[POLL] Kevin Garnett: Where do you rank him?

[RayBan-Sematra]

Just for the record im not a "Kobe fan". I actually like Kg more than him but when im honest with myself theres no way i can put kg over Kobe. Most sensible fans who actually watch basketball would'nt either.

Funny thing is I probably felt the same way for a good time.
However when I remove something like team success and just examine what they bring to a game my opinions starts to sway.

Offensively Garnett can get me 20-24ppg on decent efficiency with 4-5apg.
Kobe can get me 26-30ppg on good efficiency with 4-5apg.
They both struggle offensively to some degree against tougher competition.

Pretty clear edge to Bryant and he is clearly the better scorer & offensive anchor.

Then we have defense.
Garnett is a huge impact defender. Kobe is not even close here.

Rebounding also is another point in KG's favor.

Bringing up team success is hard in this comparison since KG was pretty much stuck with trash until his last elite season (08).

Maybe my current perspective is wrong and I will move Kobe back up later on but for now I can understand why someone might think that KG was the more valuable player.

People used to think it was crazy to have Wilt or Bird outside of your Top 3 or Top 6 and now I feel strongly that neither belong ranked that higher.

We have to keep our mindsets open and malleable if we are to advance our views.
Just sticking rigid to the expected norms won't do it.

[JeepCSC]

Garnett is a great player. But if you were to tell me in 2010 immediately after the Finals that the 4th best player of the first decade of the millennium just finished playing in that series, and that he also happened to have a strong case for top 10 player all-time, I'd just say nuts. It wouldn't have mattered if you were talking about Kobe or Kevin, I'd have said too high. Of course that would have been my initial, visceral reaction.

Part of that reaction would be me realizing that this list being created means we are a couple people short-changing Hakeem's non-prime years or magnifying Bird's injuries from Garnett being bottom-half of the top 10 all-time. In any random year from 2000-2010, you are likely finding Garnett in the bottom-half of the MVP votes. And while that is obviously a terrible argument for any number of reasons, it does make one wonder about perception vs reality. Could Garnett be the sleeper top 10 player no one saw coming even while they were witnessing the very best he had to offer live? Is that even possible?

Garnett's bread and butter is defense. He is extraordinarily good at it. He is one of a handful of best defensive bigs I have ever seen. And defense is impossibly hard to measure. We can see it, but we can't always quantify it. So some people have tried to do it better, to their credit. But while it may help us better capture some of Garnett's goodness, it is still just a piece of the puzzle, and not the answer key.

But these are things everyone knows. I'm mostly just talking this out for my own peace of mind. I'm of course open to new information, but I very much need to ponder said info, I need to know it's limitations and I need to know the problems that exist if I accept it while not having it for 80% of the rest of NBA history. Is the history of the NBA chock full of sleeper superstars who are really GOAT in disguise?

I guess I'm just taking all this in as a learning experience. While a part of me will definitely revolt against the idea that I missed an all-time top 7-10 player right before my eyes (ego is a tricky thing), I'll at least be open to the idea that it is possible. I now want to revisit some of those Timberwolves teams to try and see all the things I perhaps missed.

[Vinsanity_GOAT]

...
KG is a legend, but his teams got snuffed out in the first round year after year. I understand the desire to not hold team performance against a superior individual in this sort of ranking, but with KG it has gone a bit far. His teams were trounced, oftentimes in embarrassing fashion, in the first round for seven straight years. Other guys (like Wade in 2009) were able to at least push teams to seven games with godawful supporting casts, KG couldn't even manage that.
...

I don't usually post on the pc boards, mostly because i feel there's no definitive way to correctly compare/rank players in a team game. Too many intangibles, different circumstances, team influence etc. However, when i stumble upon something like this and see it actually gets and 1's i feel like i need to intervene with some common sense.

Here we go, it's pretty simple. The teams garnett faced in those seven first round exits were better (some by a large margin) than the 2009 hawks. Not to mention that wade was 27 and at his peak, while garnett was only just reaching his prime by the end of those 7 years.

