Wilt Chamberlain vs Kevin Garnett: 5 tool players, versatility & stats vs impact (Link to my blog:
https://hoopslab.rotowire.com/post/163664532841/wilt-chamberlain-vs-kevin-garnett-5-tool-players )
I could be mistaken, but before the RealGM Top 100 Project 2017 I really don’t remember doing this particular comp before. Which is interesting, because it’s one with a lot of obvious parallels. Wilt Chamberlain and Kevin Garnett are both among the (if not THE) most “five tool” players in NBA history. Each could do almost everything that could be done on a basketball court, to at least some degree of facility. Both are known, on at least some level, as boxscore phenoms that weren’t winners in the way that their most common era rival was considered, and suffer from that comparison. Wilt was the first NBA player to put together a four-year streak of averaging 20 points/10 rebounds/5 assists, before Larry Bird did it for 5 years in a row in the 80s and then eventually KG did it for 6 years in the 2ks. Both went on to win championships on dominant teams, while playing a style of play that was different from what they were best known for in their primes. Heck, Garnett once played Wilt in a movie. So, for the next little while I’ll meander through a comp of the two of them and see what shakes out.
The style makes the fightAs alluded to above, both Wilt and KG were overflowing with things that they could do on the court, and throughout their careers they played in different ways.
Wilt was the giant of his generation, most often physically compared to Shaq because of the physical dominance they displayed over their peers. Unlike Shaq, though, Wilt didn’t depend as much on his power and explosiveness to score (some, in fact, decry that and believe he’d have been more effective if he did). But, Wilt developed more of a finesse game than Shaq, utilizing finger rolls instead of dunks, and wanting to show that he could operate from out-top as well instead of just living in the paint. Wilt seemed as though, for the most part, he could pick an area of the game and decide to pile up statistics at unheard of rates. He spent much of his early career scoring at a volume that was absurd, and doing so with great field goal percentage. He pulled down rebounds, consistently, at a level that only one player in his generation could come close to matching. He played more minutes in a season than anyone, ever, in a record that will never be approached. In one season it’s said that he decided to lead the league in assists, and he did. He decided at some point to start maximizing his field goal percentage, and he set records there, as well.
Wilt was bigger than life, and his individual statistical accomplishments reflected that as well as he could seemingly choose what record to break and break it. But, a criticism of his is that he often seemed to evaluate the quality of his play based upon those individual statistical (or other) accomplishments, as opposed to how much he could help his team to win games. That twice in his career, Wilt had a coach that was able to sell him on the concepts of focusing more on defense and taking far fewer shots on offense, and in both instances his ability to help his team win went through the roof. But, despite those results, the lessons didn’t take and he continued to focus on individual marks to the detriment of team success.
It should be noted, of course, that many don’t agree with parts/all of that criticism. They tend to believe that Wilt was always dominant, and that the reason he didn’t win more was because his teammates weren’t good enough. Based on my current understanding, I tend to agree more with the critics. But, just like 70sFan did with his analysis of Wilt’s playoff team defenses (in 2017), if someone can make convincing arguments that Wilt’s play did lend itself to consistent max impact, I’ll certainly listen.
Garnett was a different player, in a different era. It was a much bigger league, with a much larger pool of global talent, more sophisticated schemes on offense and defense, and many different rules/implementations. Garnett’s versatility, compared to Wilt’s, was more on the level of skillset than feature of the game. For example, though Wilt wasn’t a good shooter, he was still able to dominate the scoring aspect of the game like no one ever had. Garnett, on the other hand, could score at a high level in just about any way that someone can score. He’s known for having an excellent mid-range-to-deep jump shot, unheard of and unparalleled for a 7-footer outside of Dirk Nowitzki. But what isn’t as obvious is that Garnett actually had the skillset to be a dominant back-to-the-basket scorer from the post. He was absurdly long, he had a variety of moves and countermoves, with facility to spin over either shoulder and finish. In one of the last RealGM projects, someone pointed out that in the first four years of Synergy (2005 - 2008), Garnett scored more points per possession from post-ups than Duncan did. Garnett could handle the ball and had court vision much more commensurate with a guard than a big man, and he is in the argument for best passing big man in history. Garnett can (and has) played almost every position on offense for extended stretches, and he can (and has) guarded almost every position on defense for extended stretches.
Garnett could, then, do more things on the basketball court than most, and at a higher level than many. However, one of his criticisms was that he was TOO versatile…that he did everything well, but that he wasn’t dominant as a scorer the way many felt he should (and could) be. Though he did lead the NBA in points scored one season, in which he tied for second in points/game, many thought that he could and should focus on scoring (and specifically scoring in the post) as opposed to passing so much and “settling” for jumpers. The phrase “unselfish to a fault” has been used often to describe Garnett, from people all throughout the basketball world. Some say that this lack of scoring is why the Timberwolves didn’t have a lot of playoff success, and many use this as reasoning for why Garnett should be further down the rankings list, behind some of the more dominant scorers in history.
It should be noted, of course, that many don’t agree with parts/all of that criticism. They tend to believe that Garnett was always dominant, and the reason he didn’t win more was because his teammates weren’t good enough. Based on my current understanding, I don’t agree with the critics. I tend to believe that Garnett’s style of play, while unorthodox, allowed him to be a pioneer in new ways to maximize impact that weren’t the norm before him. And of course, I’ve been debating this particular topic for years, and as yet no one has convinced me that the evidence supporting his dominance isn’t valid…but I still love to engage, and at the end of a debate hopefully we’ve both learned something.
