2011-12 RealGM Player of the Year Discussion Thread

[nikomCH]

Whats crazy about LeBron in 2010 (beside Game 5 against the Celtics)...people called his 27/19/10 game in game 6 vs. the Celtics a D- game....Well...Skip Bayless did..

IIRC he also had 9 turnovers and shot 8/21.

[MisterWestside]

Not at all.

Oh? Because I still had to actually google the information to get the source (and by the way, it still lacks the lineup data and minutes played). Lots of hand-wringing on your part for no reason.

To the data: the theory that no Bynum probably gives Kobe more spacing (and therefore higher ts%) isn't invalid. There are still drawbacks to using raw +/- and on-off data though (lineups, noise, adjusting for opponent, etc.). It's why I look to provide the contextualized box and +/- numbers wherever possible.

It's a bit besides the point though. The point was to show Kobe didn't provide "top 5" impact on his team, and there's plenty of evidence to support that (from the metrics I provided and the Lakers play in their stretch of games without Kobe on the floor).

[Mo26]

Actually, there isn't. Took a team with the worst bench in the league, the worst 3-pt shooting, the worst PG and SF rotation, the worst at creating turnovers (by far), the worst head coach in the NBA, the least productive 4-15 in the entire league, and a totally new offensive and defensive system to the #3 seed. Incredible how they overachieved. Easily top 5 impact. But I'm glad to see you acknowledge how stupid looking at raw TS%z!!! is.

[Mo26]

Not at all.

Oh? Because I still had to actually google the information to get the source (and by the way, it still lacks the lineup data and minutes played). Lots of hand-wringing on your part for no reason.

Wasn't hand-wringing at all. Try again.

[MisterWestside]

Wasn't hand-wringing at all. Try again.

Yes you were. It wasn't until DocMJ stepped in that you provided the info (that I still had to google for more detail).

Actually, there isn't. Took a team with the worst bench in the league, the worst 3-pt shooting, the worst PG and SF rotation, the worst at creating turnovers (by far), the worst head coach in the NBA, the least productive 4-15 in the entire league, and a totally new offensive and defensive system to the #3 seed. Incredible how they overachieved. Easily top 5 impact.

..and you posted this before, and it doesn't show where KOBE made that "impact".

You're being deliberately obtuse. But if that's how you want to think, then think as you wish.

[Mo26]

Yes you were.

Not really.

..and you posted this before, and it doesn't show where KOBE made that "impact".

Yes, I did.

You're being deliberately obtuse.

No, not really.

Try again.

[bballcool34]

Hat off to Mo26 for essentially ruining a great thread that was coming along nicely and interesting to read.

Not with his opinions which he has a right to, but with the fact that he continuously said the same thing to the point of copying and pasting that exaggerated block of text about LA having the worst of everything, while basically not addressing what others said. Good job pal.

[mysticbb]

Well, it is true and 7 games doesn't change that.

So, they were obviously able to play MUCH better than the worst team in the league, yet you still claim that they were the worst at those things and not even considering that Bryant could be the reason for that.

Lakers without Bryant made 395 of 1136 3pt attempts, that is 34.8%, which is about league average. Kobe Bryant made 107 of his 350 3pt attempts, that makes 30.6%. Bryant is the very reason that the Lakers weren't good at 3pt shooting overall.
All other Lakers created 778 turnovers in 7863 plays, a 9.9 TOV%, Bryant created 64 turnovers in 729 plays or 8.8 TOV%. You may wondering how Bryant ended up with 85 steals. Well, when someone creates a turnover while Bryant is picking up the ball, it counts as steal for Bryant. So, counting the actual situations will show that Bryant was creating less turnovers in average than the rest of the Lakers.

no training camp.

Which teams had a training camp?

lol @ Dork being top 5 when he came into the season out of shape and played like garbage until about mid-Feb. Then was swept in the first round. Great leadership there by Dork.

