The Kevin Garnett thread: the most fascinating player on RGM

[ardee]

I just thought that since there are a LOT of KG threads on RealGM (half of them are started by me ) and more often than not, we end up having a discussion about him in any thread related to other bigs, we could have a thread about his 17 year career where everyone voices any random thought they feel like about him.

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

[tsherkin]

Contentious player from an analytical standpoint.

Very good defender, good rebounder. Quality passer. A lot of his numbers are somewhat overstated by the number of minutes he used to play to at least some degree and his scoring ability was tepid at best. Did very well in 04, though, with a fairly underwhelming cast and proper role distribution and has obviously been a large part of some serious success in Boston. No doubt, one of the best PFs to ever play the game. The ultimate "pay attention to context" player.

He's remained relevant even in his twilight years, much like Duncan, still exerting defensive impact, wielding his height and J to great success. Legacy-wise, he's got two Finals appearances, a ring, an MVP, a DPOY, broke Bird's record for consecutive 20/10/5 seasons, was the lynchpin on one of the greatest defenses of all-time... Lots and lots on his resume.

To me, he's surpassed Karl Malone. Career-wise, I think it's safe to say he's surpassed Dirk and Barkley as well, although not to the extent that he's obviously better, more in terms of career accomplishments. It's generally clear that Barkley and Dirk would be better choices as focal offensive players and that KG is the best defensive anchor of the lot, even when you throw in Malone, who was better on D than Dirk and Barkley.

Close arguments all, though, that spawn some really interesting conversations. Of the three, I have Dirk closest to KG. Sort of the other side of the coin, the offense to KG's defensive utility. He also has two Finals appearances and a title, though he adds the Finals MVP. Like I said, very interesting stuff.

[Not Bias]

IMO the most versatile big man of all-time. My only problem with him was that he played outside too much rather than inside the paint.

[Texas Chuck]

I think KG is

Spoiler:

Awesome

[tsherkin]

Well played, Texas. Haha

[Rapcity_11]

Something that's been bothering me in various KG threads is that he's gotten this label from his detractors as a guy who is only viewed as awesome because of +/- stats, when that's not the case at all.

1. The guy is a box-score monster. Career RS PER of 23.1 in almost 48K minutes. 23/13/5/1.6/1.4 from 01-07.

2. Part of the reason +/- stats are used so frequently when examining him is to counter the resistance to the claims that his supporting cast was THAT bad. He isn't awesome because of +/- stats. Those stats do help show his value. Just like they do for Duncan, Dirk, Kobe, etc.

[Vinsanity420]

He's honestly had a Bill Russell type defensive impact if one goes by +/- numbers. I am always confused as to where you should rank him... by pure impact, you're looking at the GOAT defender and an offensive player that works perfectly well within the team setting. He averaged 5-6 assists in his prime, in addition to 20 points. Guards do that type of stuff.

I really want to put a restart button on his career and have him end up on the Spurs replacing Duncan, if I can.

[Texas Chuck]

He's honestly had a Bill Russell type defensive impact

No, no he hasnt. No one ever has. This is part of the problem that generates what Rap is talking about which I will address separately because he makes a fair pt. KG's defensive impact isnt close to Russells. Look at the TWolves years.

[HeartBreakKid]

He's honestly had a Bill Russell type defensive impact

No, no he hasnt. No one ever has. This is part of the problem that generates what Rap is talking about which I will address separately because he makes a fair pt. KG's defensive impact isnt close to Russells. Look at the TWolves years.

What good defenders were on the Twolves other than KG?

[Texas Chuck]

Something that's been bothering me in various KG threads is that he's gotten this label from his detractors as a guy who is only viewed as awesome because of +/- stats, when that's not the case at all.

1. The guy is a box-score monster. Career RS PER of 23.1 in almost 48K minutes. 23/13/5/1.6/1.4 from 01-07.

2. Part of the reason +/- stats are used so frequently when examining him is to counter the resistance to the claims that his supporting cast was THAT bad. He isn't awesome because of +/- stats. Those stats do help show his value. Just like they do for Duncan, Dirk, Kobe, etc.