Anyway, let's see:

- 1st year (96-97): swept by houston with 33-34 yo olajuwon/drexler/barkley. The rockets went on to beat the payton/kemp sonics in 7 and lost in 6 to the stockton/malone jazz, who ofcourse took mj/pippen's bulls to 6 in the finals.
- 2nd year (97-98): lost 2-3 to the 61 win sonics. This might be the worst team he faced but remember that garnett's only 22 at this point and his second best player is 21yo starbury.
- 3rd year (98-99): lost 1-3 to the spurs who went on to sweep shaq's lakers and the blazers, and eventually beat the knicks to win the championship.
- 4th year (99-00): lost 1-3 to the stacked blazers who took the eventual champions (shaq's lakers) to 7 games.
- 5th year (00-01): lost 1-3 to the spurs. This link should explain it http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2001.html just skip ahead to "playoffs advanced. There's only so much one player can do... If you want to compare wade's 2009 teammates, go ahead http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIA/2009.html.
- 6th year (01-02): lost 0-3 to the mavs. I'll give you this one, although to be fair this mavs team is obviously better than 08-09 hawks. But still, they should've at least won one game.
- 7th year (02-03): lost 2-4 to the lakers, who in turn lost in 6 to the eventual champion spurs.

- wade (08-09) - lost 3-4 to the hawks who got swept by the cavs in the next round.

I think it's pretty reasonable to think that a couple of those timberwolves teams would of (quickly) dispatched that hawks team that took out the heat in 7 games. Or does anyone believe that the 08-09 hawks were better than any of the wolves opponents? If so, which one?

Basically what i'm trying to convey here is that bumping kg down a couple of spots because of the 1st round exits makes zero sense, no matter how many there were. Context is always important.

[G35]

Just for the record im not a "Kobe fan". I actually like Kg more than him but when im honest with myself theres no way i can put kg over Kobe. Most sensible fans who actually watch basketball would'nt either.

Funny thing is I probably felt the same way for a good time.
However when I remove something like team success and just examine what they bring to a game my opinions starts to sway.

Offensively Garnett can get me 20-24ppg on decent efficiency with 4-5apg.
Kobe can get me 26-30ppg on good efficiency with 4-5apg.
They both struggle offensively to some degree against tougher competition.

Pretty clear edge to Bryant and he is clearly the better scorer & offensive anchor.

Then we have defense.
Garnett is a huge impact defender. Kobe is not even close here.

Rebounding also is another point in KG's favor.

Bringing up team success is hard in this comparison since KG was pretty much stuck with trash until his last elite season (08).

Maybe my current perspective is wrong and I will move Kobe back up later on but for now I can understand why someone might think that KG was the more valuable player.

People used to think it was crazy to have Wilt or Bird outside of your Top 3 or Top 6 and now I feel strongly that neither belong ranked that higher.

We have to keep our mindsets open and malleable if we are to advance our views.
Just sticking rigid to the expected norms won't do it.

There are a lot of things said about Garnett e.g. he can be a teams offensive anchor (not a chance), he was a point forward (not even in the same realm as others like Odom, Pippen, or Lebron), but this statement that he is a superhero on defense, having huge impact.

When I think of having huge impact on defense I'm thinking Russell, Dikembe, Robinson, Hakeem, Duncan, Kareem, Yao, Eaton, Ewing, Ben Wallace. All these players have anchored top 5 defenses WITHOUT great defensive players next to them or have an extended amount of team defensive success.

When I think of great impact, I'm thinking of clear dominance where you can put this player on an expansion team and they could make them top 5 in defense just through their rim protection and intimidation. When I think impact where a players defensive excellence changes the course of a playoff series i.e. Dikembe in 1994 vs the Supersonics. It's almost like being Deion Sanders like where my best defensive players will take your best offensive player away, he shuts them down. KG is nothing like that as a defender.

Look at how Dikembe shut down Shawn Kemp and the Sonics, if you look at 7:38 the Reign Man had a semi-fast break opportunity to go one on one vs Mutumbo and he drove the lane and passed the ball away for a turnover. No block shown, but that kills anything RAPM can show me. When you get into your opponents head, I will take that over the +6.0 that is being touted so heavily.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8-R3bBmhqU[/youtube]

KG is more SF than C which means he plays further away from the basket. It's his ability to guard perimeter players that makes people fall in love in with KG. But then I hear PG and SG defense doesn't mean much, just ask anyone about John Stockton, Walt Frazier, or Alvin Robertson's defensive impact and it's panned heavily. Yet, KG guards someone outside the lane and this board goes nuts about his versatility.