Nowitzki during the first 7 games: 24.4 points per 36 min on 58 TS%
Next 12 games Nowitzki played until start of February: 15.0 points per 36 min on 46 TS%
Last 47 games (starting on February the 3rd!): 25.1 points per 36 min on 58 TS%

Where does the myth comes from that Nowitzki started out in "out of shape" and "played like garbage until mid February"? Nowitzki wasn't in the best shape of his life, but somehow he was still able to score rather efficient and on a pretty high rate. Then his knee problems started and they tried to play him through it. Which was obviously not the best idea, but the Mavericks hadn't quite a better option. As it became worse they decided to work on those knee problems specifically and Nowitzki missed 4 games due to that. You know, Nowitzki had that knee sleeve for a reason, and it wasn't for asthetic reasons.
When the knee became better, Nowitzki started to play similar to his first 7 games again.

The Mavericks lost in the first round against a superior team without HCA. They played the Thunder close in 3 of those games and with a bit more luck that could have very well ended up with the Mavericks beating the Thunder in 3 of the 4 games played. They didn't had that luck, obviously, but it is not like they played them incredible bad.

And despite the bad games due to the knee injury, Nowitzki ends up with the better boxscore based metrics and far better +/- based metrics. Nowitzki also missed only 4 games, while Bryant missed 8 games. Somehow the reality shows us as Nowitzki being the clearly more impactful player, increasing the chances for his team to win more than Bryant did. If Bryant is so easily better, why did the Lakers played worse with him on the court than the Mavericks with Nowitzki, while the Lakers without Bryant played clearly better than the Mavericks without Nowitzki? Shouldn't the better player being able to lift his team more than the supposed to be worse player?

[Mo26]

Hat off to Mo26 for essentially ruining a great thread that was coming along nicely and interesting to read.

Good job pal.

Mad because I expose the obvious agenda against Bryant.

And now crying like a bitch.

Good job pal. Way to contribute.

[Mo26]

Well, it is true and 7 games doesn't change that.

So, they were obviously able to play MUCH better than the worst team in the league, yet you still claim that they were the worst at those things and not even considering that Bryant could be the reason for that.

Because they were. It's a fact. Deal with it. The 5-3 record with Bryant was an obvious fluke. They'd have been a 8th seed or in the lottery without him.

And Bryant certainly wasn't the reason they he worst bench in the league, the worst 3-pt shooting, the worst PG and SF rotation, the worst at creating turnovers (by far), the worst head coach in the NBA, the least productive 4-15 in the entire league, and a totally new offensive and defensive system to the #3 seed.

Try again.

[drza]

Re: Paul vs Garnett vs Dirk

As I posted awhile ago, my top-5 this year are likely to be some order of Durant, Garnett, LeBron, Paul and Dirk. LeBron is self evident at this point, and I talked a bit about Durant yesterday, so now I'll tackle the other three.

Paul, KG and Dirk are all currently poster-children for impact players as measured by the non-boxscore methods. Being a true floor general (Paul), playing outstanding defense (Garnett), and creating offensive spacing (Nowitzki) are all aspects of the game that aren't well measured in the box score but that can have a huge impact on your team results as captured by the +/- stats. Of those three "specialties", Paul's is the one that comes with the ball in his hands so perhaps it's not surprising that of these three Paul is the one that measures out in the boxscore stats that tend to follow the ball (Paul 2nd to LeBron in both PER and WS on the regular season). It's hard to figure out where to put "presence on the court pulls defenders out of paint and opens up scoring lanes for teammates" in the box score, which doesn't do Dirk the same favors as Paul in the boxes despite offense being his calling card as well. Garnett's defense also barely makes a ripple in the box scores, though you can at least point to the Celtics' #1 ranked defense and Garnett's #1 ranking in defensive rating for some evidence of his defensive impact...though there are better ways to see this. Namely, the +/- stats. At the end of the regular season Dirk, Paul and KG finished 1, 3 and 5 respectively in RAPM, which gives a more accurate view of their overall effect on games than the limited box scores do. All three were vitally important cogs in strong teams, with similar levels of impact.

In the postseason, we didn't see enough from the Mavs to get a big enough dataset for Dirk. In his four games his scoring volume went way up (26.8 ppg) on similar efficiency (56% TS), but his rebounding went way down (only 9.8% rebound rate...barely higher than Paul's 8.1%). I don't trust a 4-game sample for +/- data, but as someone that spot-checked Dirk's +/- in individual games through the regular season it was surprising to see the Mavs get outscored with him on the court but outscore the Thunder with him off...that just rarely happens on this Mavs team. Nevertheless, I don't think we can really say that Dirk's postseason hurt him much...though it also didn't help him.

