RealGM Top 100 List #10

[ElGee]

And that brings up a question for me:

Why is looking at team success from a w/l perspective so frowned upon, but we don't think twice about using team offenses to support guys like Nash/Magic and in this case: question Bird?

This seems inconsistent to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

Such a great question.

You should be looking to figure out how much a player impacted the team result, not using the team result as a de facto representation of the player. I see this way, way, way too much, in all kinds of varieties, like basketball is some one-on-one game. With that said, I understand where the confusion comes from and I'll go back to what I always qualify WOWY data with:

-the heights of an offense/defense/team are important -- it's a proof of concept (on a team level) where sometimes we need proof of concept (e.g. the Spurs offensive success without a superstar)

-the differences should still be emphasized -- the Lakers 80's ORtgs to me are impressive, but it makes a big difference if they were +2 or -2 without Magic (whether we can hammer that down or not, the point stands in theory).

-Offensive/Defensive splits are often used for players slanted toward one side or the other as a way of segmenting their specialized impact. (Nash -- offense, because he has lesser impact on the defense. Russell, defense.)

That said, you are right that it's one step removed from looking at the standings to just automatically equate the team setting with an individual without any further evidence. And if you use the O/DRtg splits, I think you need to account for team strategy (i.e. transition play versus crashing the glass, or "cheating" lineups) to get an accurate gauge of the team's efficacy in that regard, let alone the individual most responsible.

[90sAllDecade]

I have to agree that playoff performance over a career indicates how well a player's game translates against multiple matchups, over several years against better teams, usually better defenses, who game-plan against stopping that star player for a 5-7 game series. It's harder and a career sample is a large one imo, not taking only a couple games or series.

The pace slows down, transition or easy baskets decrease, what a player normally could get away with gets taken away or pressured into a different method of attack. This matters imo and I use it often as a tiebreaker between close players.

Similarly, you are doing what you are advocating against -- you are looking at a small sample sample and attributing something special about the playoffs to make conclusions instead of looking at larger pieces of data. Do you think it's more likely that the PS is radically different and pace significantly changes, or do you think players just play better defenses? And do you think you can get a better and more diverse sample from 1 to 4 PS series or from the entire season?

I disagree, that was never my assertion. I wasn't comparing PO sample size to regular season, I was said career playoff sample size is large enough to infer an idea of how a player's game translates in the post season. The regular season sample is larger, but the sample type changes in the post season.

Yes, the playoffs are different and are more difficult for the majority of players.

You said yourself 70% of players stats decrease in the post season. That stat alone shows it separates the wheat from the chaff. It is harder to succeed. Why?

If you don't see that then we have to agree to disagree. Defenses not only improve, there are many times players have spoken about playing teams a few times a season. But when they play a series they become more familiar with each other and advantages/disadvantages magnify.

Frankly its seems very easy to identify that the intensity (the games mean more, players play harder), atmosphere (fan & media scrutiny increases) and difficulty (better teams, defenses and 5-7 series game-planning) in the playoffs increase. Stress levels from many avenues increase.

Some teams or players are regular season stars but falter under playoff pressure, others consistently thrive. Why? Why do some coaches suggest young teams often struggle without playoff experience? Is it because the experience is different?

This can't often can't be quantified, like many things in the mathematics or scientific world. Many great scientists are the first to admit they don't know everything and their methods have flaws or are imperfect at times. I'm a regular person and I can admit I don't know everything, but I do understand certain things I've studied, that the playoffs are harder to be successful in for players than the regular season.

I respect your input Elgee, so I hope your don't take my argument personally. But I think we get so caught up in quantitative data, that qualitative gets dismissed. But since many posters here value quantifying the game, I'll make a statistical comparison.

NBA 80-88 Pace Comparison Regular Season vs Playoffs:
League RS Averages for Pace:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... stats.html
79-80 RS: 103.1
PO: 98.4
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1980.html
81 RS: 101.8
PO: 95.2
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1981.html
82 RS: 100.9
PO: 98.4
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1982.html
83 RS: 103.1
PO: 100.2
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1983.html
84 RS: 101.4
PO: 97.9
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1984.html
85 RS: 102.1
PO: 103.5
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1985.html
86 RS: 102.1
PO: 99.0
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1986.html
87 RS: 100.8
PO: 97.5
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1987.html
88 RS: 99.6
PO: 94.0
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1988.html

Except for one year, every year in 80-88, using Bird as an example, the pace slowed down in the playoffs. The game changes in the post season imo. How about a really slow paced year like 05-06?

