Is 2021 Giannis vs peak KG a legit discussion?

[dygaction]

that's a time machine argument though.

Isn't that what you want to argue?

i assume people mean relative to era. KG played so many minuites because his team wasn't as deep. IN 2021 when the bucks had a shallow team giannis was a lot worse in the regular season and played 38 minuites. In 2020 he only had to play liek 33 minuites a game.

Usually the more you play, the less effective you get and the less you play the more effectiev you get. In the playoffs this doesn't matter so much but seeding can help a team win so.

Giannis last year's offense rate/efficiency was similar to Curry's 2016 and he had the highest PER in the league history. The Bucks usually blew the other teams away in the first 3 quarters, so he did not have to play long.
Giannis 2020: 29.5ppg in 30.4 min (or 34.9p per 36min) @ .613 TS%
Garnett 2004: 24.2ppg in 39.4 min (or 22.1p per 36min) @ .547 TS%

Giannis scores at 58% higher rate than KG with higher efficiency. Giannis himself is the reason his team can have the cushion to win and he can have more rest. I know the pace is faster now but it is nowhere close to this gigantic gap. Whoever interested can do more adjust to compare further.

[migya]

Pity people who never saw nba in past eras or have recency bias.

Giannis playing against bigger players, less spacing and better defenses wouldn't have these numbers.

[dygaction]

Pity people who cannot drop pacifier from years ago and welcome the next TRUE big after Shaq and Duncan.
Giannis playing in any era on any team would not have missed playoffs 3 years in a row.

[70sFan]

Pity people who cannot drop pacifier from years ago and welcome the next TRUE big after Shaq and Duncan.
Giannis playing in any era on any team would not have missed playoffs 3 years in a row.

How can you know that? No player is capable of making worst teams ever a legit playoff team, not even LeBron, Jordan or Kareem.

[AussieBuck]

Pity people who cannot drop pacifier from years ago and welcome the next TRUE big after Shaq and Duncan.
Giannis playing in any era on any team would not have missed playoffs 3 years in a row.

How can you know that? No player is capable of making worst teams ever a legit playoff team, not even LeBron, Jordan or Kareem.

It is truly hard to comprehend how bad those Minny teams were. Not just a complete lack of starting quality and depth players, not just lacklustre players, but multiple Drew Gooden or worse level outright saboteurs!

[migya]

Pity people who cannot drop pacifier from years ago and welcome the next TRUE big after Shaq and Duncan.
Giannis playing in any era on any team would not have missed playoffs 3 years in a row.

How can you know that? No player is capable of making worst teams ever a legit playoff team, not even LeBron, Jordan or Kareem.

It is truly hard to comprehend how bad those Minny teams were. Not just a complete lack of starting quality and depth players, not just lacklustre players, but multiple Drew Gooden or worse level outright saboteurs!

Giannis replacing Garnett on those teams yields the same, likely worse, results.

[dygaction]

Pity people who cannot drop pacifier from years ago and welcome the next TRUE big after Shaq and Duncan.
Giannis playing in any era on any team would not have missed playoffs 3 years in a row.

How can you know that? No player is capable of making worst teams ever a legit playoff team, not even LeBron, Jordan or Kareem.

How do you know that? No one can prove whether some of the early Cavs team without LeBron would be the worst team ever.
I don't see any of my top 15 players missed 3 playoffs in a row, or maybe, if a player did, he would not be in my top 15. I value accolades and team winning a lot higher than others. If a player does not win, I can put him high on talent level comparison or in vacuum, but not high on my ATG list.

[70sFan]

Pity people who cannot drop pacifier from years ago and welcome the next TRUE big after Shaq and Duncan.
Giannis playing in any era on any team would not have missed playoffs 3 years in a row.

How can you know that? No player is capable of making worst teams ever a legit playoff team, not even LeBron, Jordan or Kareem.

How do you know that? No one can prove whether some of the early Cavs team without LeBron would be the worst team ever.
I don't see any of my top 15 players missed 3 playoffs in a row, or maybe, if a player did, he would not be in my top 15. I value accolades and team winning a lot higher than others. If a player does not win, I can put him high on talent level comparison or in vacuum, but not high on my ATG list.

