David Robinson vs Karl Malone(The following is an older post comparing Karl Malone and David Robinson in some depth. While I might modify some aspects slightly, the general tone and most of the details still fit just as well today as it did when I wrote it. Yes, Malone is the longevity king, but as I examine it, it just appears that Robinson was the clearly better player. And, Robinson's longevity isn't worse than a player like Bird's, who is already voted in. So...well...here's the post, for you to consider yourselves.)Background thoughtsMy evaluations of these two have evolved over time. Live action, there was no question to me that Robinson was better. I've said it before, but Robinson was one of the most electric players that I've ever seen. I remember when he was at Navy, watching him burst onto the national scene in that tournament run was kind of like how Barry Sanders came out of nowhere at Oklahoma State in football. I was planning to see the greatness of Danny Manning (or Aikman/Peete in football), and instead this phenom exploded all over the place and stole the show. I impatiently waited for Robinson to serve his Naval duties, and when the time came for him to make his NBA debut I was watching avidly. And he didn't disappoint, building even upon the promise he showed in college to quickly become one of the best players in the NBA. He came in right as the best of my childhood (Magic and Bird) were on the way out, and it wasn't long before Jordan was leaving as well to go swing at baseballs. I was sure that it wouldn't be long before Robinson was the acknowledged best in the NBA.
On the flip side, Malone had been in the NBA pretty almost as long as I could remember. I was watching the NBA before he came in, but I was really young and I really wasn't paying attention to Utah at that time. By the time I started, Stockton and Malone were already becoming household names. I always knew they were good, but neither one of them ever struck me as the best. I thought that Barkley was better than Malone in general (even though when they matched up 1-on-1 it seemed like Malone was just too big for him), and there was just never a time through the 80s and into the early 90s when I saw Malone on that level.
By the mid-90s I was in college and not watching the NBA as closely. Maybe that's part of why my opinions of these two didn't evolve that much even as Malone started having more success. I remember being stunned at how badly Hakeem outplayed Robinson in that fateful series. I remember how meh I felt when the Jazz and Bulls faced off back-to-back (I was never a fan of either squad, and wanted them both to lose). Actually, I was pretty bummed that the Rockets weren't the ones making the FInals from the West because I really wanted to see old Hakeem/Barkley against Jordan and Pip. But no, the daggone Jazz had to get in the way. I think the biggest disappointment was that I was positive that the Jazz couldn't beat the Bulls, because I was sure that Malone didn't have that extra gear. I thought Hakeem and/or Chuck might be able to find something inside, but I never believed that Malone would. And when they made it close, only to have Jordan strip Malone and then immortalize Byron Russell that just put the taste of ashes in my mouth.
Anyway, by the time we did the RPoY project in 2010, I still had Robinson as the better of the two in my mind. I thought that his legacy had been overly tarnished by that one series against Hakeem, and that by going through year-by-year as we were it would be clear that Robinson was a beast. Instead, a poster named Kaima brought up the 1994 and 1996 playoffs (in addition to the expected 1995 Hakeem match-up) in which Robinson really didn't look good against Malone and the Jazz. He shifted the argument from "Robinson just got outplayed by a transcendant Hakeem" to "Robinson consistently got outplayed in the postseason" to "Robinson just wasn't a good postseason performer". At the time I wasn't expecting that line or argument, and in going year-by-year and playoff series by playoff series, the argument that the Admiral couldn't perform in the postseason sounded plausible.
Then, the next year we did the 2011 Top 100 and by then it was accepted dogma among many of the voters that Robinson's offensive style simply wasn't suited for the postseaosn. That his offense took too much advantage of fast breaks and face-up opportunities that weren't there in the postseason, and thus that he could never be a championship team's #1 option. Meanwhile, ElGee also led the charge for Malone, pointing out his ridiculous longevity and arguing that his playoff downfalls weren't as bad as advertised. Before I knew it, Malone was voted in at #12, a full 10 spots before Robinson.
But it's never really set well with me. I keep finding myself re-considering the evidence and arguments made in those projects. And the more I look, the more hollow they seem. So today I want to start over with a clean slate and see what conclusions my analysis leads to.
Longevity
The absolute first thing that has to be mentioned in a Malone vs. Robinson comparison, even before we get to the numbers, is the difference in prime longevity. Malone is the iron man of NBA history, never really missing a game over 20 years and with a graceful decline in his box score numbers. As I pointed out when I first posted the 10-year prime box score data (seen below for Malone and Robinson), Malone has about four more seasons at this exact same level while I had to add an extra year (to make up for the missed '97) and include some years when Robinson was "playing 2nd fiddle" to Duncan in order for the Admiral to get his 10 year prime. And even in one of those seasons (1992), Robinson got hurt and missed the playoffs. When looked at that way, the longevity gap seems insurmountable. And maybe it is. But.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Robinson was actually significantly better than Malone. Suppose, in fact, that Robinson at his best was as good as Larry Bird. If Robinson were that good, would longevity still be an obstacle that couldn't be overcome? Seemingly not, right, since Bird was voted in at #10 and longevity king Malone is still waiting on the call. So before go any further, let's stop for a moment and compare Robinson's longevity to Bird's.