How do their results compare?At his peak, Garnett was at the top of fantasy drafts every year because of his box score stat dominance. However, if fantasy basketball would have existed in Wilt’s day, he’d have been comp in points-based leagues. Just, no one could compare to his ridiculous volume. If boxscore volume stats are your thing, Wilt is the clear winner here (as he would be versus pretty much everyone).
However, if Wilt is the boxscore King, Garnett has shown himself to be the posterchild for +/- stats. In the 20+ years of the stats, the Garnett’s only peer in those measures is LeBron, with Shaq and Duncan just behind. They represent a different way to evaluate the game than the boxscores, one that is based more on impact. But, the boxscore stats have the advantage of accuracy (for the feature being measured) over the impact stats, which can be noisy and harder to get significantly large datasets out of. However, over his 21 year career, Garnett demonstrated dominant impact, as measured by various +/- approaches, repeatedly, in wildly different situation, for an extremely long time. Thus, the signal of his outstanding impact has proven to be much larger than any noise that might be inherent in the different +/- approaches. His measured, dominant impact is legit.
But, while KG’s boxscore footprint is still incredible (even if not quite up to the video game Wilt stats), Wilt did not share a similar outstanding footprint in the available impact approaches for his era. Obviously, WOWY isn’t perfect and is more limited than databall-era +/- stats (Blackmill has posted on this); and evaluating players based on how much his former team declined and/or his new team improves, is also not optimal (for many reasons, not the least of which is other player movement). However, those are some of the best impact tools that we have available for that era, and…Wilt doesn’t do great, there. His first team improved a lot when he arrived, and his last team declined significantly when he left…both to his credit as an impact player. But, when Wilt went from the Warriors to the 76ers (mid-season), neither team’s regular season SRS changed all that much. When he went from the 76ers to the Lakers, the 76ers only fell off a bit and the Lakers didn’t change all that much. When he missed a good chunk of a season with the Lakers, again, the team’s SRS didn’t change that much. Now, I know that there is context to be considered and pushback about why some of these results looked the way they did. And I’m perfectly willing to listen to those reasons, and give credence where they make sense (such as 70Fan’s post on playoffs and Wilt’s defense, which makes sense and improves his standing in my mind). But, if his impact dominance truly matched his super-sized boxscore dominance, then I believe we would see much more difference in his comings and goings, despite the other context.
What their changes in style through the years say about themI could make the argument that Wilt and Garnett are two of the players who should most NOT be judged based upon their boxscore stats. But for opposite reasons. The boxscore stats were meant to provide good estimates for how good a player was playing, how much he was impacting the game. But, the boxscores have holes…they do an awful job tracking defense, and have large gaps as far as different ways to contribute on offense as well. The assumption is, and for the most part it’s not a terrible one, that players that do well in the boxscore are generally making a great impact on games.
However, in Wilt’s case, his mechanisms of outstanding impact seemed to be tied to his defense and unselfish offensive play. His most impressive boxscore stats, though, came from him (seemingly) conscientiously over-emphasizing certain boxscore stats (again, based on my current level of understanding). And it may be reasonable to conclude that focusing on the stat, for the stat’s sake, can work against the impact it’s assumed to yield. That a great scorer will, as an effect of being a great scorer, have a lot of points in the boxscore at a good efficiency. But the counter is not necessarily true, and may be false…because having a lot of points in the boxscore at good effiency doesn’t necessarily make you a great scorer (where “great scorer” is defined as someone whose scoring ability leads to positive team results). Similarly, a great team offense initiator will likely accumulate assists as an effect of setting up teammates in a good position to score. Again, though, the opposite isn’t necessarily true…accumulating a lot of assists does not necessarily make a treat team offense initiator. So, if it’s true that he was consciously choosing to maximize various boxscore stats for reasons outside of his team winning (which has been contended, and at least somewhat reasonable supported), then that would support another contention that I’ve heard against Wilt…that he was essentially tone-deaf when it came to how to use his awesome gifts to maximize impact, and it took outstanding (and tough) coaches like Alex Hannum to recognize what he should do and then coax him to do it for short periods.
In Garnett’s case, his approach to the game almost always had a maximal impact on his teams, regardless of how he chose to play. In his early days, Garnett was playing (nominally) small forward often, putting up solid-to-good boxscore stats but in a bunch of categories, but not drawing the casual eye based on those stats…but his team was improving in leaps and bounds, his teammates were having their best seasons, and the available impact stats peg Garnett’s value as around top-5 in the league (I went into a lot of detail here, to look into what he was doing and how to help explain how/why he may have been making that level of impact). As he approached his peak, his offensive responsibilities steadily increased, until in his peak years he was measuring out as a top 1-3 offensive player in the NBA (I go into excruciating detail, here, about everything about those Wolves offenses and KG’s contributions to explain his impact stats) and top 3 - 7 defensive player at the same time, on teams in which he was by-far the leading scorer, one of (if not THE) primary distributor, and the primary gravity producer. And the available impact stats pegged his value as the best in the league. And then, when he went to Boston, Garnett went the other way, lessening his offensive responsibilities while maximizing his defensive energy…he measured out as by-far the best defensive player in the league, and overall as the highest impact player in the league before age/injury slid him back to “just” a top 5-ish player by impact per minute over the remainder of his Boston tenure.
His impact, then, wasn’t dependent upon a coach utilizing him properly, but instead seemed to be an inherent part of his understanding of the way to “play the right way”.
Bottom line: All told, I’m impressed by Wilt’s amazing achievements. But I think that ultimately, Garnett’s approach to the game and his own brand of dominating by maximizing just about every team that he was ever on made him the better player. But as always…I’d love for this post to lead to a debate, instead of radio silence. Where one stands on Wilt vs Garnett says a lot about how one evaluates the game, and a good push-back conversation could lead to some interesting outcomes, if anyone wants to engage.