I think this is a really fair point. Im certainly one who has been troubled by how much +/- continues to be the repetitive refrain in all KG discussion.

I agree his supporting casts have been bad, but AUF has recently posted some data that suggests it wasnt always nearly as bad as perceived and that Dirk's werent always nearly as good as perceived yet the gap in results between the Dirk Mavs and KG Wolves is pretty sizable. And so I feel that +/- has become a crutch to excuse a lot of KG's relatively poor( but obviously still really good when compared to players not in the top 20 all-time) PS performance something that Dirk rarely had. Dirk came up even bigger in the PS almost every single year and really only has a couple of PS series that could remotely be considered subpar.

[Texas Chuck]

He's honestly had a Bill Russell type defensive impact

No, no he hasnt. No one ever has. This is part of the problem that generates what Rap is talking about which I will address separately because he makes a fair pt. KG's defensive impact isnt close to Russells. Look at the TWolves years.

What good defenders were on the Twolves other than KG?

Trenton Hassell and Earvin Johnson were both terrific defenders. Joe Smith was solid. It doesnt really matter tho. Russell is on another level. Please read some of the ElGee stuff on him. This is not me attempting to knock KG as a defender.

[NO-KG-AI]

Something that's been bothering me in various KG threads is that he's gotten this label from his detractors as a guy who is only viewed as awesome because of +/- stats, when that's not the case at all.

1. The guy is a box-score monster. Career RS PER of 23.1 in almost 48K minutes. 23/13/5/1.6/1.4 from 01-07.

2. Part of the reason +/- stats are used so frequently when examining him is to counter the resistance to the claims that his supporting cast was THAT bad. He isn't awesome because of +/- stats. Those stats do help show his value. Just like they do for Duncan, Dirk, Kobe, etc.

This. The argument used to be that he was stat padding on bad teams, and that his box score number made him appear to be better than he really was.

I don't have a problem with where some people rank KG, it just seems that every time something comes out that prove his detractors wrong, they shift the goalposts and use some other argument.

[ardee]

I personally think the first 30 or so games of his Boston career were a startling revelation of what could have been had he had competent team-mates through his career.

He was rocking 19.2/10.3/4 with 3.2 combined steals/blocks in only 35.1 mpg on 56% from the field, startlingly higher than anything we'd ever seen from him before. The Cs were 28-3, -11.2 defense, 13.1 MOV.

Then he got injured and we didn't see the same production out of him. He started the season so pumped and on fire, I remember seeing 22-15-6 with almost 4.5 steals/blocks and the Cs were winning every game by 15+, if he'd somehow maintained something close to that it'd be one of the best seasons ever.

I think that's indicative we missed out on a career that could have approached a stratospheric level given the right circumstances.

[ElGee]

I'll post some more specific thoughts to KG's game later if need be, but here are my macrosopic thoughts:

Why is KG polarizing?

I often say KG is the exemplar of a lot of things we discuss, which in many ways makes him one of the most fascinating players (much like Wilt, or really Dantley). There are other exemplars, but as one he is a lightning rod. Good thread idea, and obviously I hope to collect a lot of the minutiae in the KG survey thread which I'll open up shortly (waiting for the playoffs to pare down...)

How differently do we see his game?

It's still unclear to me how differently we all see Garnett. That was one of my biggest motivations for starting the survey project -- not KG specifically, but how much of the divide with regards to players like him has to do with disagreements about his game in particular? I'd love all the regulars (I haven't PMed all of you guys yet) to participate, even if it takes time to crystalize, to really flesh that out. To whit:

I used to have KG ranked like 12th or something. I now have him 7th, just from updating the rubric with information about championship probabilities and examining the distribution of teams. My opinion about his game, or even each individual season, hasn't changed at all. So clearly, looking at where someone ranks someone can make it seem like there is a giant chasm, where one doesn't necessarily exist, all depending on criteria.

How did I end up KG ranking on my super-short list?