Bird: 9 prime years from 1980 - 1988, one full missed season (1989), 2 lesser but productive seasons (1990 and 91) and a final season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season.
Robinson: 7 prime years from 1990 - 1996, one full missed season (1997), four more "side kick" seasons (1998 - 2001), one productive but lesser season where his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season (2002) and a final season in which he was physically limited but still a strong role player in limited minutes.
Is there really a difference there? The key, for me, is how to characterize those 1998 - 2001 years for Robinson. Because he was only playing 32 mpg over that stretch and Duncan was acknowledged as the star, most (including me) considered these to be post-prime years for Robinson. But while we're here, let's compare Robinson's 1998 - 2001 stretch to the late prime of one player that's already been voted in, and to the early prime of Bird himself:
Regular Season1998 - 2001 Robinson: 32 mpg, 17.5 ppg (57% TS), 9.7 rpg, 2 apg, 2.1 TO; 25.3 PER, 47 WS
2005 - 2008 Duncan: 34 mpg, 19.5 ppg (55% TS), 11 rpg, 3 apg, 2.4 TO, 25 PER, 46.2 WS
1980 - 1983 Bird: 38 mpg, 22.2 ppg (55% TS), 10.8 rpg, 5.4 apg, 3.3 TO, 21.7 PER, 48.4 WS
Playoffs1998 - 2001 Robinson: 35 mpg, 17.4 ppg (53% TS), 11.7 rpg, 2.3 apg, 2.3 TO, 24 PER, 6.9 WS (43 games)
2005 - 2008 Duncan: 38 mpg, 22.4 ppg (54% TS), 12.3 rpg, 3.1 apg, 2.7 TO, 25.8 PER, 11.1 WS (73 games)
1980 - 1983 Bird: 42 mpg, 20.5 ppg (51% TS), 12.8 rpg, 5.8 apg, 3.5 TO, 19.9 PER, 6.4 WS (44 games)
Now, the point of this isn't to make this a Robinson vs Duncan or Bird thread. But just take a look at those statlines again. Robinson was only playing a few minutes less than Duncan, and outside of scoring volume (Duncan by a bit) he was contributing very similarly in the box scores in both regular and postseason to Duncan during years universally included in his prime. Bird was playing much heavier minutes than Robinson, and was also the player most helped by pace here (for example, Robinson's rebound rate is higher despite Bird's higher raw boards due to pace). But even with that, Robinson had almost as many win shares (used as a cumulative catch-all stat, as opposed to a rate one) as Bird in the regular season and more in the playoffs with a much higher PER and WS/48. Again, these are years universally included in Bird's "productive prime" years tallies.
Plus, because we have RAPM studies starting in 1998, we know that Robinson's RAPM from 1998 - 2000 (using Doc MJ's normalized PI RAPM method) was +7.4, +8.9, and +8.3 (with a heavy defensive influence, notching DRAPM's that match the best that we ever saw from Duncan in his career). Those overall RAPMs in the ~8.2 range couldn't quite keep up with the best-of-the-best in the study, but they were right there on average with the average of the highest three career RAPM scores of Nash (+8.2 3-year average) or Kobe (+8.0) and just below 2005 - 08 Duncan (4-year average 9.3 RAPM). Robinson wasn't playing as many minutes as any of them, so they would have had higher volume impacts on game than these years of Robinson, but the point is that Robinson appeared to be still having huge impact on games from 98 - 2001 according to both the box scores AND the +/- data.
Thus, if we return to our Bird longevity comparison, I now see it:
Bird: 9 prime years from 1980 - 1988, one full missed season (1989), 2 lesser but productive seasons (1990 and 91) and a final season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season
Robinson: 7 prime years from 1990 - 1996, one full missed season (1997), four more almost prime seasons on the order of 1980 - 1983 Bird (1998 - 2001), one lesser but productive season when his body broke down and he couldn't finish the season (2002) and a final season in which he was physically limited but still a strong role player.[/spoiler]
Suddenly, Robinson's longevity looks EXACTLY like Bird's to me. And if Bird's career length is the gate-keeper for being ranked this high, suddenly Robinson is eligible. If his prime is strong enough. So let's get away from quantity, and look at quality.