Paul, on the other hand, clearly had a poorer playoffs than he did the regular season. There was a lot of talk about him having an injury that he played through, but in the yearly evaluation of his performance the injury doesn't help him. His performance as measured by the box scores was down dramatically in his 11 playoff games, and he went from one of the league's best in regular season +/- measures to one of the league's worst in the postseason (-15 on/off +/- in the playoffs). While the 11-game sample size may be too small to draw high levels of results from the +/- data, the fact that it fully corroborates both the trend in the boxscores as well as the naked eye results on the court that showed Paul struggling in the 2nd round combines to not do Paul any favors. His playoff performance was well below what we would have expected from a top-5 player.

Of the three, Garnett is the one that most helped himself with his postseason performance. More than any other factor, Garnett's ability to maintain his high level of play from the last few months of the regular season while upping his minutes to 37 min per game was the biggest reason for the Celtics' surge to within a quarter of toppling the Heat in the ECF. The Celtics had no other viable players over 6-8, which likely tied into Garnett's ridiculous postseason +/- scores (+35.8 on/off +/- in 20 games)...but on the flip side, their complete lack of any kind of big men outside of Garnett just underscores what Garnett was able to provide. As the only big on the team, he completely locked down the paint and gave the Celtics their defensive identity with no help. For the first time that I can remember, LeBron and Wade actually hesitated to drive to the rim because Garnett was everywhere. Garnett was a universal fixture in the postseason MVP conversations that swirled along in the playoffs, and still finished in the top-5 of ESPN's ranking (the highest finish of anyone whose team didn't make the Finals) http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs ... p-rankings

All three players were close after the regular season. With the postseason factored in I've got Garnett leading this grouping, and at the moment I'm leaning Dirk then Paul behind him.

[JordansBulls]

Is there going to be another thread on this for the actual voting?

[MisterWestside]

At the end of the regular season Dirk, Paul and KG finished 1, 3 and 5 respectively in RAPM, which gives a more accurate view of their overall effect on games than the limited box scores do. All three were vitally important cogs in strong teams, with similar levels of impact.

Good post drza. Made a lot of valid points.

RAPM still has its own biases like any "all-in-one" stat, but just looking at the regular season, I would put Paul on a tier above Dirk/Garnett. 3rd in RAPM, 2nd in both SPM and WS/48 - he had a dominant regular season across the board. If not for LeBron James, he would be collecting an MVP award (and for those who like "storylines", how could you not like the Clippers return to "glory"?)

Shame that his injury limited his production in the playoffs.

[mysticbb]

They'd have been a 8th seed or in the lottery without him.

Well, I can even agree with the Lakers being a 8th seed without Bryant. And while the difference between 8th seed and lottery isn't that big, even low lottery (like 9th or 10th) would be possible. Nobody is saying that Bryant does not have a positive effect on the outcome of games in average. Just that his impact isn't as big as it used to be and that others have a bigger impact.

And Bryant certainly wasn't the reason they he worst bench in the league

Indeed, Bryant wasn't the reason for the bench play, but the Lakers hardly had the worst bench in the league. Did you watch the Bobcats for example?

the worst 3-pt shooting

Bryant's 3pt shooting was WORSE than the 3pt shooting in average of the rest of the Lakers. Bryant's bad shooting from 3 was one of the reasons for the Lakers being in average at 32.6%, which is 25th overall while 5 teams being worse. Thus, the Lakers weren't even the worst.

the worst PG and SF rotation

How did you figure that out?

the worst at creating turnovers (by far)

I just showed that Bryant contributed to that by forcing less turnovers in average per play than the remaining Lakers in average.

the worst head coach in the NBA, the least productive 4-15 in the entire league

How did you figure that out?


Isn't it weird that you have to revert to such hyperbole in order to push Bryant? It seems as even you know that Bryant isn't among the Top5 anymore.

[Mo26]

Well, I can even agree with the Lakers being a 8th seed without Bryant.

