Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time?

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Kevin Garnett ranking

1-5
10
5%
6-10
31
17%
11-15
49
27%
16-20
39
21%
21+
54
30%
 
Total votes: 183

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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#341 » by Sark » Mon Aug 5, 2019 11:29 pm

iggymcfrack wrote:
homecourtloss wrote:
Hal14 wrote:
3) Let's not put too much stock in KG being the near unanimous MVP winner in 2004. This was an era where the NBA had some very questionable MVP winners. We all know Kobe should have won it in 2009 - not LeBron. It's very debatable whether Steve Nash deserved to win either of his MVPs in 2005 and 2006. Many people think Iverson didn't deserve the MVP in 2001..I could go on....



:lol: Absurd. “We all know”?


LOL. LeBron got 109 out of 121 first place votes that year and it really should have been unanimous. That was probably the most impressive season in NBA history. He had the highest WS/48 since Kareem, the highest PER since Wilt, finished 2nd in DPOY voting and led Mo Williams, Delonte West, 33 year old Big Z, and 34 year old Ben Wallace to 66 wins despite having the point differential of a 20-win team whenever Bron went to the bench.

Kobe had 2 first place votes and was nowhere near LeBron’s league. He had a worse record with much better teammates. He wasn’t top 5 in PER, WS, WS/48, BPM, or VORP. He finished 6th in RAPM and was closer to Nene in 32nd than he was to LeBron in first. I don’t think he even deserved first team all-NBA that year over Paul and Wade. It would have been the most absurd awards decision in the history of the league if he’d won MVP that season.



Looks like you misspelled "Jordan".
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#342 » by freethedevil » Tue Aug 6, 2019 5:32 pm

Sark wrote:
iggymcfrack wrote:
homecourtloss wrote:
:lol: Absurd. “We all know”?


LOL. LeBron got 109 out of 121 first place votes that year and it really should have been unanimous. That was probably the most impressive season in NBA history. He had the highest WS/48 since Kareem, the highest PER since Wilt, finished 2nd in DPOY voting and led Mo Williams, Delonte West, 33 year old Big Z, and 34 year old Ben Wallace to 66 wins despite having the point differential of a 20-win team whenever Bron went to the bench.

Kobe had 2 first place votes and was nowhere near LeBron’s league. He had a worse record with much better teammates. He wasn’t top 5 in PER, WS, WS/48, BPM, or VORP. He finished 6th in RAPM and was closer to Nene in 32nd than he was to LeBron in first. I don’t think he even deserved first team all-NBA that year over Paul and Wade. It would have been the most absurd awards decision in the history of the league if he’d won MVP that season.



Looks like you misspelled "Jordan".

The paragraph would be factually inaccurate if jordan was in lebron's place.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#343 » by Sark » Tue Aug 6, 2019 8:13 pm

freethedevil wrote:
Sark wrote:
iggymcfrack wrote:
LOL. LeBron got 109 out of 121 first place votes that year and it really should have been unanimous. That was probably the most impressive season in NBA history. He had the highest WS/48 since Kareem, the highest PER since Wilt, finished 2nd in DPOY voting and led Mo Williams, Delonte West, 33 year old Big Z, and 34 year old Ben Wallace to 66 wins despite having the point differential of a 20-win team whenever Bron went to the bench.

Kobe had 2 first place votes and was nowhere near LeBron’s league. He had a worse record with much better teammates. He wasn’t top 5 in PER, WS, WS/48, BPM, or VORP. He finished 6th in RAPM and was closer to Nene in 32nd than he was to LeBron in first. I don’t think he even deserved first team all-NBA that year over Paul and Wade. It would have been the most absurd awards decision in the history of the league if he’d won MVP that season.



Looks like you misspelled "Jordan".

The paragraph would be factually inaccurate if jordan was in lebron's place.



Looks like you didn't see the part that I bolded.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#344 » by freethedevil » Tue Aug 6, 2019 11:29 pm

Sark wrote:
freethedevil wrote:
Sark wrote:

Looks like you misspelled "Jordan".

The paragraph would be factually inaccurate if jordan was in lebron's place.



Looks like you didn't see the part that I bolded.