Who's best at their best? Box Score Statistics[spoiler]
Regular season, 10 year primes per100 possessions Karl Malone (1990 - 1999): 36.8 pts (59.3% TS), 14.5 reb, 5 ast, 4 TO
David Robinson (90 - 2000): 33.3 pts (58.8% TS), 15.9 reb, 4 ast, 3.9 TO
Playoffs, 10 year primes per 100 possessionsKarl Malone (1990 - 1999): 35 pts (52.9%), 15 reb, 4.4 asts, 3.7 TO
David Robinson (90 - 2000): 30 pts (54.6%), 16.1 reb, 3.8 ast, 3.7 TO
One thing that jumps out at me when I look at these numbers is that Robinson was a MUCH better player than Malone, both regular season and post-season. The numbers itself don't tell me that, of course. Numerically, you'd be hard pressed to find any space at all between the general box score stats displayed above. But that, of course, is the problem (for Malone). Because if he couldn't create any space between he and Robinson with his offense, then of course he's going to get left behind because Robinson smokes him on defense. Malone was a rugged post defender who earned an air of intimidation with his hatchet man tendencies. And ironically, he limited Robinson in the 1994 postseason with those same strong 1-on-1 defensive skills. But Robinson is one of the best team defenders that ever lived, a true defensive anchor. And more and more I've come to appreciate that the game isn't neatly broken down into a box score battle with a small tie-breaker for defense and everything else. No, an elite defender can have defensive impact that rivals the best offensive impacts. And Robinson was definitely that.
Available +/- dataObviously, since the first available play-by-play data doesn't start till '97, we missed the majority of both players' primes. However, '98 is widely considered by many (including Malone) as potentially his peak season and he was the MVP in '99. Thus, I think it's reasonable to see what types of impacts he was having in those seasons. We've already touched briefly on Robinson's available +/- results, but I'd like to put them in some context as well.
Malone
98: 9.0 (+8.8 ORAPM; 0.2 DRAPM)
99: 5.8 (+6.4 ORAPM; -.6 DRAPM)
00: 5.5 (+6.9 ORAPM; -1.4 DRAPM)
Robinson
98:7.4 (+1.2 ORAPM; +6.2 DRAPM)
99: 8.9 (+2.3 ORAPM; +6.6 DRAPM)
00: 8.3 (+2.7 ORAPM; +5.6 DRAPM)
For those that don't know, this data came from Doc MJ's normalized PI RAPM spreadsheet from 1998 - 2012. I only did 1998 - 2000 for both players, because we don't have +/- data in 2001 and only partial for 2002, and by 2003 both were on their last legs. I found these numbers revealing for a few reasons. Malone's value in these years was almost all offense, while Robinson's value was primarily defense. Here are a few thoughts that come to mind:
1)
Malone's offense aged gracefully. There's been some speculation that Malone may have made a mistake later in his career by continuing to play the same offensive role for the Jazz as his physical tools eroded. I've seen this idea put forth by (I believe) Doc MJ, and I know that Ronnie Mac addressed this potential concern in one of his big Malone posts. However, when we break the RAPM numbers into offensive and defensive components, it doesn't appear at all that Malone's offense was struggling by the turn of the century. He was still putting up offensive numbers over 6, which compare very favorably with the best career ORAPM numbers that we saw from Dirk, KG or Duncan.
2) Robinson's defense was elite till the end. Robinson obviously became the subordinate to Tim Duncan in an overall sense, but defensively Robinson appears to be the anchor through at least 2000. Robinson's average DRAPM from 98 - 2000 (+6.1) was almost double the DRAPM of young Duncan (+3.2). Duncan's impact on those teams was bigger due to offense and minutes played, and his impact grew over time while Robinson's waned, but defensively in the first few years of their union Robinson was the man. Plus, Robinson maintained a DRAPM up around +6 all the way until he retired in 2003, indicating that even as his body broke down and limited his minutes, he was still a defensive beast for every moment that he could spend on the court.
3) Mailman's defensive impact was surprisingly low. Or maybe it wasn't. Malone's rep is as a strong 1-on-1 post defender, not as a team anchor. However, one theme we see repeatedly is that team defenders make a much bigger mark than individual defenders. Malone's DRAPM scores here look remarkably like Kobe's DRAPM scores during the parts of his career when he was gaining recognition for his 1-on-1 defense.
We have to be careful about extrapolating the conclusions from this RAPM info over their entire careers, because again this is just three years near the end for each. However, as mentioned, these were three years where both were still having star impact and I think we can do some qualitative projections backwards. Namely:
1)
I believe that these years represented Malone's offensive peak (or at least the end of it). Early Malone put up better scoring numbers, but he was almost purely a finisher. Late Malone was a better passer and much better initiator, plus he had a better mid-range game. These are all things that generally lead to better offensive impact.
