NBAWOWY Stats: 2008~11 Lakers (Kobe, Gasol + Odom)

[LA Bird]

NBAWOWY stats for the Kobe/Gasol Lakers. Bonus stats for 09 Lakers in the end with Odom.

How to read the diagrams
Using original example with Shaq and Kobe.

Spoiler:

Venn diagram of the Lakers' performance in possessions with different combinations of Shaq and Kobe.



For example, the 2001 Lakers:
• Played 5169 possessions with both Shaq and Kobe and were a +11.4 per 100 in those possessions.
• Played 1700 possessions with Shaq, without Kobe and were a +3.7 per 100 in those possessions.
• Played 1516 possessions with Kobe, without Shaq and were a -0.3 per 100 in those possessions.

[Colbinii]

No surprise for me here. Kobe is great at playing with talent, or talent is great at working with Kobe.

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[Senior]

Great stuff man. I'm honestly surprised that Pau alone wasn't better. Even the 08-11 split of 3886/+2.5 seems inflated given his +8.8 in 2011 (felt his peak was either 2010/pre-playoffs 2011) but it's telling that those 10/11 Lakers were quite a bit worse than 08/09. They rose and fell with Kobe.

Fun stat bonus: Pau's BPM/WS/VORP/PER/whatever are super close to or beat Kobe's...but his WOWY/RAPM/other impact stats aren't. Can we please stop pretending that Kobe supporters are just blinded by homerism/emotions when they say box-scores don't capture everything?

[andrewww]

No surprise for me here. Kobe is great at playing with talent, or talent is great at working with Kobe.

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This in and of itself is the very definition of impact but this forum as a whole thinks hes overrated. In terms of career value there definitely isnt 10 players with more.

[mischievous]

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

[colts18]

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

He was in the playoffs. 19-11-3, 56 FG%, 23 PER, 6.4 BPM, all while playing elite defense (shut down KG and Howard)

[Colbinii]

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

Most people claim such thing only mention gasol was on his level in the postseason, not regular season.

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[Colbinii]

No surprise for me here. Kobe is great at playing with talent, or talent is great at working with Kobe.

Sent from my SM-G920P using RealGM mobile app

This in and of itself is the very definition of impact but this forum as a whole thinks hes overrated. In terms of career value there definitely isnt 10 players with more.

Again, depends on how people view elite defensive anchors who also garner alltime offensive games. I see no problem with Kobe anywhere from 8-15 as long as consistency is being used in evaluating players. I think there are a handful of players that Kobe doesn't "touch", but outside of those select few he has a case over anyone.

I have a feeling he is going to be underrated with the emergence of Westbrook Harden over the next few years.

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[Bad Gatorade]

...

Your current series of posts has to be my favourite on the board right now. You've assured yourself of a guaranteed And1 on each of these (unless I'm having one of my week long absences, and fail to notice your post).

Great stuff man. I'm honestly surprised that Pau alone wasn't better. Even the 08-11 split of 3886/+2.5 seems inflated given his +8.8 in 2011 (felt his peak was either 2010/2011) but it's telling that those 10/11 Lakers were quite a bit worse than 08/09. They rose and fell with Kobe.

Fun stat bonus: Pau's BPM/WS/VORP/PER/whatever are super close to or beat Kobe's...but his WOWY/RAPM/other impact stats aren't. Can we please stop pretending that Kobe supporters are just blinded by homerism/emotions when they say box-scores don't capture everything?

I wonder if some of Gasol's woes are due to spending more time with bench lineups. Taking a cursory look at the top lineups from Basketball-Reference, I find the following for 2008-09 -

Most commonly used lineups with Kobe and without Gasol
T. Ariza | K. Bryant | A. Bynum | J. Farmar | L. Odom LAL 46:06:00
T. Ariza | K. Bryant | A. Bynum | D. Fisher | L. Odom LAL 44:59:00
T. Ariza | K. Bryant | A. Bynum | L. Odom | S. Vujacic LAL 42:07:00

Kobe's top 7 most "used" lineups all contain Gasol. The above 3 lineups ranked 8-10th in 2008-09, and even without Gasol, it seems like Kobe played with non-bench heavy lineups. All 3 lineups were positive (+26.3, +2.2, +34.4). Kobe obviously deserves massive credit for helping enable Bynum extremely well, but those are hardly bad lineups. Kobe played very few minutes with "scrub" lineups.