Specifically, I've always been high on Garnett because I was always high on Pippen and players who were doing other things besides iso-scoring. Nonetheless, there's a lot of Losing Bias that develops ("KG's a choker," which turns out to be mostly false) or context-specific biases, like "KG doesn't have a great low post game." That ones true IMO, and again, I used to knock him for that...but now I actually value his spacing as a jump shooter and his mid-post passing, which I think is borderline incredible. (As a simple example, would you rather have Shaq/KG or Shaq/Duncan? Sign me up for KG.)

Finally, a change of environment...

Remember, I'm a Celtic fan AND have been arguing on the KG side of debates for years. When he came to Boston, even I underrated the team, because (1) I didn't understand how good his Global Defense was (eg defender the pick and roll and communicating) and (2) I naively thought "3 stars, 1 ball." What I didn't think about at the time was the *makeup* of the stars on offense:*

-Pierce is a self-creator
-Allen's an off-ball spacer
-KG's a mid-post, PnP player

These players couldn't fit together better if we tried. And this Portability goes hand in hand with why I'v grown higher on Reggie Miller types (Allen is one). Furthermore, I don't think bigs have the offensive impact we think they do, because arguably the most valuable offensive trait (creation for others) isn't captured in the box score. So 25 ppg bigs look as sexy as 25 ppg wings, but I personally only value a few bigs as elite offensive players in NBA history. I'm not taking Zo for his 23 ppg. Now Ewing for his long, prodding isolation. And not even Duncan. (Ironic, then, that most people center their Duncan-KG debates on individual offensive scoring...)

The final piece of the puzzle for me was seeing how the impact of players was relatively limited, and how those lower tier teams basically have no shot at winning titles even with the GOAT player on them. The teams that really generate titles (Russell flashback) are teams that are constantly generating a positive margin of error over the majority of their competition. This is the Iverson Effect, because while it looks impressive as all hell (T-Mac 03, eg) to drag a terrible, terrible team to mediocrity, it's literally useless for building title teams if the impact is completely redundant with what good teams already have (eg scoring -- basketball isn't additive like baseball).

Thus, while I wouldn't pick KG over many players on offense to be my "get out the way and have him carry us" offensive player by any stretch, I WOULD pick KG on almost every great team because his offensive success is predicated on passing, screening action and spacing the court. And frankly, it took me a lot of years, and a lot of research, to reach that conclusion.

*I also thought there was something wrong with his knee, which I suppose was technically correct. Whatever minor quad injury he had at the end of the season was in all likelihood the structural precursor so his 2009 injury.

[Texas Chuck]

I
Thus, while I wouldn't pick KG over many players on offense to be my "get out the way and have him carry us" offensive player by any stretch, I WOULD pick KG on almost every great team because his offensive success is predicated on passing, screening action and spacing the court.

I 100% agree with this statement about KG.

[G35]

I
Thus, while I wouldn't pick KG over many players on offense to be my "get out the way and have him carry us" offensive player by any stretch, I WOULD pick KG on almost every great team because his offensive success is predicated on passing, screening action and spacing the court.

I 100% agree with this statement about KG.

I agree with this. As a #2 guy KG is awesome.

but now I actually value his spacing as a jump shooter and his mid-post passing, which I think is borderline incredible. (As a simple example, would you rather have Shaq/KG or Shaq/Duncan? Sign me up for KG.)

Which imo contradicts this statement; yes I would rather have Shaq/KG because of the better fit and Shaq plays to KG's do it all strengths. However if we change the scenario and remove Shaq, would you rather have KG or Duncan. This is Duncan all day. If you are building a team you want a #1 guy. That is not a KG. That's not where his strength's are. It's simple to me that if you are capable of building a superteam like the 80's Celtics/Lakers/Sixers, 90's Bulls, 00 Lakers, current Heat/Thunder then KG is the choice. But if I'm building a team from scratch like the Thunder did or the Wolves tried to do, it's going to be a much harder road.