In alternate universe if Garnett had played on a great team like those Celtics his whole career and everyone would look at the Celtics great team defense and the question would be asked, "What if Kevin Garnett was drafted to the Minnesota Timberwolves...how much would he improve their defense?" Those posters from that alternate universe would be saying, "Top 5 no doubt, look at his RAPM, KG can improve any defense because of his versatility, BBIQ, and ability to make his teammates better."

Yet we see he didn't make ANY of his teammates better, just ask his supporters. Not one player got better playing KG. But a lot of players got better playing with Ewing, Robinson, Duncan, Kareem, Russell, Dikembe, and on and on. Isn't the job of the best players to make the marginal players better? Isn't that the mark of the truly great? Oh yeah, I forgot, if a player puts up great numbers by themselves screw their teammates, it's all about the superstar.

It would really be nice if there was some sort of consistency when rating players.......

[PaulieWal]

But then I hear PG and SG defense doesn't mean much

Unrelated to KG but it bugs me when people say that. Not sure where this theory came from but it doesn't make any sense. Sure, an elite defensive big will have a bigger defensive impact that an elite defensive wing but defense from your wings and PG absolutely matters. Just ask Houston that.

[SactoKingsFan]

Yet we see he didn't make ANY of his teammates better, just ask his supporters. Not one player got better playing KG.

34 year old Cassell had a career year playing with KG, Sczerbiak clearly benefited from playing with KG and Ricky Davis had the best season of his career in MIN. Did you expect KG to turn Anthony Peeler, Rasho, Marc Jackson, Troy Hudson (best season in MIN) and Fred Hoiberg into All-Star caliber players?

[uncleduck13]

anywhere from 16-20. easily

[ardee]

Really? This thread is full of insecure KG fans complaining about what's being said EVEN though their guy was already voted in.

I'm just amused at how inane some of the arguments were and putting them out there to show how out there they are.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

If it was such inane and obviously crazy logic...then why did so many people get convinced by it?

Because most of the voters on the project would give their left nut to make sure Kobe was voted in as low as possible.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[Baller2014]

I have Kobe in my top 15 players. I just don't have him as high as some others. There are voters who had him lower than I did when they submitted pre-lists for the top 100.

[PaulieWal]

Really? This thread is full of insecure KG fans complaining about what's being said EVEN though their guy was already voted in.

I'm just amused at how inane some of the arguments were and putting them out there to show how out there they are.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

If it was such inane and obviously crazy logic...then why did so many people get convinced by it?

Because most of the voters on the project would give their left nut to make sure Kobe was voted in as low as possible.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

That's not an honest or a fair characterization of the voters. Two of the biggest KG supporters in that project are Doc and fpliii (Lakers fans), who are also coincidentally two of the best posters here. I get that you are frustrated with KG and Kobe not getting voted in (I think he deserves to be around 10 or 11) but that's simply not true.

[Regulio]

Personally I think superstar quality offense is much harder to come by than quality defense.
You can achieve both with very good coaching and no superstars, but that is even more rare, especially on offense (that won't sacrifice your defense). This is one reason I value Kobe higher than KG.
Another thing, though I know that some don't think it matters, is crunch time ability to take over games. Does it reflect in box-score statistics ? Not really. Does it matter ? Of course and very much.

Also everyone acts like KG was an anchor on defense, when he wasn't. He was very useful, versatile, but protecting the rim wasn't his strength. He didn't have the "intimidation" factor, he wasn't a good shot blocker.
Also some people really overrate +/- stats. Especially the situation was comical with Stockton, when his RAPM data was released.

[kayess]

Really? This thread is full of insecure KG fans complaining about what's being said EVEN though their guy was already voted in.

I'm just amused at how inane some of the arguments were and putting them out there to show how out there they are.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

If it was such inane and obviously crazy logic...then why did so many people get convinced by it?