So without him we both agree they'd be a 8th seed or in the lottery.. and with him they're the #3 seed and have the 6th best record in the entire league...that's not top 5 type impact?

Indeed, Bryant wasn't the reason for the bench play, but the Lakers hardly had the worst bench in the league. Did you watch the Bobcats for example?

The Lakers were dead last in bench PPG with nobody even coming close. I'm sure.

This year the Lakers are dead last at 20.8 ppg. The next team ahead of us is the Clippers who average almost 4 ppg more than us.

So we're not only last, we average 14% less points than the team in the 29th position in terms of bench scoring.

Bryant's 3pt shooting was WORSE than the 3pt shooting in average of the rest of the Lakers. Bryant's bad shooting from 3 was one of the reasons for the Lakers being in average at 32.6%, which is 25th overall while 5 teams being worse. Thus, the Lakers weren't even the worst.

Bryant had to create all his threes. Everybody else got WIDE-OPEN threes from the defensive attention he drew. They still bricked.

Metta shot under 30% on wide-open shots. Barnes was 33%. Blake 33%. Fisher 32%. The only decent shooter was Goudelock and that idiot Brown refused to play him.

So yes, they were a **** three-point shooting team. Anyone who watched Lakers games this year knew shooting was a huge weaknesses. Teams doubled Pau/Andrew/Kobe with zero hesitation because of this.

How did you figure at out?

Check the numbers.

Maybe it changed after the Sessions trade but there wasn't a team in the league getting less from their PG position than the Lakers. Same thing with the SF spot.

I just showed that Bryant contributed to that by forcing less turnovers in average per play than the remaining Lakers in average.

He was #1 on the team in SPG. They suck because they zero athleticism.

Bynum:0.5 SPG
Pau: 0.6
Sessions: 0.7
Barnes: 0.6
Fisher: 0.9
Blake:0.8
Murphy: 0.3
McRoberts:0.4

terrible.

How did you figure that out?

Here are two articles detailing how horrible the Lakers 4-15 is...posted mid March.
http://www.silverscreenandroll.com/2012 ... hink-it-is
And Matt Barnes has the distinct honor of being the only other guy not to suck, with a 14.8. Keep in mind, that's already technically below average, but it still is enough to qualify Barnes as far and away the 4th most effective player on the roster. And after Barnes? We're single digits the rest of the way. There are names on that list that you know, like Fisher, Walton, Kapono, World Peace. Names you might not expect, like Blake, Murphy, or Goudelock. Every single one of them sporting a PER below 10.

That's right folks. Roster spots 5-14, a grand total of 10 players, all come in with a PER that barely qualifies them to play in the league. How bad is that? Well, I did a quick check of the rest of the teams in the league, and no other team sports more than 8 dudes with single digit PER. Cleveland is the second worst, with 8 players under 10. The Lakers' partner in crime when it comes to really old superstar cores, the Boston Celtics, chime in with 7 single digit PER players. So do the New Jersey Nets. There are a few fine teams out there (OKC, Miami, the Clippers, and Orlando) with six single digit players.

You might be thinking 10 players vs. 8 or 7 isn't that big of a difference, that some of these other teams have bench units almost as weak as our own. You would be wrong, because, if your mind is anything like my own, this next bit of numerology will blow your mind in its epic horror. At first, my thoughts were along those same lines ...10 players ...8 players, what does it matter when these guys probably hardly ever see the court? So the next thing I checked was how many minutes each team is giving to players with single digit PERs. Second place goes to the Celtics, with a total of 2783 minutes having gone to these "bad" players. Oklahoma City surprisingly leads the rest of the pack with 2415 total minutes, thanks to high minutes-low PER contributors Kendrick Perkins and Daequan Cook. Of course the Lakers lead the league in minutes to bad players, but where do they fit into the bell curve? They smash the hell out of it. The Los Angeles Lakers have played single digit PER players a total of 4263 minutes, an increase of more than 50% over the 2nd place Celtics.

To put that in perspective, consider that even though Andrew Bynum, Pau Gasol and Kobe Bryant all play closer to 40 minutes per game than they do to 30, the Los Angeles Lakers still give almost half of their available court time to players who can't manage better production than you might expect out of a D-league player. To be exact, 47.7% of all court time goes to these players.