Most commonly used lineups with Gasol and without Kobe
T. Ariza | J. Farmar | P. Gasol | L. Odom | S. Vujacic LAL 143:53:00
T. Ariza | J. Farmar | P. Gasol | J. Powell | S. Vujacic LAL 96:53:00
J. Farmar | P. Gasol | J. Powell | S. Vujacic | L. Walton LAL 87:35:00

These 3 lineups ranked 5th, 9th and 10th most frequent for Gasol, and were +5.7, -17.1 and -7.2 respectively. Those are clearly more bench orientated lineups (2 of the 3 didn't even have Odom) and this likely impacted his raw +- numbers quite a bit. A much larger proportion of Pau's lineups without Kobe were alongside scrubs than they were for Kobe.

Plus, I'd also hazard a guess that Kobe's role was more important than Gasol's. That Lakers team had an impressive frontline, and having Bynum replacing Gasol off the bench was probably a better option than replacing Kobe with Saša Vujačić. If you swap Bynum with a big of Saša's quality, and Saša with a big of Bynum's quality, and the results probably look even closer. And this highlights one of the problems with the +- family of statistics - the quality of reserves can manipulate the results to an extent, so using them as a strict measure of player quality comes with its caveats.

That being said, although the gap between Kobe/Pau is probably more pronounced in this data than it should be, I wholly agree that the box score stats are misleading, and Kobe was clearly a better player than Pau.

There are quite a few things that most box score stats don't capture that undermine his offensive value as a player -

Kobe's ability to score from anywhere - I don't think it's too controversial to acknowledge that Kobe's offensive arsenal was immense. He was an excellent shot creator and at this point of his career, was extremely resilient against any offence. His combination of individual shot creation and shot making ability had multiple effects. His offensive gravity made things easier for the other players on the court, and his ability to make ridiculous shots is naturally effective against better defences (that are more likely to force players into "tough" shots) was immense. Unlike a guy like, say, Dwight Howard (who relied on others to create, and interior shots are a limited commodity) Kobe was able to scale his scoring up quite a bit whilst maintaining above-average league efficiency (his career clutch numbers can attest to this).

Most box score stats don't fully acknowledge his shot creation (USG% can be used as a proxy, but it's far from resolute), nor do they acknowledge the completeness of his offensive game. In particular, it allows Kobe to be an excellent scorer no matter who he is paired with (and it's partially why he's so good at enabling his big men).

Kobe's passing ability - almost any catch-all box score stat factors in both assists and turnovers as an attempt to model passing ability, but it's also worth mentioning that Kobe is one of the better SGs of all time at passing to the interior. Passing to the interior has a higher risk/reward than other types of passing - Willard's modelling showcased that passes to dunks/layups are worth more (a player with a tendency to pass successfully to the interior is providing a higher percentage shot), and my own work has shown that passing turnovers are primarily linked to interior passes. Most box score stats look at raw assist and turnover totals, and this is likely to underrate players that are terrific at providing high percentage shots (e.g. Steve Nash) and overrate players that accrue gaudy assist totals, but mainly assist jump shots (e.g. Stephon Marbury). Tying in with the turnover theme, Kobe is also shown (through +- analysis) to be one of the best players ever at reducing turnovers through his own ball handling and dominance, so even though his TOV numbers aren't bad at all, they're still probably better than the pure box score showcases.

[Senior]

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

Most people claim such thing only mention gasol was on his level in the postseason, not regular season.

This argument...doesn't even make sense. It's not as if the Lakers had to drastically change their gameplans for those years and it's pretty clear that Kobe's RS impact surpasses Pau's.

If these posters really believed that Pau's playoffs was on par with Kobe's, then something major had to change from the RS to the playoffs to warrant that change because Kobe's RS impact was clearly superior to Pau's by any impact metrics. In all my time discussing Kobe/Pau on these teams, I have never seen the posters making the claim that Pau was near-equal to Kobe separate RS and playoffs.

There's nothing from the 08-10 Lakers that suggested Pau's impact eclipsed Kobe's, RS or not.

I wonder if some of Gasol's woes are due to spending more time with bench lineups. Taking a cursory look at the top lineups from Basketball-Reference, I find the following for 2008-09 -
Most commonly used lineups with Kobe and without Gasol[/u]
T. Ariza | K. Bryant | A. Bynum | J. Farmar | L. Odom LAL 46:06:00
T. Ariza | K. Bryant | A. Bynum | D. Fisher | L. Odom LAL 44:59:00
T. Ariza | K. Bryant | A. Bynum | L. Odom | S. Vujacic LAL 42:07:00

Kobe's top 7 most "used" lineups all contain Gasol. The above 3 lineups ranked 8-10th in 2008-09, and even without Gasol, it seems like Kobe played with non-bench heavy lineups. All 3 lineups were positive (+26.3, +2.2, +34.4). Kobe obviously deserves massive credit for helping enable Bynum extremely well, but those are hardly bad lineups. Kobe played very few minutes with "scrub" lineups.