Because most of the voters on the project would give their left nut to make sure Kobe was voted in as low as possible.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

Can you name names? I felt that only GilmoreFan and RBS was doing this.

[kayess]

Let me try my hand at this:

The project lost credibility when he was voted in at #11; he missed the playoffs with horrific teammates, he didn't score enough (because basketball is about PEE PEE GEE and TEE ESS!) to be the number one option on a title team, I don't value defense so that doesn't count. We should ignore all the years he didn't win a title or put up great box-score stats because they don't add value to a player's career.

RAPM is a flawed stat, so we shouldn't use it with context. The only stats that are without flaw and perfectly represent player impact are PPG, ORTG, TS, and, to some extent, PER/WS.

Just kidding, it's actually "rings won/rings won as the man", and "record with HCA/SRS advantage".

This guy shouldn't even be top 100.

Sorry to use the term, but there's an immense amount of butthurt about this. I mean, I don't agree with it either - I find it very hard to fathom how someone could vote the guy into the top 10 myself - but to say it was all just the RAPM hype train was insane - people really were contributing some monster posts without the use of RAPM, but you had someone even consistently putting forth the same factually incorrect argument about the nature of the math behind the statistic (why is that stat any less valid than the box score, anyway?). There's a sense of "my eyes don't match what this stat is telling me", and there's a tendency to go with what we see because we have a preconceived notion of what great basketball impact looks like.

FTR, I personally think voting him in the top 10 seems like lunacy as well, as I have a hunch there might be some unseen error that overrates him to some degree, but that will get sorted out in time (if indeed it exists). For now, I don't agree with it, but I can't find anything to argue against it either, so although my heart says (this can't be right), my mind says this is close to the best argument one can make for Garnett, and it's difficult to argue against without refinement of the stat that seems like the ultimate validation of his ranking.

[Volcano]

While the KG led Celtics had only two good playoff runs. Actually even their 2008 championship was shaky at best and the offense fell off big time. Gasol didn't just have a good series vs KG, he busted KG's ass. It would have been better if KG had not played.

In G7 of the finals Gasol had 18 rebounds and KG had 3 rebounds...now I know you want to say KG was injured but he also shot 8-13 so he was not that hurt and he played 38 minutes. How big does KG come up in close out games...not very well.....

Gasol was the best player in both Laker's championships and was robbed of 2 Finals MVP's. That doesn't mean he's better than KG or Kobe though. His peak was short-lived. We saw Gasol's game regress and the Lakers immediately regress with him. For about 2 seasons, he was a top 3 big in the league..if not the best big man in the league.

Garnett is the one who scores less in volume. This is a fact. And does he compensate with effciency?
Garnett's best ts% is 58.9 and in the playoffs it's 56.9 with a 1st round exit. Seasons above KG for the other PFs:
Barkley: 8/9
Malone: 8/3 (two of them with more than 10 games in the playoffs)
Dirk: 5/8

So all the other PFs have reached much higher ts% than KG. Taking regular seasons samples (because all of them play a lot of games) they all have at least 5 seasons above KG's best. And they're scoring more volume.

Garnett is BY FAR the worse scorer among these 4 players.

Playmaking: I'd say Malone, KG, Barkley and Dirk haven't got big gaps between them as playmakers. You might give them a lot of different ranking but none are relevant for seeing who's the best player since the gaps are small.

PER says Barkley and Dirk are the best players of the bunch. PER is not a perfect stat. It also says Malone is usually a better RS performer than KG but he drops his production in the playoffs, making it similar to KG.
1. Barkley
2. Dirk
3. Malone
4. KG

Unless Kevin Garnett is god on D, he's not even better than Duncan, Malone, Barkley and Dirk. How can he be the 5th best PF I've seen playing and be 11 on an all time list? And you go as far as saying 7-10? Sorry but that's too high for Kevin Garnett.

Cs better than KG: Russell, KAJ, Shaq, Wilt, Hakeem
PFs: Malone, Barkley, Duncan, Dirk
SFs: LeBron, Bird
SGs: Jordan, Kobe Bryant
PGs: Magic Johnson (I'd say a few more more but it's debatable because of KG's impact on D).