If you were wondering why the Lakers had rumored interest in Rasheed Wallace, this is why. If you don't understand why it might make sense to trade Pau Gasol when there's no way the Lakers might get equal value in terms of a star player, this is why. According to these numbers, if Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and Andrew Bynum were to take the night off, the Lakers would struggle to win a D-league contest. The Lakers need depth and they need it very, very badly. They have 10 days to acquire some, whether that means taking on additional salary or getting rid of prized players.

And by the BAD stat:

To calculate BAD, I started with every player with a PER below 12. I subtracted his PER from 12, and multiplied by his minutes played. For example, a player with a PER of 10 and 200 minutes played would add 400 BAD points for his team.

I then summed the BAD rating across all the players on the team, so that all 30 teams had a rating.


We have only four players with a PER over 12. We have a BAD rating of 12,499, which is about 2000 points clear of the second place team, the Magic.

So yeah, the Lakers 4-15 was HORRIBLE. They had TERRIBLE depth.

And M.Brown is a terrible coach. There's a reason he gets so much criticism. Dude is a joke.

Isn't it weird that you have to revert to such hyperbole in order to push Bryant?

None of this is hyperbole. He certainly is more deserving than Dork/Nash/Westbrook etc

It seems as even you know that Bryant isn't among the Top5 anymore.

Well, he very easily is. He gives me 28/5+/5/1.2. He commands as much defensive attention as anyone. He's #3 in non-PG APG behind only Iggy and LeBron. He gives 5.4 RPG from the SG postion, which is excellent. He possesses the greatest skill-set in the world. He's still capable of handling a large load of minutes. 39 MPG this year. He took a terribly flawed team that would have been a 8th seed or worse to the #3 seed/6th best record in the NBA. True, he only has a league-average 53% TS, but of course that has far more to due with the terrible spacing, Mike Brown's incompetence, and the ridiculous Bynum/Pau front-line. Which is why he has a very solid 56% TS with one or the other is off the court.

Then in the playoffs he's great. he steps his game up, which is what you want from a superstar Through 12 games he puts up 30/5/5 and 109 ORTG/25 PER/#1 in OWS for the stat-geeks. He has a bunch of great games.
31/5/4/2/54% TS
38/4/2/3/59% TS
22/8/6/2
43/6/5/2/58% TS
31/4/3/1/59% TS
17/8/2
36/7/6/2/55% TS
38/8/6/55% TS
42/5/2/1/59% TS
So yeah, looking at the entire season, and considering how weak the comp is this year... he's easily top 5.

Deal with it.

[mysticbb]

So without him we both agree they'd be a 8th seed or in the lottery.. and with him they're the #3 seed and have the 6th best record in the entire league...that's not top 5 type impact? :-?

There is a 2.2 point difference between the 3rd seed and the 11th seed, thus a top5 type impact is not needed in order to get to the 3rd seed here.

The Lakers were dead last in bench PPG with nobody even coming close. I'm sure.

This year the Lakers are dead last at 20.8 ppg. The next team ahead of us is the Clippers who average almost 4 ppg more than us.

So we're not only last, we average 14% less points than the team in the 29th position in terms of bench scoring.

The Lakers bench also took the least amount of shots, had the 3rd least TO and PF and the 2nd least amount of minutes. Maybe there is a correlation between points and opportunities to score. When Gasol or Bynum weren't on the court, Bryant was chucking like crazy. The bench player had no chance to score points, because they got no opportunity. Looking at the shooting percentages they weren't that bad; 20th in FG% and 16th in 3PT%, maybe it would have been a different story, if they would have gotten more touches?

So yes, they were a **** three-point shooting team. Anyone who watched Lakers games this year knew shooting was a huge weaknesses. Teams doubled Pau/Andrew/Kobe with zero hesitation because of this.

Actually, one of the reasons was Bryant's unwillingness to pass it to an open shooter and rather take the contested shot. Multiple times players were open on the wings or in the corner, but Bryant rather took a bad shot.

And sorry, the Lakers' players beside Bryant had a better 3pt% in isolations, p&r, spot up and after screens than Bryant. Bryant's was WORSE than the rest of the Lakers in basically all types of 3pt shots.

