AdagioPace wrote:freethedevil wrote:AdagioPace wrote:
KG took part in several commercials, he was also selling lots of shirts.
He was more hyped than a random KAT and more than Davis in NOLA, despite being in similar not-winning situations.
I think Odinn has a point. He was quite revered in average fan circles.
For example in 2003 he was selling more shirts than back-to-back MVP Duncan (who was below Jalen Rose lol). Both outside the top 10 though.
Trash talk, chest pounding and loudness definitely pay off in the NBA if you are a star, at least in comparison to quiteness and benedictine monk-like execution. KG probably became underrated (only in an all-time context though, not within the epoch) because fans don't quite understand his defensive prowess and his offensive versatility that allow him to be compared with untouchables like Magic and Bird
He's more hyped because he won 58 games in his not great situation and was conssitently measured to be the most or neat the most valuable player in the league as his situation changed demonstrating that his ability to impact winning basketball couldn't be chalked up to circumstance. AD's never been nearly as good in the regular season and until 2020 hadn't showed he could be like garnett in the postseason. KAT's made the playoffs once.
And neither AD or KAT have shown the impact Garnett has.He's comapred with bird because he's a better player, or at the minimum, there arepeople on this board who consider him a better player.
Whene people explicitly tell you why they like player a over player b, pop psych analysis becomes a red herring.
people outside of realgm (and other few communities) have no idea of what impact is. You're talking with a scientific mind, not considering the average joe's horizon (especially in early 2000 where even PER was considered too progressive and alienating). I doubt most of the fans considered Garnett near to the most valuable player in the league but he was still liked and gathered a lot of attention also for the reasons stated above (despite playing in Minny).
Also, I don't agree with ignoring or minimizing population-psychology. That fact that it cannot be easily quantified doesn't mean that aesthetical-phenomenological attributes are not appreciated, especially when people still don't have the tools to assess how good a player is. Also, the fact that Garnett was, in the end, as good as Duncan or close (as we only know NOW) doesn't leave out the possibility that even KG's demeanour contributed in part to the early appreciation; basically
a form of overrating for wrong reasons. This is what Odinn underlined in different words.
In any case both Duncan and KG were not close to Kobe-level of "rating-by-acclamation" luckily but neither they suffered from bias against boring big men given they were (espec. Ducnan) at the top of the western conference and all-stars selections. For me the most underrated will always be Dirk and Nash in the '00.
Oh, I misinterpeted what you were saying. My bad. Yeah, that makes sense. KG's personaility was perfect for being hyped provided he was in a situation where he could win. I wouldn't be shocked if people started talking about him(for the time at least) like shaq if the Wolves win a title in 2004.
KG essentially was a most extreme version of jordan as far as "bully your teamamtes into being good" goes(not saying that's what actually happened, but it is the perception). I agree fully that if you have garnett and you have duncan winning the same accolades kg would be rated higher. That's actually been proven more or less with kobe. Kobe as far as resume is clearly discount duncan and even gets muked by duncan in the box compsoites fans consider valuable barometers of basketball play, and yet people will make absurd claims like "duncan could never carry a team like kobe" to justify ranking kobe higher.
Actually pretty identical to what we get with bird and magic. Bird is "tough" so the fact that magic has demonstrated he can carry **** teams in a way bird hasn't(post kareem lakers) and has a signifcantly better resume won't stop people from saying bird was better peak and they're "Impossible to decide between" as far as careers are concerned.
Really I think if we're looking at general pop.. biases, the order goes something like this:
1. Rangz (Jordan>Lebron, Kobe>>>KG, Russell>Wilt, Duncan>>>Garnett, Durant>>>Harden, Westbrook, Giannis, Magic>Hakeem, Bird>Hakeem)
2. Box Stats favoring smaller players (Jordan>Lebron even just on defense apparently, 08 Kobe>>>08 KG, Durant>>Giannis in the playoffs)
3. Scoring (88-90 Jordan>09-10 Lebron and >>>15 Lebron, 08 Kobe>>>08 KG, 2017 Durant> 2017 Curry, 2019 Durant>>2019 Curry, Kobe=Duncan, Kyrie>Lowry, Melo>Lowry)
4. Maschismo(Jordan and Bird and Kobe have intangibles Lebron don't have, Kobe=Duncan, Iverson>Nash)
5. Volume over effiency (Not doing enough is treated as a way worse choke than shooting your team out of a series. Is winning a tight series vs the 50 win 92 knicks really a worse showing than losing a tight series to a mavs team that was eating 57 win teams for breakfast? Was tragic johnson's series really worse than kobe ineffecient chucking in 2010? KD was better than Kawhi before he got hurt because he scored more even though kawhi was signifcantly more effecient)
Players like Jordan, Bird and Kobe score well on basically everything here, so their repuation far exceeds what you would get if you took the "lets isolate their impact" approach. There's nothing hsitorically unprecedented about winning 45-50 games with a bleh team, but people will routinely cite the regular seasons as the greatest ever. Bird had a loaded team that didn't suffer all that much when he went out, but people will get shocked if you say that KG winning 58 games was more impressive. Kobe's team was very good without him but 35 ppg and all nba defense(becuase you know, that means so much for a shootign guard) so he wins mvp even though kg's more valuable to a better team.
In the next tier you have your KD's and Iverson's. The former set of players are 'soft' but all the box stats and they score alot so whooo! And then with iverson their winning is wholly unimpressive but they scored alot and they exmplified "toughness".
A player like Lebron and Curry are middle of the pack. They're undderrated realtive to older players because they're extrodinary creator with curry's creation not showing up in the box score. lebron is massively undersold on defense due to being better at non-man aspects, and curry is potrayed as a negative defensively because he's better off-ball than on. On the other hand they get overrated realtive to players like Giannis, Davis, because they've "proved it" and "won rings" and happen to be better scorers and have better box numbers in the playoffs.
KG has the personality for sure but he basically lacks everything else.
The one thing that I don't understand is how kawhi gets rated under durant. Kawhi's won as much, is less 'soft', and has a scoring centric game.