So absolutely no way KG is #11.

I don't have a ranking for KG and I thought #11 was pretty high for him as well, but I wouldn't rank him as the #5 PF. You're forgetting to take in context, didn't list defensive stats and ignored passing.

When KG was still in Minny, it was pretty much the general thought that it was Duncan/KG as the #1 and 2 PF's of all time. Dirk was never in the conversation until he became overrated after his championship run.

Unfortunately, Minny's management completely screwed themselves over and was only able to build trash around KG. At the time, I thought that KG was getting worn down towards the end of his Minny tenure and that his defense dropped a bit. I don't know if stats support that, but it was my feeling at the time. I remember KG being one of the only players constantly facing triple teams in the post (another one being Shaq). So in the post season, I'd only expect it to get worse as he was the only real threat on his team.

The one time he gets starter-level material in Sprewell/Cassell, he makes the WCF where Cassell gets injured. The sad thing is that those were weren't even great and both were heading towards the downside of their career. Then a post-prime KG goes to Boston and immediately wins a championship. Sure, he had Ray/Pierce, but both also past their primes and neither were good defenders. If you compare to the Miami trio, they couldn't win the first time. Neither could the Lakers with the best FC in the league and best wing player in the league.

So basically every realistic chance KG had, he proved himself as much as any superstar..if not more.

As for KG's offense. I see KG as a tier 2 scorer and a play maker. Malone/Barkley/Dirk are more tier #1 pure scorers, but I'd want to use them to finish plays, while KG is someone I'd run plays through. He turned Szczerbiak and Cassell into all-stars. I can't see Wally being an all-star alongside the other 3..it would basically be like Dirk making JT an all-star.

Barkley's just an offensive beast all round, but he's the worst defender of the 4 and Dirk is just an average defender..sometimes soft. Stats like PER are basically a measure of boxscore stats that doesn't take defense into account (I believe). KG has the intangibles and defense that the other 3 don't have. Defense also requires more teamwork and a good system compared to offense where a player can just throw up shots or iso. The question is how much impact can the other 3 have in the right defensive setting compared to KG? Malone I can see being effective, but not as good as KG while Dirk/Barkley will always need a ton of defensive help.

As for a direct Dirk/KG comparison. It's funny how a championship can completely flip people's perspective despite the player not even being better than a previous finals run. Dirk essentially had one role..which was to shoot and score. Yeah, he did it at an extremely elite level, but that's why he's a perennial all-star in the first place. It was Kidd who ran the plays, Marion/Kidd/Tyson (DPOY) who brought the great defense. Scoring wise, Dirk didn't have the greatest offensive help, but they all stepped up in the PO's. Marion made tough buckets over LBJ, Barea was a pest off the bench, JT finally had a great PO run, Kidd was a 3 point specialist. In their last game, Dirk wasn't even playing well in the first half and Dallas was still winning. So, I wouldn't propel Dirk ahead just because he won with a "weak" cast. I see it as a combination of Miami/LBJ choking (Lebron was being passive) and Dallas's cast stepping it up..Dirk just did his thing like he always did.

Against the argument about PO success: Cuban only went into the luxury tax with the highest payrolls in the league next to the Knicks in order to win a championship. Yes, he overpaid mediocre talent, but those teams were at LEAST built to make the playoffs. So I told consider being a continuous "pretender" year after year as an argument over Minny's teams that were built to tank.

Overall, if we're building a contender, I think KG can anchor a top 5-10 offense and a top 1-5 defense while Dirk can anchor a top 1-5 offense and nothing on D. In order to be a championship team, you need either (A) a top 5 O+D (Spurs) or...(B) dominant O + top 10-ish D (Lakers) or...(C) dominant D + top 10ish O (Pistons). Some people say that offense is a lot more valuable, but that's not necessarily true. If you look at Dirk's Nash/Finley teams..they were missing defense and low post play. KG would have been the perfect fit over Dirk.