Most commonly used lineups with Gasol and without Kobe
T. Ariza | J. Farmar | P. Gasol | L. Odom | S. Vujacic LAL 143:53:00
T. Ariza | J. Farmar | P. Gasol | J. Powell | S. Vujacic LAL 96:53:00
J. Farmar | P. Gasol | J. Powell | S. Vujacic | L. Walton LAL 87:35:00

These 3 lineups ranked 5th, 9th and 10th most frequent for Gasol, and were +5.7, -17.1 and -7.2 respectively. Those are clearly more bench orientated lineups (2 of the 3 didn't even have Odom) and this likely impacted his raw +- numbers quite a bit. A much larger proportion of Pau's lineups without Kobe were alongside scrubs than they were for Kobe.

Plus, I'd also hazard a guess that Kobe's role was more important than Gasol's. That Lakers team had an impressive frontline, and having Bynum replacing Gasol off the bench was probably a better option than replacing Kobe with Saša Vujačić. If you swap Bynum with a big of Saša's quality, and Saša with a big of Bynum's quality, and the results probably look even closer. And this highlights one of the problems with the +- family of statistics - the quality of reserves can manipulate the results to an extent, so using them as a strict measure of player quality comes with its caveats.

That being said, although the gap between Kobe/Pau is probably more pronounced in this data than it should be, I wholly agree that the box score stats are misleading, and Kobe was clearly a better player than Pau.

You are right that Kobe was the primary perimeter threat on those teams. The LA guards apart from Kobe were the weakness of those teams whereas their frontline of Pau/Odom/Bynum was the strength. It just goes to show how much those teams relied on Kobe because their perimeter playmaking was mediocre outside of him. Pau is the best out of the three but considering Kobe produced well with all three of Odom/Bynum/Pau alone, I don't feel that his impact is underrated, although the "Pau alone" section seemed wrong considering the kind of player he was in 2010/2011. I guess what I'm trying to say is - the stuff Pau/Odom/Bynum gave LA was far more replaceable than what Kobe was doing for them. Those teams had scrubs backing up Kobe because they decided to put their resources in their frontline and they felt they could rely on Kobe to play. They were right to do so.

But yeah, even though the team was well constructed around Kobe/Pau/Odom, Pau took the hit in his stand-alone split.

There are quite a few things that most box score stats don't capture that undermine his offensive value as a player -

Kobe's ability to score from anywhere - I don't think it's too controversial to acknowledge that Kobe's offensive arsenal was immense. He was an excellent shot creator and at this point of his career, was extremely resilient against any offence. His combination of individual shot creation and shot making ability had multiple effects. His offensive gravity made things easier for the other players on the court, and his ability to make ridiculous shots is naturally effective against better defences (that are more likely to force players into "tough" shots) was immense. Unlike a guy like, say, Dwight Howard (who relied on others to create, and interior shots are a limited commodity) Kobe was able to scale his scoring up quite a bit whilst maintaining above-average league efficiency (his career clutch numbers can attest to this).

Most box score stats don't fully acknowledge his shot creation (USG% can be used as a proxy, but it's far from resolute), nor do they acknowledge the completeness of his offensive game. In particular, it allows Kobe to be an excellent scorer no matter who he is paired with (and it's partially why he's so good at enabling his big men).

Yes, this ability/confidence to score from a variety of areas is crucial because when high-quality defenses start gameplanning for a player, they're going to take away the easiest and most comfortable spots. The players showing off world-class efficiency (like >61-62% TS) don't usually have this ability or they have the luxury of passing up shots they would be forced to take on less talented teams. Or they're relied on more as finishers instead of initiators. Efficiency is overrated. Just play around with a TS% calculator and see how much one missed shot or a few FTs affects it.

Kobe's passing ability - almost any catch-all box score stat factors in both assists and turnovers as an attempt to model passing ability, but it's also worth mentioning that Kobe is one of the better SGs of all time at passing to the interior. Passing to the interior has a higher risk/reward than other types of passing - Willard's modelling showcased that passes to dunks/layups are worth more (a player with a tendency to pass successfully to the interior is providing a higher percentage shot), and my own work has shown that passing turnovers are primarily linked to interior passes. Most box score stats look at raw assist and turnover totals, and this is likely to underrate players that are terrific at providing high percentage shots (e.g. Steve Nash) and overrate players that accrue gaudy assist totals, but mainly assist jump shots (e.g. Stephon Marbury). Tying in with the turnover theme, Kobe is also shown (through +- analysis) to be one of the best players ever at reducing turnovers through his own ball handling and dominance, so even though his TOV numbers aren't bad at all, they're still probably better than the pure box score showcases.