Ah fair, missed that, Though, 2009 bron does have the #1 per for any playoff run. Technically speakign that , was, the highest run since jordan(as well as anyone else in the league.)
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#345 » by liamliam1234 » Wed Aug 7, 2019 12:12 am

He has a lot more than just PER going for him. That was far and away the greatest second EDIT: third round exit in NBA history, and while I understand why some people will take Jordan’s 1991 or 1992 over it because he did it through the finals, on a per game basis Lebron’s 2009 is wholly unrivalled.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#346 » by freethedevil » Wed Aug 7, 2019 12:53 am

liamliam1234 wrote:He has a lot more than just PER going for him. That was far and away the conference final exit in NBA history, and while I understand why some people will take Jordan’s 1991 or 1992 over it because he did it through the finals, on a per game basis Lebron’s 2009 is wholly unrivalled.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#347 » by iggymcfrack » Wed Aug 7, 2019 12:53 am

liamliam1234 wrote:He has a lot more than just PER going for him. That was far and away the greatest second round exit in NBA history, and while I understand why some people will take Jordan’s 1991 or 1992 over it because he did it through the finals, on a per game basis Lebron’s 2009 is wholly unrivalled.


It was actually a 3rd round exit. Cavs swept through their first 8 playoff games before facing the Magic.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#348 » by liamliam1234 » Wed Aug 7, 2019 2:49 am

My memory was that it was Celtics/Magic, but evidently I mixed that up with the following year. And in retrospect, obviously the 66-win Cavaliers would not be matched with the Magic in the second round.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#349 » by LKN » Wed Aug 7, 2019 4:32 am

I don't do a ton of rankings... but i'd probably put Garnett somewhere in the 11-20 range. I come down somewhat in the middle of the stats/impact vs results debate. You definitely have have to take stats/impact and context into account... but at the same time results matter. Great basketball players have a huge impact on team success and far too many people turn "providing context" into "making excuses". Rings matter and winning matters. It's not everything, but pretending it doesn't matter at all is one of the silliest things people do around here.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#350 » by freethedevil » Wed Aug 7, 2019 7:30 am

LKN wrote:I don't do a ton of rankings... but i'd probably put Garnett somewhere in the 11-20 range. I come down somewhat in the middle of the stats/impact vs results debate. You definitely have have to take stats/impact and context into account... but at the same time results matter. Great basketball players have a huge impact on team success and far too many people turn "providing context" into "making excuses". Rings matter and winning matters. It's not everything, but pretending it doesn't matter at all is one of the silliest things people do around here.

:lol:

Impact quite literally is derived from winning so equating that with "pretending it doesn't matter" is one of the silliest things I've seen people do here.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#351 » by LKN » Wed Aug 7, 2019 10:53 am

freethedevil wrote:
LKN wrote:I don't do a ton of rankings... but i'd probably put Garnett somewhere in the 11-20 range. I come down somewhat in the middle of the stats/impact vs results debate. You definitely have have to take stats/impact and context into account... but at the same time results matter. Great basketball players have a huge impact on team success and far too many people turn "providing context" into "making excuses". Rings matter and winning matters. It's not everything, but pretending it doesn't matter at all is one of the silliest things people do around here.

:lol:

Impact quite literally is derived from winning so equating that with "pretending it doesn't matter" is one of the silliest things I've seen people do here.





That is not true. First of all - winning championships involve both on the court and off the court factors - so no statistic/formula is going to perfectly measure a player's impact on winning rings (although 538 did have that article on expected championships that was kind of interesting). Also, it's subtle, but point differential is not the exact same thing as winning games (although certainly impact stats are useful since there is good correlation) and impact stats are also not perfect. It's not possible to completely isolate the impact of one player from his teammates (and there are a few other issues - I could post a multitude of links explaining the issues with RPM, RAPM, PIPM, etc). I'm certainly not saying they are useless; I personally think they are quite useful and are some of the best data we have... however they are not definitive. They should serve as a guide to start discussions... not "Player X > Player Y because his RPM/PIPM/etc is better".
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#352 » by freethedevil » Wed Aug 7, 2019 5:32 pm

LKN wrote:
freethedevil wrote:
LKN wrote:I don't do a ton of rankings... but i'd probably put Garnett somewhere in the 11-20 range. I come down somewhat in the middle of the stats/impact vs results debate. You definitely have have to take stats/impact and context into account... but at the same time results matter. Great basketball players have a huge impact on team success and far too many people turn "providing context" into "making excuses". Rings matter and winning matters. It's not everything, but pretending it doesn't matter at all is one of the silliest things people do around here.