[Hornet Mania]

...
KG is a legend, but his teams got snuffed out in the first round year after year. I understand the desire to not hold team performance against a superior individual in this sort of ranking, but with KG it has gone a bit far. His teams were trounced, oftentimes in embarrassing fashion, in the first round for seven straight years. Other guys (like Wade in 2009) were able to at least push teams to seven games with godawful supporting casts, KG couldn't even manage that.
...

I don't usually post on the pc boards, mostly because i feel there's no definitive way to correctly compare/rank players in a team game. Too many intangibles, different circumstances, team influence etc. However, when i stumble upon something like this and see it actually gets and 1's i feel like i need to intervene with some common sense.

Here we go, it's pretty simple. The teams garnett faced in those seven first round exits were better (some by a large margin) than the 2009 hawks. Not to mention that wade was 27 and at his peak, while garnett was only just reaching his prime by the end of those 7 years.

Anyway, let's see:

- 1st year (96-97): swept by houston with 33-34 yo olajuwon/drexler/barkley. The rockets went on to beat the payton/kemp sonics in 7 and lost in 6 to the stockton/malone jazz, who ofcourse took mj/pippen's bulls to 6 in the finals.
- 2nd year (97-98): lost 2-3 to the 61 win sonics. This might be the worst team he faced but remember that garnett's only 22 at this point and his second best player is 21yo starbury.
- 3rd year (98-99): lost 1-3 to the spurs who went on to sweep shaq's lakers and the blazers, and eventually beat the knicks to win the championship.
- 4th year (99-00): lost 1-3 to the stacked blazers who took the eventual champions (shaq's lakers) to 7 games.
- 5th year (00-01): lost 1-3 to the spurs. This link should explain it http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2001.html just skip ahead to "playoffs advanced. There's only so much one player can do... If you want to compare wade's 2009 teammates, go ahead http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/MIA/2009.html.
- 6th year (01-02): lost 0-3 to the mavs. I'll give you this one, although to be fair this mavs team is obviously better than 08-09 hawks. But still, they should've at least won one game.
- 7th year (02-03): lost 2-4 to the lakers, who in turn lost in 6 to the eventual champion spurs.

- wade (08-09) - lost 3-4 to the hawks who got swept by the cavs in the next round.

I think it's pretty reasonable to think that a couple of those timberwolves teams would of (quickly) dispatched that hawks team that took out the heat in 7 games. Or does anyone believe that the 08-09 hawks were better than any of the wolves opponents? If so, which one?

Basically what i'm trying to convey here is that bumping kg down a couple of spots because of the 1st round exits makes zero sense, no matter how many there were. Context is always important.

Thanks for that breakdown, this is exactly the sort of analysis I was looking for. All of these losses still make me wary of attributing godly impact to KG, but I'm glad to see someone actually frame the post-season struggles from their perspective rather than dismiss them as so unimportant that they aren't even worth discussing.

[Melodabeast]

Gasol was the best player in both Laker's championships and was robbed of 2 Finals MVP's.

Pau wasn't even remotely close to Bryant.

Dude wasn't even a top 10 player while Bryant was easily top 2-3 both seasons.

Kobe's box-scorer numbers **** on Pau's. His +/- numbers are far superior. He's commanding far more defensive attention. He's scoring 10+ more PPG and also do far more creating while only getting assisted on about 15% of his shots while Pau is at 50%+. Please. Please explain how Pau was even close to being the best player on those teams.

Seriously, this is one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever seen.

[aal04]

Really really really bad time to give him a rating now.

Hes barely a benchwarmer now, and everyone here is all about the NOW.

[JeepCSC]

people really were contributing some monster posts without the use of RAPM, but you had someone even consistently putting forth the same factually incorrect argument about the nature of the math behind the statistic (why is that stat any less valid than the box score, anyway?).

You can make a great pro-argument for Garnett in the top 20 not using RAPM. But I think you need some game-changer to argue him for top 10, and a massive one for the top 5, when the Garnett train started out slowly but surely.

As for why RAPM is different than box scores, that seems a silly question. One is readily available to everyone and we've had decades to pour over the relative strengths and weaknesses of it.

[Winsome Gerbil]

#11?? Sigh.

This whole thing isn't going well.

Somewhere back there in the late teens with Admiral is about right.

[Laimbeer]

Sure as *%#& not 11th.