2) I
believe that these years represented Robinson's defensive peak as well (as far as measurable impact). Robinson, in the Duncan years, played a similar role to Garnett after the championship year in Boston. At this point in their careers, both were focusing more on their defense and ceding more offensive responsibility to teammates. It is to both of their immense credits that they could maintain overall impacts just a step down from the elite (+ 8 range) primarily with defense, because it indicates the versatility of their impact. But, like Garnett, this also means that during the years when Robinson was having to carry both the offense and defense his DRAPM scores likely weren't quite as high.
PlayoffsI'll finish off with a discussion on Malone and Robinson in the playoffs, as this is the big criticism that both face. As has been pointed out many times, both saw a drop in both volume and scoring efficiency in the postseason when compared to their regular season numbers (Malone -1.8 pts, -6.4% across 10-years displayed here, Robinson -3.3 points and -4.2% TS drop).
ElGee and AcrossTheCourt have done a lot of great work normalizing their production in the face of defensive quality. ElGee that both Robinson and Malone did a lot of feasting on poor defenses in the regular season, that their scoring (volume and efficiency) dropped quite a bit in either the regular season against good defenses or the postseason against "bad" defenses, and that they dropped the most in the postseason against good defenses. It appears that Malone's drops may have been larger than Robinson's.
The resulting narrative is that both Robinson and Malone have offensive styles too predicated on things like easy buckets, face-up mismatches and/or getting set up by teammates that are more limited by good defenses than other offensive skills. Thus, that it isn't a fluke that their scoring was attenuated, that it was a result of the flaws in their games that could only be exposed in the crucible of the post-season.
I'm on record in this project (and really, for awhile now) as believing that scoring efficiency is (way) over-used as a mechanism for determining individual offensive contributions. The fact that all of the most commonly referenced individual box score metrics (PER, win shares, offensive rating, TS%) all are strongly dependent on scoring efficiency tends to, IMO, cause us to double- and triple- count scoring efficiency either for or against players to the degree that it skews the results. This is especially true for players that have large parts of their impacts in areas besides scoring (e.g. Larry Bird' or Garnett).
This thought process makes me want to give Robinson the benefit of the doubt, because his all-world defense might not be fully captured by postseason box score stats. If that's true, and he's still having mega impact on games when his scoring was off due to his defense then I would be inclined not to be as worried by his scoring drop. However, this leniency is tempered because his three peak playoffs (1994 - 96) all ended with him out-right losing a perceived 1-on-1 match-up against a similar caliber big man on teams that seemingly were well-matched. Plus, unlike Bird or Garnett, Robinson didn't have the offense initiation/distribution skills to have a positive team impact on offense when his shot was off. So he would really need to demonstrate a strong team defensive trend in the postseason for me to feel comfortable overlooking the scoring issues, and I haven't had the time to do any type of team defensive analysis for Robinson's Spurs. I'd love to see a breakdown of the Spurs' playoff opponents' regular season/expected offensive ratings vs. their actual offensive ratings against Robinson's 90 - 96 Spurs defenses. If anyone has the time to do that, I'd be appreciative.
With Malone, on the other hand, I have a really hard time seeing how his drop-off in scoring shouldn't be a big deal. Not only is scoring his primary role, but we saw in the 98 - 2000 RAPM data that at (what I consider to be) his peak his value was almost ENTIRELY on offense. His defense, though solid 1-on-1, didn't seem to move the needle much on a team level. Older Malone was a better passer than young Malone, so perhaps later in his career he was able to help mitigate the scoring a bit by setting up teammates. But on the whole, it seems hard to credit Malone with much non-scoring impact and thus the more than 6% drop in TS% could be significant. But he has the opposite caveat as Robinson, because my perception is that in 94 and 96 his individual defense DID have an impact on how Robinson played and thus the results of the series. So, just like with Robinson, if a more thorough examination of the Jazz's defensive results through the years suggests a previously unexpected strength and that strength can be traced to Malone, then that might change how I see him in the postseason for the better.
Bottom lineRobinson and Malone are two of the best big men left on the board. Malone was an awesome offensive threat in the regular season for a lot of years, and a still strong presence in the postseason. His 1-on-1 defense was rugged, but at least late in his career did not appear to be moving the needle as much as I'd have thought in terms of defensive impact. Robinson was an awesome 2-way threat early in his career in the regular season, and a ridiculous defensive player who was strong as a secondary scorer in both the regular and postseason at the end of his career.
Karl Malone played forever at a really high level. But I tend to feel that Robinson was the better player during his prime, and upon further examination I'm seeing that productive prime stretch for Robinson at closer to 10 years than the 6.5 I previously credited him with. In theory, Robinson should have also been a better postseason performer than Malone because his defense should translate better, but I'd like to look into that further before finalizing that conclusion.
On the whole, at the moment, I'm leaning Robinson over Malone (just like I had them pre- RPoY project). But, just like with those projects, I'm still willing to listen and learn and could be talked into changing my mind.