KG will be just good enough to get you to the playoff's and end up with some mid level draft pick. So what you will end up with is a bunch of #2's that need a number one to exploit their full potential. And that's what happened in Minnesota. They never had a true first option.....

[ardee]

I'm also curious as to the explanations of anyone who thinks KG's best year was 2003.

[drza]

Thus, while I wouldn't pick KG over many players on offense to be my "get out the way and have him carry us" offensive player by any stretch, I WOULD pick KG on almost every great team because his offensive success is predicated on passing, screening action and spacing the court.

I 100% agree with this statement about KG.

I agree with this. As a #2 guy KG is awesome.

You ever listen to three people talk, and all three say they agree, but they're obviously not saying the same things? It's like a game of telephone, where with each person the statement gets further away from what was intended.

G35 agrees on the premise that KG is "a #2 guy" that shouldn't be the foundation of a team. Texas Chuck agrees on the premise that KG is great but not as good as Dirk. But the statement that they're agreeing with comes from ElGee, who in the exact same post says that he'd put KG as one of the top 6 or 7 players in NBA history to build a team around.

Those points are almost diametrically opposed from each other.

The good thing is that it's totally obvious where the disagreement takes place. You can see it as soon as G35 starts wanting to characterize someone as "a #2 guy". That term is one of my biggest pet peeves, because it almost never means what the person is saying that it means. #2 as used here is #2 scorer (which still doesn't fit KG, but let's go with it)...the problem is

#2 scorer does not mean secondary player!!!

What G35 and to a lesser extent Texas Chuck seem to be saying is that Garnett isn't the scorer that some of his peers on the GOAT lists are...which makes him not as good as them.

What ElGee is saying, on the other hand, is that Garnett isn't the scorer that some of his peers on the GOAT list are...but it doesn't matter because as an overall player he's BETTER than them.

This is an interesting debate on its own, because it doesn't even require that Garnett's name be in the argument. The question is whether you can be so great at the game of basketball that you can be the dominant player on the court without being the best scorer.

The disagreement over that particular question is a big reason WHY Garnett is, according to the thread title, "the most fascinating player on RealGM".

[ThaRegul8r]

#2 as used here is #2 scorer (which still doesn't fit KG, but let's go with it)...the problem is

#2 scorer does not mean secondary player!!!

Thing is, it does to "most people." The best player on a team is the "#1 option." The lead scorer. That's the defining characteristic of "best player" for most. The guy who can "carry the offensive load"; "throw the ball to and say get me a basket"; etc. It's unfathomable to people that a team's best player could be a player who doesn't score the most points. This wasn't always the prevailing way of thinking, but it is now.

(On an aside, I've always found it curious that I have never once on any basketball messageboard in cyberspace seen anyone talk about a player carrying the defensive load, when there have been great defenders with weak defensive teammates, and they have to cover for their lapses, rotate, help, and guard their own man. I just find it interesting.)

[Texas Chuck]

I agree completely that you can be the best player on a team and not be the leading scorer. I want that to be made clear before I get assigned a belief I dont hold. I also tend to hold players like Russell, Pippen, Kidd, Deke well above others on this forum. I got into a spirited debate defending Noah just yesterday. I love defense. Thats the kind of player Ive always been and I have a great deal of appreciation for it.

I dont have time atm to get into fully KG v Dirk (Again) but it only has to do with offense over defense insomuch as I believe that Dirk's impact offensively has more value than KG's does defensively for a myriad of reasons that include team-building around the respective guy. There are some excellent posts about this in the peak project surrounding 2011 Dirk and why its not all about the cast/coaching.

Stating that I love KG fitting into any great team easier than many players including Dirk doesnt seem that contradictory to me at all. He is one of the most versatile players of all time. Dirk's offensive game is going to be more redundant than whatever role KG fills on many elite teams. I just dont always think versitility trumps dominance and I think Dirk's dominance offensively is of more value in building a franchise around than KG's versatility. And I think really highly of players that franchises can be built around.

Ive said many times that KG may well be a better basketball player than Dirk. But the rarity of Dirk's particular skills make him more valuable imo.