06 RS Pace: 90.5
PO: 89.2
http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _2006.html

[Doctor MJ]

Yeah Im not arguing against Nash being credited for good team offenses at all. I think he absolutely deserves credit because as you state we have multiple sources of information confirming this. My question was why then we wouldn't "credit" say Tim Duncan for also clearly by multiple sources of information, having a ton to do with 4 rings in his prime as the best player and a 5th as a key cog. Nash is obviously an amazing offensive player and Im not remotely suggesting otherwise.

Seems like we should do the same thing in both cases, but I keep seeing posters who are cool with looking at team stuff like otrgs, but not team stuff like w/l or championships when both are similar in that the star player has a ton to do with it, but clearly isn't doing it alone and requires some non-trivial amount of help in that regard.

I mean, we do credit Duncan. We don't pretend he did it by himself of course, and if it's your perception that we do something like that with Nash/Magic, well we clearly shouldn't be.

I'll say a couple things:

1) I'd say we can admit to essentially using the offensive success of the Suns, Lakers, and sometimes Royals, as a shorthand for the offensive GOAT candidacy for Nash, Magic, and Oscar respectively. Clearly it's not a proof though. We do it because it goes along with a bunch of other things and it really hammers home the other trends in a succinct way that can't really be done any other way.

And, I'll say we also do this with Russell, both on defense and talking about his overall impact.

So why don't we do it with Duncan? Because when we look at the more granular stuff when it comes to Duncan, the macro narrative doesn't hold nearly as well.

In terms of all-time defensive dynasties, one can argue the Duncan Spurs were the 2nd greatest of all-time...but good luck finding any individual metric that ranks Duncan as clearly ahead of his contemporaries on a year in year out basis. Even Defensive Win Shares, which directly biases the conversation to Duncan based on the team's performance, sees Ben Wallace tear a whole right through Duncan's prime, and sees plenty of guys historically put up better numbers than prime Duncan typically did.

Viewing it from a lens of overall production I don't think makes it look any better. Duncan is an A-list superstar certainly, but he doesn't have 4 alpha titles while all other non-Hakeem bigs of his generation have none because his peak was so, so superior. He was just in a better situations.

Again, none of this makes the team shorthand for Nash/Magic offense foolproof, or something that will last the ages, but it's pretty understandable to me why it's seen as a useful way to communicate in a way that using it for Duncan wouldn't be.

Not sure if we're looking at different sources for RAPM data---I'm assuming that's the primary stuff you're referring to when you use the word "impact"---but I don't see Ben Wallace "tearing a hole right thru Duncan's prime" defensively. In fact, I see Duncan's PI DRAPM equal or higher than Wallace's most years (and the one year where it's not, he's not far behind: 4.6 to 4.3). I see one year where Duncan ties for the league's best DRAPM (and multiple others where he ranks #2-4), and multiple years (prior to '08, anyway) where his DRAPM is better than Garnett's, too, fwiw.

Anyway, all that to say that I don't think it would be too disingenuous to cite Duncan's team DRtg's, for instance, while making a case for Duncan.

No, Duncan didn't have as much defensive impact (as measured by RAPM) as Nash/Magic did offensive impact. However, with Nash/Magic, offense was the whole deal. Defense isn't the whole deal with Duncan.

Magic was probably a defensive neutral (slight positive at best), and Nash was a consistent defensive negative. Duncan, otoh---in addition to his D---was a consistent offensive +; often a pretty substantial +, and rarely even among the league's elite: '07 he had higher PI ORAPM than Dirk, Wade, Kobe, Chauncey (NPI tells a similar story, too).
And, given context, I think it's pretty impressive that aside from the often #1 rated defense, the Spurs were also a top 9 offense from '01 thru '03, for instance. Duncan really didn't have all that much in the way of offensive help in those years.

When I brought up Ben Wallace, it was in the context of Defensive Win Shares.

When we got by PI RAPM, Kevin Garnett's peaks clearly beat him, and then there's Mutombo well ahead of Garnett.

You're right that you can find stats that put Duncan at the top in a given year, but my point was that you can't really find anything that makes Duncan appear to stand out individually in a manner similar to what the Spur defense did, and that's why using the latter as a short hand for the former just isn't something that makes a lot of sense.

I don't know where you're going with the last part. I'm answering a question posed by someone. That question isn't about how good Duncan is relative to Nash or Magic. Note that I rank Duncan ahead of both.