Because there are no evidences of player having ~40 wins impact. It's not possible for one player to turn all-time bad teams into solid playoff contenders.

Kareem missed playoffs twice in a row - do you have him outside top 15? Michael Jordan led his team to two below 50% records in 1985 and 1987, in normal cases he wouldn't make playoffs. 2005 Wolves had better record than 1985-87 Bulls, why should we give Jordan more credit for making playoffs with worse records?

Hell, Cavs had worse record in the very same season but they made playoffs because EC was significantly weaker than WC.

[AussieBuck]

How can you know that? No player is capable of making worst teams ever a legit playoff team, not even LeBron, Jordan or Kareem.

It is truly hard to comprehend how bad those Minny teams were. Not just a complete lack of starting quality and depth players, not just lacklustre players, but multiple Drew Gooden or worse level outright saboteurs!

Giannis replacing Garnett on those teams yields the same, likely worse, results.

It must suck for you, panicking this hard about 26 year old Giannis. Imagine at his peak, you're going to be working overtime inventing unfalsifiable narratives to discredit him. I feel you man.

[DCasey91]

Has anyone figured out why Garnett didn’t score more? I can’t, I wish he just scored more.

At times he looked like a bigger Kobe on his midrange repertoire of shots. Don’t know and I can’t put my finger on it still even now. Was it a forced issue, gameplan? Etc.

I trust Duncan as the head option more then Garnett even at their very best. That’s where I dock Garnett the most.

[migya]

It is truly hard to comprehend how bad those Minny teams were. Not just a complete lack of starting quality and depth players, not just lacklustre players, but multiple Drew Gooden or worse level outright saboteurs!

Giannis replacing Garnett on those teams yields the same, likely worse, results.

It must suck for you, panicking this hard about 26 year old Giannis. Imagine at his peak, you're going to be working overtime inventing unfalsifiable narratives to discredit him. I feel you man.

Instead of relying something more low grade than - You sick with what you know young one,
I'll just leave it at that.

[AussieBuck]

Giannis replacing Garnett on those teams yields the same, likely worse, results.

It must suck for you, panicking this hard about 26 year old Giannis. Imagine at his peak, you're going to be working overtime inventing unfalsifiable narratives to discredit him. I feel you man.

Instead of relying something more low grade than - You sick with what you know young one,
I'll just leave it at that.

You're a 90s stan, you're no older than me.

[Asianiac_24]

KG is probably the most overrated player on this board. If he was supposedly a GOAT defensive anchor, the Wolves would of been better on that end.

they won fifty eight games with less help than kobe needed to make the playoffs, and mj needed to win fifty. Then he took kobe/shaq/malone to six with his second best player hurt.

Four years past his peak, he was the best player in the league on a sixty six win champion. Then, five years past his peak, before getting hurt, he was literally leading a candidate to break the wins record before curry did. He's one of the best floor raisers, one of the best cieling raisers, one of the best regular season peformers, one of the best postseason performers, one of the best impact dudes, one of the best boxscore dudes and has goated longetvity. That's a pretty strong case for being one of the best players ever.

KG hate is wierd. Whenever he had help, he was extremely successful. Top 10 peak plus top five longetity gives you a top 10 player all time as far as basketball is concerned. But people get mad if you have him over karl malone for some reason...

First of all, he wasn’t the best player in 08.

Second of all, considering the talent Boston had, they weren’t really that successful. 1/3 with 3 superstars and an emerging star in Rondo isn’t that great, all things considered.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Has anyone figured out why Garnett didn’t score more? I can’t, I wish he just scored more.

At times he looked like a bigger Kobe on his midrange repertoire of shots. Don’t know and I can’t put my finger on it still even now. Was it a forced issue, gameplan? Etc.

I trust Duncan as the head option more then Garnett even at their very best. That’s where I dock Garnett the most.

Too reliant on long twos instead of just taking threes

Didn't get to the free-throw line a lot

Doesn't finish super well through contact

Doesn't get very deep post position because of a lack of core strength

Perhaps too passive at times?

