian 55th in Ilardi's 6-year APM study, Manu was 3rd overall with a whopping +8.2. So it's not just the box score stats that think Manu was better...the nonboxscore APM stats also suggest strongly that Manu was having a bigger impact on games than Ray. And remember, this is a greater impact than 25/5/5 Ray.
Then, and most importantly to me, we've gotten to see both Ray and Manu in similar roles for the past four years. Both of them have been part of a group leading a contender, next to similar bigs with similar calibers of perimeter teammates. And again, Manu measures out better. This time in the same situation. Manu had MUCH higher PERs, much better Win Shares, and again much higher APM scores (Manu 5th at +7.6, Ray 30th at +3.0 in Englemann's '06 - '11 study).
Getting away from the numbers, I think that while Ray is one of the best shooters that's ever lived, Manu is also an excellent shooter out to long range but also one of the best point-wings of this generation. His ability to mix very strong dribble penetration with excellent ability to draw fouls and his own clutch sense of the moment makes him a much more versatile offensive threat than Ray. And on defense it's no contest, as Manu's defensive APM scores tend to be among the best perimeter defenders of this generation while Ray's...isn't.
If you can't get past that Ray was at some point a #1 on mediocre teams while Manu wasn't...ok. If Manu's durability concerns bother you I can understand, though he's at 8 years and counting now of very big impact even with the injury concern issues mixed in. And if the fact that he was a 30 mpg guy sticks in your craw...there's nothing I can say, except that Manu had more impact in 30 mpg than just about any other wing was having in 40 mpg. And that includes Ray. I've got no problem with Ray going in now, but I think Manu was better.