Also think assists are overrated in the sense they tend to overstate the differences in playmaking. Assists are a function of the team/system around a player. I'd go even farther and say that a three point shooter should be receiving more credit than we think because those shots are way harder to make than a layup/dunk. Think of it like this - open threes are good but they're still a shot you can expect to make 45% of the time at best - compare that to a layup/dunk that most quality finishers can make at >70%. Is it really more valuable to create an open three? Shouldn't more credit go to the guy creating the easier shot for his teammate since the three-point shooter is doing the more difficult portion of the interaction?

[mischievous]

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

Most people claim such thing only mention gasol was on his level in the postseason, not regular season.

This argument...doesn't even make sense. It's not as if the Lakers had to drastically change their gameplans for those years and it's pretty clear that Kobe's RS impact surpasses Pau's.

If these posters really believed that Pau's playoffs was on par with Kobe's, then something major had to change from the RS to the playoffs to warrant that change because Kobe's RS impact was clearly superior to Pau's by any impact metrics. In all my time discussing Kobe/Pau on these teams, I have never seen the posters making the claim that Pau was near-equal to Kobe separate RS and playoffs.

There's nothing from the 08-10 Lakers that suggested Pau's impact eclipsed Kobe's, RS or not.

Pretty much this. I'd challenge the claim that Pau was some elite defender too, a good one but nowhere near truly elite. If people understood anything about the lakers they'd see how much more crucial Kobe was to their offense, and Pau's defense isn't closing that gap.

[lorak]

Kobe's numbers look better than Gasol's, because KB played more with Odom and Lamar was the real +/- star of these Lakers teams.

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

Most people claim such thing only mention gasol was on his level in the postseason, not regular season.

This argument...doesn't even make sense. It's not as if the Lakers had to drastically change their gameplans for those years and it's pretty clear that Kobe's RS impact surpasses Pau's.

If these posters really believed that Pau's playoffs was on par with Kobe's, then something major had to change from the RS to the playoffs to warrant that change.

So anytime player X plays better/drop offs in playoffs, then there had to be some drastic change outside of this player?

[mischievous]

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

He was in the playoffs. 19-11-3, 56 FG%, 23 PER, 6.4 BPM, all while playing elite defense (shut down KG and Howard)

Don't talk to me about shutting down a hobbled 34 year old Kg that was still getting right from surgery.

[E-Balla]

Lamar GOATdom carried the Lakers in 09. This confirms it.

[Colbinii]

Should dispel any nonsense about Gasol being equally valuable in 09 and 2010. Yes some anti Kobe guys have said that.

He was in the playoffs. 19-11-3, 56 FG%, 23 PER, 6.4 BPM, all while playing elite defense (shut down KG and Howard)

Don't talk to me about shutting down a hobbled 34 year old Kg that was still getting right from surgery.

Not only this, but KG improved quite a bit from the Conference Finals against Dwight to the Finals against Pau.

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[Senior]

Kobe's numbers look better than Gasol's, because KB played more with Odom and Lamar was the real +/- star of these Lakers teams.

Most people claim such thing only mention gasol was on his level in the postseason, not regular season.

This argument...doesn't even make sense. It's not as if the Lakers had to drastically change their gameplans for those years and it's pretty clear that Kobe's RS impact surpasses Pau's.

If these posters really believed that Pau's playoffs was on par with Kobe's, then something major had to change from the RS to the playoffs to warrant that change.

So anytime player X plays better/drop offs in playoffs, then there had to be some drastic change outside of this player?

Look at the difference in impact stats between Pau and Kobe in their title years. They're huge. I can accept that LA may have wanted to prioritize different players (for example they looked for Pau more against the Jazz because their interior D sucked) series to series but over three years of playoffs? Only 08 Boston stopped them with any kind of regularity, so I have no reason to assume that their RS impact changed drastically because there was no need to overhaul their offensive strategies. Obviously the box-scores didn't represent the difference between Kobe/Pau in the RS, I have no reason to assume that they did in the playoffs either.

Would probably call Odom an X-Factor - the stuff he was doing for those teams could only be realized in that 3rd person role because he wasn't actually able to shoulder 2nd option-level offensive burdens. Those teams without Pau would be a slightly better 06/07 Lakers. Odom's +/- comes from the fact that his unique talents (overall versatility, playmaking, etc) can be realized through +/- on this kind of construction. Wouldn't happen on a worse team.