:lol:

Impact quite literally is derived from winning so equating that with "pretending it doesn't matter" is one of the silliest things I've seen people do here.





That is not true. First of all - winning championships involve both on the court and off the court factors - so no statistic/formula is going to perfectly measure a player's impact on winning rings (although 538 did have that article on expected championships that was kind of interesting). Also, it's subtle, but point differential is not the exact same thing as winning games (although certainly impact stats are useful since there is good correlation) and impact stats are also not perfect.

This is a red herring. No one said anything about "perfect" and perfect or not. What was said was that it is derived from winning which is accurate. Because it comes from gamescore which tells you
a. whose winning
b. by how much(which is more predictive thyan merely w-l)

If you were advocating for a perfect stat(and yes, winning, rings are all, by definition, stats), this would be relevant, but you're not. You're putting impact on one side and winning on another, when really, impact already has winning baked in.

hey should serve as a guide to start discussions... not "Player X > Player Y because his RPM/PIPM/etc is better".

Yes, and once you have the guide, you split small differences by eyeing in on specifics like skill set and scheme, not by broadening your measuring stick with rings and wins. Impact gets you close because it's more specific. To get closer you have to use more specific measures, not broader ones. When you're tying to measure something smaller than centimeter's, you don't use inches.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#353 » by Pg81 » Wed Aug 7, 2019 6:00 pm

freethedevil wrote:
LKN wrote:
freethedevil wrote: :lol:

Impact quite literally is derived from winning so equating that with "pretending it doesn't matter" is one of the silliest things I've seen people do here.





That is not true. First of all - winning championships involve both on the court and off the court factors - so no statistic/formula is going to perfectly measure a player's impact on winning rings (although 538 did have that article on expected championships that was kind of interesting). Also, it's subtle, but point differential is not the exact same thing as winning games (although certainly impact stats are useful since there is good correlation) and impact stats are also not perfect.

This is a red herring. No one said anything about "perfect" and perfect or not. What was said was that it is derived from winning which is accurate. Because it comes from gamescore which tells you
a. whose winning
b. by how much(which is more predictive thyan merely w-l)

If you were advocating for a perfect stat(and yes, winning, rings are all, by definition, stats), this would be relevant, but you're not. You're putting impact on one side and winning on another, when really, impact already has winning baked in.

hey should serve as a guide to start discussions... not "Player X > Player Y because his RPM/PIPM/etc is better".

Yes, and once you have the guide, you split small differences by eyeing in on specifics like skill set and scheme, not by broadening your measuring stick with rings and wins. Impact gets you close because it's more specific. To get closer you have to use more specific measures, not broader ones. When you're tying to measure something smaller than centimeter's, you don't use inches.


No, winning titles is a team effort. If MJ never had gotten Pippen, Grant/Rodman and Jackson he would have still been one of the greatest players of all times even if he had never won a title. Winning titles is at best the cherry on top.
If you're asking me who the Mavs best player is, I'd say Luka. A guy like Delon Wright probably rivals his impact though at this stage in his career. KP may as well if he gets his **** together.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#354 » by LKN » Wed Aug 7, 2019 7:23 pm

freethedevil wrote:
LKN wrote:
freethedevil wrote: :lol:

Impact quite literally is derived from winning so equating that with "pretending it doesn't matter" is one of the silliest things I've seen people do here.





That is not true. First of all - winning championships involve both on the court and off the court factors - so no statistic/formula is going to perfectly measure a player's impact on winning rings (although 538 did have that article on expected championships that was kind of interesting). Also, it's subtle, but point differential is not the exact same thing as winning games (although certainly impact stats are useful since there is good correlation) and impact stats are also not perfect.

This is a red herring. No one said anything about "perfect" and perfect or not. What was said was that it is derived from winning which is accurate. Because it comes from gamescore which tells you
a. whose winning
b. by how much(which is more predictive thyan merely w-l)

If you were advocating for a perfect stat(and yes, winning, rings are all, by definition, stats), this would be relevant, but you're not. You're putting impact on one side and winning on another, when really, impact already has winning baked in.

hey should serve as a guide to start discussions... not "Player X > Player Y because his RPM/PIPM/etc is better".

