MO12msu wrote:Some plus minus data:
RAPTOR
- 05 Nash: 5.76 total, 7.3 offense, -1.54 defense
- 06 Nash: 5.74 total, 6.51 offense, -1.04 defense
- 07 Nash: 6.32 total, 7.52 offense, -1.20 defense
- 16 Russ: 6.59 total, 6.63 offense, -0.04 defense
- 17 Russ: 6.84 total, 7.79 offense, -0.95 defense
On/Off (From bball reference)
- 05 Nash: +14.9 (1st on team), +17.4 offense, +2.5 defense (positive is bad for defense)
- 06 Nash: +9.1 (2nd), +8 offense, -1.1 defense
- 07 Nash: +11.7 (1st), +13 offense, +1.3 defense
- 16 Russ: +12.6 (Tied for 1st), +10 offense, -2.6 defense
- 17 Russ: +12.4 (1st), +10.5 offense, -1.9 defense
First thing: RAPTOR is not +/- data. It uses +/-, but it also uses other stuff. Other stuff that tends to favor Production over Impact.
Doing a quick google, I found this ranking of
5-year RAPMs up through 2021.
If I rank the best numbers for the two players in question, here's what I see:
1. '13-17 Westbrook 4.55
2. '07-11 Nash 4.46
3. '08-12 Nash 4.30
4. '06-10 Nash 4.07
5. '05-09 Nash 4.01
Now, first, with Westbrook appearing at the top, there's an argument right there for Westbrook having the higher peak.
Second, the fact that these are 5-year runs gives us the argument that Westbrook had a stronger 5-year prime.
At the same time though:
It's really something the way Westbrook has one 5 year stretch towering above all his others. Basically, his RAPM takes a bit leap forward when we get a 5-year-run that includes '16-17, but apparently by adding in '17-18 it falls back down to earth. And it's just vital to note that the way this is jumping up and down like this as Westbrook loses his co-star and then gains a new one screams "This probably wasn't about a player peaking. This was probably about a player being best suited for impact on the '16-17 team."
And for me that's a problem, because the '16-17 Thunder weren't a serious team and we all knew it. It's not a sin to be able to lift a weaker team more than a stronger team - it's what we expect with notions of scalability for players in general - but to the extent that difference in impact really stands out, that's the essence of being a floor raiser.
Of course, I know some would argue that Westbrook just happened to fall off massively in '17-18, but while I'd certainly agree his effectiveness fell off, dude was averaging a triple double so arguing he was post-prime just doesn't make sense to me.
Let's note that to a much lesser degree Nash is showing the same thing. Nash's biggest numbers here are basically the post-Marion years, with the last two years in question being post Amar'e. So it's not that if we had some objective Scalability metric we would expect Nash to get a perfect slope of 0 either. (A perfect score incidentally would imply that you'd have the same impact on a team with a 0.0 SRS as one with 99.9 SRS.)
But since we know that Nash synergized historically well with both Marion & Amar'e - they were never the same outside of their Nash years - I'd argue that this more gives us a baseline for how we should expect graceful scaling to look.
Last thing: I don't think RAPM adequately measures a year like '04-05 Nash when it's a guy arriving on a new team and immediately grabbing the team's culture by the horns. Not looking to take anything away from D'Antoni here, but I think it's important to remember that this isn't a Kerr-at-GS situation where a coach comes in, makes changes to what the other coach did, and the players all looking amazing. In Phoenix, that transformation came not with D'Antoni's arrival but with Nash's.
Anyway, pretty telling that Nash in his actually most impactful year - '04-05 - isn't even in his 3 best 5-year-stretches according to this RAPM. So yeah, to me, this data favors Nash over Westbrook, and yet still underrates Nash.