It's kind of like Manu - Manu is a superstar with +/-, he has unusual offensive skills with elite playmaking/shooting/driving/etc and his defense was usually pretty solid - but force him to play 38 minutes a game and I don't think he can hit the same level of +/- impact because he just wasn't the kind of player to carry teams game to game. On a worse team, he'd still be the same guy and he'd still have all his talents/skills, but his +/- wouldn't be as good.

[lorak]

Look at the difference in impact stats between Pau and Kobe in their title years. They're huge.

Well, Kobe has advantage in 2009 & 2010 but in 2008 and 2011 Gasol looks superior (RAPM). Anyway, it doesn't change the point, that sometimes players in the playoffs play better/worse than RS not because some drastic changes happened, but because of matchups or simply they elevate their game/drop off under pressure. From my recollection Gasol was MVP of 2009 finals, mostly because of his defense. Not sure about WC PO, but it's possible in postseason he played better than Bryant.

[andrewww]

No surprise for me here. Kobe is great at playing with talent, or talent is great at working with Kobe.

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This in and of itself is the very definition of impact but this forum as a whole thinks hes overrated. In terms of career value there definitely isnt 10 players with more.

Again, depends on how people view elite defensive anchors who also garner alltime offensive games. I see no problem with Kobe anywhere from 8-15 as long as consistency is being used in evaluating players. I think there are a handful of players that Kobe doesn't "touch", but outside of those select few he has a case over anyone.

I have a feeling he is going to be underrated with the emergence of Westbrook Harden over the next few years.

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The only select few IMO are MJ/Kareem.

Every other player (Russ/Wilt/Dream/Shaq/Duncan/Lebron/Magic/Bird) lacked either post season production/offensive game/longevity/work ethic/benefited from a great system or coach/played in a weak conference/had multiple closers in Kyrie/Ray Ray or Wade, etc.

Offensive players are generally more impactful as well.

Also for those discusisng Pau, where was he in Boston from games 3-5 of the 2010 Finals? He layed a goose egg during those games that saw a 1-1 series tie turn into a 3-2 Celtics lead. There was legitimate discussion that Kobe would be Finals MVP win OR lose in 2010.

Funny how that gets left out in revisionist theories here?

[Senior]

Well, Kobe has advantage in 2009 & 2010 but in 2008 and 2011 Gasol looks superior (RAPM). Anyway, it doesn't change the point, that sometimes players in the playoffs play better/worse than RS not because some drastic changes happened, but because of matchups or simply they elevate their game/drop off under pressure. From my recollection Gasol was MVP of 2009 finals, mostly because of his defense. Not sure about WC PO, but it's possible in postseason he played better than Bryant.

What RAPM are you looking at?

I have 08 Kobe RAPM at 5.7 O + 0.5 D = 6.1 and 08 Pau at 2.3 O + 1 D = 3.3, for 11 Kobe I have 3.6 O - 0.9 D = 2.7 and 11 Pau at 2.2 O + 0.8 D = 3. For the 08-11 split I have 4.7 O + 0.1 D = 4.8 for Kobe and 2.9 O + 1.5 D = 4.4 for Pau. Apart from Kobe's 2011 defense bringing him below Pau no RAPM has him under Pau - and no iteration of ORAPM has him under. Same story with this WOWY data or on/off. Any impact stat I can think of has Kobe far ahead at least on offense which is the main argument at hand.

And yeah, playoff matchups can affect how a player plays, but considering there was no meaningful difference between Kobe/Pau's box-scores (and box-score derived stats) from RS to playoffs, that only 08 Boston beat them in a playoff series in three years, and that their offenses were resilient in their playoff runs, I have no reason to believe that Pau's impact numbers would've approached Kobe's. The Lakers offense didn't need to make major changes because they were already winning playoff series with the same things they were doing in the RS, which is where the major separation in impact numbers comes from.

I don't disagree that Pau played well in the 09 Finals vs Orlando, but Kobe's help defense was tremendous on Dwight that series as well, and LA's offense suffered only a minor hit of -2 ORTG compared to Orlando's -6.4 defense. As Kobe was the driver of that offense a lot of credit has to go to him, despite his efficiency taking a decent hit. The Magic (well, really Dwight/Marcin Gortat) did a decent job preventing Pau's FGA (similar FGA to RS/WC playoffs despite playing a few more mins in the Finals), so LA's perimeter players soaked up the USG%. Kobe took a decent amount of shots that would've normally gone to the bigs but so did Ariza/Fisher.

[colts18]

If you look at 08-11 RAPM:

Odom (13th): 4.9 RAPM
Kobe (15th): 4.8 RAPM
Gasol (17th): 4.4 RAPM

All of them really close.