Yes, and once you have the guide, you split small differences by eyeing in on specifics like skill set and scheme, not by broadening your measuring stick with rings and wins. Impact gets you close because it's more specific. To get closer you have to use more specific measures, not broader ones. When you're tying to measure something smaller than centimeter's, you don't use inches.


It's derived from point differential - not from game or series outcomes. So no, impact stats for a player do no tell us whether his team won the game or the series.

I know that you know this and are being intentionally obtuse.

I simply don't agree with the bolded. I think wins and rings do matter. You can choose to ignore them if you'd like, but whether it's fair or not, life is results oriented and accomplishments matter. We have no other way to measure off the court intangibles and not everything that happens on the court can be measured (or measured accurately)

The thing is we largely agree that impact stats are very valuable and give us a lot of information. I do weigh them quite a bit and I'm not here to tell you that Kobe is better than Lebron because 5>3 or anything like that.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#355 » by LKN » Wed Aug 7, 2019 7:29 pm

Pg81 wrote:
freethedevil wrote:
LKN wrote:



That is not true. First of all - winning championships involve both on the court and off the court factors - so no statistic/formula is going to perfectly measure a player's impact on winning rings (although 538 did have that article on expected championships that was kind of interesting). Also, it's subtle, but point differential is not the exact same thing as winning games (although certainly impact stats are useful since there is good correlation) and impact stats are also not perfect.

This is a red herring. No one said anything about "perfect" and perfect or not. What was said was that it is derived from winning which is accurate. Because it comes from gamescore which tells you
a. whose winning
b. by how much(which is more predictive thyan merely w-l)

If you were advocating for a perfect stat(and yes, winning, rings are all, by definition, stats), this would be relevant, but you're not. You're putting impact on one side and winning on another, when really, impact already has winning baked in.

hey should serve as a guide to start discussions... not "Player X > Player Y because his RPM/PIPM/etc is better".

Yes, and once you have the guide, you split small differences by eyeing in on specifics like skill set and scheme, not by broadening your measuring stick with rings and wins. Impact gets you close because it's more specific. To get closer you have to use more specific measures, not broader ones. When you're tying to measure something smaller than centimeter's, you don't use inches.


No, winning titles is a team effort. If MJ never had gotten Pippen, Grant/Rodman and Jackson he would have still been one of the greatest players of all times even if he had never won a title. Winning titles is at best the cherry on top.


That's your opinion. I don't completely disagree (although I don't completely agree either), but in basketball more than most other team sports individual players can have a huge impact on winning. Larger wrote - life isn't fair and people are judged on results. What you do in the big moments matters and that's what people remember.

Almost completely discounting rings to me is just nuts. Maybe it's because I work in sales... but no one gives a crap how many product demos you give, how many leads you find, etc... all that matters is closing deals.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#356 » by freethedevil » Wed Aug 7, 2019 7:35 pm

LKN wrote:
I simply don't agree with the bolded. I think wins and rings do matter. You can choose to ignore them if you'd like, but whether it's fair or not, life is results oriented and accomplishments matter. We have no other way to measure off the court intangibles and not everything that happens on the court can be measured (or measured accurately)

Uh, how does winning, which is something that happens on the court, measure "off the court" things any better than impact which is also, on the court?

Why would you even be using "on the court" things to measure off the court things. For this to be remotely useful you have to first find proof of causation. Something which could be done by specifically looking at off the court information. And if you actually have the off the court information, why would use "winning" rather than looking at the players involved off the court and what they did on the court?


Example: If player x kicks player y in the balls and player y plays poorly, but player z goes supernova to win the series, would you assess off the court with

a. player y's dip in performance after being kicked in the balls, or b. player x's team winning for reasons unrelated to player y's play?
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#357 » by LKN » Wed Aug 7, 2019 7:52 pm

freethedevil wrote:
LKN wrote:
I simply don't agree with the bolded. I think wins and rings do matter. You can choose to ignore them if you'd like, but whether it's fair or not, life is results oriented and accomplishments matter. We have no other way to measure off the court intangibles and not everything that happens on the court can be measured (or measured accurately)

Uh, how does winning, which is something that happens on the court, measure "off the court" things any better than impact which is also, on the court?

Why would you even be using "on the court" things to measure off the court things. For this to be remotely useful you have to first find proof of causation. Something which could be done by specifically looking at off the court information. And if you actually have the off the court information, why would use "winning" rather than looking at the players involved off the court and what they did on the court?


