Post#62 » by drza » Tue Jul 24, 2012 7:28 pm
The "winning" argument is being inconsistently used here, in addition to it just not being a good way to compare individual players.
Over the last five years the Celtics with Garnett have had more success than the Mavs have had with Nowitzki, but many of those that support Dirk are quick to qualify those results based on teammate quality.
However, those same people are then hesitant to take teammate quality into similar effect when comparing the Timberwolves results with Garnett to the Mavs' results with Dirk over the previous 7 years. When the poor-ness of Garnett's teammates in Minnesota are brought up, suddenly giving too much credence to teammate caliber is playing the "what if" game. Or, it is just declared that Nowitzki's teammates were similarly poor to Garnett's with no support given outside of All Star appearances, which is in no way comprehensive.
And this is where statistical analysis comes in, and is silly to ignore. Because for whatever warts the +/- stats might have, they are a much more logical and supported way to quantify how much a player's presence correlates with team success than to just eyeball it from a distance.
And when we look at the +/- stats we see that Dirk is one of the greatest players of this generation, just outstanding. In the 10 full years of RAPM that we have access to, Dirk has led the entire league twice and been in the top-10 in eight of the 10 years. If we include the partial 2002 season, the only players to lead the NBA in RAPM for a season are Shaq, KG, Duncan, LeBron, Dirk, Wade, and Ginobili...we're talking rarified air, here. And in that span Dirk, LeBron and KG are the only ones to lead the league more than once. Dirk is a beast in the +/- stats.
But, KG is a little better. If you rank-order their RAPM rankings over the decade, this is what you'd see:
Dirk: 1st, 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 6th, 7th, 7th, 13th, 18th
KG: 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 8th, 11th
Now again, in this post I'm not saying that KG is better than Dirk because he's done a bit better through the years in the +/- stats. But what I AM saying is that it is silly to use the Timberwolves' lack of team talent as an indictment on KG's individual performances. Texas Chuck says that KG failed in Minnesota, when in reality KG was fabulously successful in Minnesota. He was carrying his teams far, far beyond where they should have been able to go, even with a replacement star in his place. And I actually have some quantitative evidence to support my stance, not just a potentially biased opinion or a quick perusal of the names on the roster.
And it goes further, because if you look at it in context the Celtics are actually a great test case. Because Garnett has continued to put up huge impact stats in Boston on a much better team, it is clear that his previous high marks weren't some case of stat padding or of a great player looking better because his teammates suck. On the contrary, KG put up super-elite impact results next to Pierce and Ray, just as he did next to Blount and Ricky Davis, just as he did next to Hudson and Wally, just as he did next to Cassell and Sprewell. And remember, these stats are calculated ONLY based on team success. So for those that claim that team success is all they care about, when judging an individual these stats are really the best way that we have to assess how much an individual is contributing to team wins. And it's a much, much more logical approach than suggesting that we just call all non-All star teammates equal and only look at overall team results.