A better pick and roll PG to play with might have helped

Didn't have quite enough quickness to always get to the rim

Some might say he had too big of a load on both sides of the ball to truly be optimized as a scorer

His Backpicks Profile goes into this issue a bit.

[dygaction]

How can you know that? No player is capable of making worst teams ever a legit playoff team, not even LeBron, Jordan or Kareem.

How do you know that? No one can prove whether some of the early Cavs team without LeBron would be the worst team ever.
I don't see any of my top 15 players missed 3 playoffs in a row, or maybe, if a player did, he would not be in my top 15. I value accolades and team winning a lot higher than others. If a player does not win, I can put him high on talent level comparison or in vacuum, but not high on my ATG list.

Because there are no evidences of player having ~40 wins impact. It's not possible for one player to turn all-time bad teams into solid playoff contenders.

Kareem missed playoffs twice in a row - do you have him outside top 15? Michael Jordan led his team to two below 50% records in 1985 and 1987, in normal cases he wouldn't make playoffs. 2005 Wolves had better record than 1985-87 Bulls, why should we give Jordan more credit for making playoffs with worse records?

Hell, Cavs had worse record in the very same season but they made playoffs because EC was significantly weaker than WC.

Absolutely, that's why I said a two year window in prime. An ATG may have 1 year injury plus one year recovery, or need 1 year new to a team and 1 year rebuild... Three year in a row, no major injury during prime, then there is no excuse.
We have seen how Bird, Nash, and LeBron changed their franchises. We have also seen what happened to Rockets without Harden, Cavs without LeBron.
Kareem missed 17 games in Bucks, and they missed playoffs. Next year he joined Lakers, a new team, and brought the team win from 30 to 42 the same season barely missing playoffs, and next season they were a 53 win playoff team. You can take away 85-87 Jordan's credit for making playoffs, even though: 85 was Jordan's rookie seasons, 85 and 87 Bulls were a playoff team no matter in East OR West, and there were only 23 team by then but 29 in 2004 so W/L situations were completely different. Hiding your basketball knowledge and knowingly say so make me feel that you are arguing for the sake of arguing.

[DCasey91]

Has anyone figured out why Garnett didn’t score more? I can’t, I wish he just scored more.

At times he looked like a bigger Kobe on his midrange repertoire of shots. Don’t know and I can’t put my finger on it still even now. Was it a forced issue, gameplan? Etc.

I trust Duncan as the head option more then Garnett even at their very best. That’s where I dock Garnett the most.

Too reliant on long twos instead of just taking threes

Didn't get to the free-throw line a lot

Doesn't finish super well through contact

Doesn't get very deep post position because of a lack of core strength

Perhaps too passive at times?

A better pick and roll PG to play with might have helped

Didn't have quite enough quickness to always get to the rim

Some might say he had too big of a load on both sides of the ball to truly be optimized as a scorer

His Backpicks Profile goes into this issue a bit.

I think the second part (free throw) is where I got the conclusion. I mean I’m not saying Hakeem level (he got there a lot in the playoffs)

But I think he just didn’t do enough for me on that end. He did settle because his jumper was pretty, I dunno he had the toolset to be more of scorer. Maybe I’m being harsh but if you’re a potential top ten player ever I have to finecomb the whole thing.

And your right with the long twos as that is part and parcel of the inefficiency of that era. I’m fine with midrange shots, but taking one step back when your so very close to the 3 line at 150% better divided it isn’t hard to do lol and just poor imo. Not saying spam it but man oh man long twos was a diet in team offenses.

I disregard the big load entirely. It’s not like other superstars didn’t have big loads to carry

[D.Brasco]

Has anyone figured out why Garnett didn’t score more? I can’t, I wish he just scored more.

At times he looked like a bigger Kobe on his midrange repertoire of shots. Don’t know and I can’t put my finger on it still even now. Was it a forced issue, gameplan? Etc.

I trust Duncan as the head option more then Garnett even at their very best. That’s where I dock Garnett the most.

Funny enough I don't remember much criticisms towards Garnett on the scoring volume front at the time. I think the pace of the game was slower then and aside from Shaq big men weren't really averaging much above the low 20s ppg, TD was also around that range.

I wonder what his ppg would be like if Garnett was in his prime in the current era?