Example: If player x kicks player y in the balls and player y plays poorly, but player z goes supernova to win the series, would you assess off the court with

a. player y's dip in performance after being kicked in the balls, or b. player x's team winning for reasons unrelated to player y's play?
p

My points is that intangibles exist. There are things we can't measure - and perhaps that's the term I should have used instead of 'off the court factors". If you don't agree that intangibles exist then this discussion is pointless.

In any case we actually don't disagree that much on how we value players - I think I just value winning/rings a bit more than you do.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#358 » by freethedevil » Wed Aug 7, 2019 8:08 pm

LKN wrote:
freethedevil wrote:
LKN wrote:
I simply don't agree with the bolded. I think wins and rings do matter. You can choose to ignore them if you'd like, but whether it's fair or not, life is results oriented and accomplishments matter. We have no other way to measure off the court intangibles and not everything that happens on the court can be measured (or measured accurately)

Uh, how does winning, which is something that happens on the court, measure "off the court" things any better than impact which is also, on the court?

Why would you even be using "on the court" things to measure off the court things. For this to be remotely useful you have to first find proof of causation. Something which could be done by specifically looking at off the court information. And if you actually have the off the court information, why would use "winning" rather than looking at the players involved off the court and what they did on the court?


Example: If player x kicks player y in the balls and player y plays poorly, but player z goes supernova to win the series, would you assess off the court with

a. player y's dip in performance after being kicked in the balls, or b. player x's team winning for reasons unrelated to player y's play?
p


In any case we actually don't disagree that much on how we value players - I think I just value winning/rings a bit more than you do.

Yeah, that's fine. At any rate, I like making different lists in my head by weighing things differently.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#359 » by Odinn21 » Thu Aug 8, 2019 3:35 am

liamliam1234 wrote:He has a lot more than just PER going for him. That was far and away the greatest second EDIT: third round exit in NBA history, and while I understand why some people will take Jordan’s 1991 or 1992 over it because he did it through the finals, on a per game basis Lebron’s 2009 is wholly unrivalled.

I think you might want to look further because I find your last sentence a tad bit wrong;

Odinn21 wrote:The following percentages mean 'how much a player meant to his team from statistical pov' (they were calculated from available stats);

38.41% - 39.65%, Wilt in 1964 playoffs, 12 games (2nd percentage is about minutes adjustment)
37.24% - 42.10%, Kareem in 1977 playoffs, 11 games
36.17% - 36.17%, Wilt in 1962 playoffs, 12 games
34.24% - 39.96%, LeBron in 2009 playoffs, 14 games
33.65% - 38.26%, Timmy in 2003 playoffs, 9 games
32.17% - 36.66%, Jordan in 1990 playoffs, 16 games
31.65% - 35.50%, Hakeem in 1993 playoffs, 12 games
(These are the ones I'm aware of, the list probably can be expanded.)

I don't understand why LeBron gets 'this' praised for 2009 playoffs performance, because winning conditions have huge impacts on the numbers. Your team simply can not be this dependent on you and can win. And it wasn't like LeBron lost to an all-time great team. They lost to a team that got defeated in 5 in the NBA Finals. He simply didn't face Russell's Celtics or the Bad Boys, and force them to play a game 7.

His numbers in 'a losing effort' is not something uncanny or unheard of.
The issue with per75 numbers;
36pts on 27 fga/9 fta in 36 mins, does this mean he'd keep up the efficiency to get 48pts on 36fga/12fta in 48 mins?
The answer; NO. He's human, not a linearly working machine.
Per75 is efficiency rate, not actual production.
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Re: Where do you rank Kevin Garnett all time? 

Post#360 » by liamliam1234 » Thu Aug 8, 2019 4:59 am

Wilt and Jordan lost in seven games in the conference finals against the best team on the league (and Kareem was similar, without the series being as close), and Duncan won his championship. Obviously the team can win, but it is just difficult if the rest of the team is that weak... which is the dumbest possible fault on Lebron considering how outside of “percentage of stat totals” he is unparalleled in how he carried his team. Credit to Duncan, but otherwise that tells me basically nothing. What, should Lebron have made the Magic go in a cold streak?

The funny thing is, those were all some of the best individual seasons ever.

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