[Odinn21]

Has anyone figured out why Garnett didn’t score more? I can’t, I wish he just scored more.

At times he looked like a bigger Kobe on his midrange repertoire of shots. Don’t know and I can’t put my finger on it still even now. Was it a forced issue, gameplan? Etc.

I trust Duncan as the head option more then Garnett even at their very best. That’s where I dock Garnett the most.

Funny enough I don't remember much criticisms towards Garnett on the scoring volume front at the time. I think the pace of the game was slower then and aside from Shaq big men weren't really averaging much above the low 20s ppg, TD was also around that range.

I wonder what his ppg would be like if Garnett was in his prime in the current era?

Garnett was facing criticism for his scoring efficiency taking a dip in the playoffs fwiw and Duncan elevating his level in the playoffs wasn't doing KG any favours since they were constantly compared to each other. But at least for regular season play, there was not much point in criticising Garnett for his scoring volume. He was in the top 10 for scoring 3 times from 2000 to 2004;
10th in 2000 with 22.9
9th in 2003 with 23.0
3rd in 2004 with 24.2

I think people are not much aware of how different ppg dynamics were in the early '00s.
24 ppg is barely a top 20 scoring performance right now and it used to be in 5-10 range. (2004 was such an ugly season for the scorers, lol.)

As for why Garnett couldn't score more in his playing days; many KG believers would point out how the Wolves offensive system was flawed with heavy focus on inefficient mid range shooting under Saunders' coaching. I think there's merit to that argument but not by the extent they'd like to believe. What I saw is that Garnett wasn't comfortable enough with going through contacts, if a good defender sat on his right shoulder he couldn't put the ball down as comfortably as he'd like. For a player his stature, it was rather easy to force KG out of his comfort zone. Simply put, his iso scoring wasn't that strong.

[HeartBreakKid]

Has anyone figured out why Garnett didn’t score more? I can’t, I wish he just scored more.

At times he looked like a bigger Kobe on his midrange repertoire of shots. Don’t know and I can’t put my finger on it still even now. Was it a forced issue, gameplan? Etc.

I trust Duncan as the head option more then Garnett even at their very best. That’s where I dock Garnett the most.

He actually scored a lot for his era, and the Wolves were more times than not a better offensive team than defensive, though that has a lot to do with the roleplayers.


Coaching is really the biggest thing, Garnett wasn't used well. There was this stigma that 7 footers had to play a certain way, and this lead to Garnett playing down low back to the basketball way more than he should have - which in turn lead to him taking a lot of weak fade aways.

Garnett also did not play with a great PG for most of his career or one that specialized in the pick and roll. And of course the PnR in his era was not as good as it is today, as most of his career was pre D'Antoni. Looking at his attributes he would be a really special roll guy, great vertical leap, coordination and touch around the him. The shooting part and high post passing is a no brainer as well - not seeing Garnett in a PnR heavy offense is the real tragedy of his career.

In fact, Garnett often times had to initiate his teams offense from beyond the arc.

[DCasey91]

Outside of that though I can’t see a reason why he didn’t force the issue more. He was finesse yes but still the charity stripe should be part and parcel for a big.

DROB had that issue too. Now Ewing I never thought he could anchor an offense but DROB I could. Hakeem is the bench mark which Giannis really does that have that level with Shaq/Lebron type volume.

Era etc etc, I just found Duncan to be more trustworthy when push comes to shove. Team offense and individual scoring are two different things. Nash and Stockton and Paul have brilliant Ortg’s. But could they anchor as a one? No.

Means to say let’s keep the offense afloat I’ll take it from here sort of thing.

Funny Embiid just needs want Giannis has right now and a little more, I believe he can really dominate provided the right pieces are available.

Even though it was subpar for a contending team I didn’t mind the setup once it was altogether with Cassell, Sprewel and Wally (He was undersized but did have variety) and Fred shooting off the bench. Can’t for the life of me remember the shooting guard it’s been that long ago now lol.

Remember ways back a Nash led Suns team cooked them at home twice. Was thinking to myself at the time if Nash and Garnett were together that would be ominous. Slide Cassell over and run it.