Maybe it changed after the Sessions trade but there wasn't a team in the league getting less from their PG position than the Lakers. Same thing with the SF spot.

The Lakers were 20th in terms of FG% from the PG-spot and 9th in terms of 3pt%. They got the least amount of points, because they took the least amount of shots. They were in the middle in terms of assists, 7th in terms of turnovers, 16th in terms of rebounds. Yeah, if a player doesn't take shots, he will not make points.

He was #1 on the team in SPG.

Bryant was #1 in terms of SPG, because he played the most minutes and picked up the lose balls, when someone else created the turnover. Looking at the numbers derived from video analysis (Synergy Stats), the Lakers without Bryant forced turnovers in 9.9% of the plays, Bryant forced it in 8.8%. Bryant was worse at forcing turnovers than the rest of the Lakers.

Here are two articles detailing how horrible the Lakers 4-15 is...posted mid March.

Well, two biased and bad articles in order to confirm that? How about making your own analysis? And why doesn't it show up in the results, that the Lakers are so bad?

And M.Brown is a terrible coach. There's a reason he gets so much criticism. Dude is a joke.

And yet, Mike Brown has one hell of a great track record in plays after timeouts, he also constantly overachieved with his teams in terms of wins over expecations. There are far worse coaches in the NBA than Mike Brown. Especially defensively he is one of the best in the league.

Well, he very easily is.

If he would be, there wouldn't be such a discussion. Don't you think. I had Bryant within my Top5 EASILY in multiple years before and the numbers supported that EASILY. So, if Bryant is still such a great player, why didn't play the Lakers much better with him than without him? He made a slightly below average team without him play slightly above average level basketball. That's hardly Top5 worthy.

[Mo26]

There is a 2.2 point difference between the 3rd seed and the 11th seed, thus a top5 type impact is not needed in order to get to the 3rd seed here.

Lottery to #3 seed is top 5 worthy. Wrong.

When Gasol or Bynum weren't on the court, Bryant was chucking like crazy.

Wrong. He was considerably more efficient when either or both were off the court. Try again.

The bench player had no chance to score points, because they got no opportunity.

No, it's actually because they suck balls.

Looking at the shooting percentages they weren't that bad; 20th in FG% and 16th in 3PT%, maybe it would have been a different story, if they would have gotten more touches?

They would have been worse. 20th in FG%. Dead last in PPG on wide-open shots. Turrible.

Actually, one of the reasons was Bryant's unwillingness to pass it to an open shooter and rather take the contested shot. Multiple times players were open on the wings or in the corner, but Bryant rather took a bad shot.

Actually, it's because they simply aren't that good. Multiple times players were open on the wings or corner, Kobe would pass, and they would brick. Watch some games.

And sorry, the Lakers' players beside Bryant had a better 3pt% in isolations, p&r, spot up and after screens than Bryant. Bryant's was WORSE than the rest of the Lakers in basically all types of 3pt shots.

And sorry, the Lakers players did this:Metta shot under 30% on wide-open shots. Barnes was 33%. Blake 33%. Fisher 32%. The only decent shooter was Goudelock and that idiot Brown refused to play him.

Try again.

The Lakers were 20th in terms of FG% from the PG-spot and 9th in terms of 3pt%.

Sucks. 20th in FG% on wide-open shots. Last in PPG.

They got the least amount of points, because they took the least amount of shots.

No, it's because they suck. There isn't a worse rotation than Fisher/Blake.

Bryant was #1 in terms of SPG, because he played the most minutes and picked up the lose balls, when someone else created the turnover.

it's actually because he's a flat-out better ball-thief and everybody else is terrible. The minutes have little to do with it.
Bynum:0.5 SPG
Pau: 0.6
Sessions: 0.7
Barnes: 0.6
Fisher: 0.9
Blake:0.8
Murphy: 0.3
McRoberts:0.4

terrible.

Looking at the numbers derived from video analysis (Synergy Stats), the Lakers without Bryant forced turnovers in 9.9% of the plays, Bryant forced it in 8.8%. Bryant was worse at forcing turnovers than the rest of the Lakers.

Synergy is often wrong.

Well, two biased and bad articles in order to confirm that?

There's nothing biased about those articles. You're the biased one.

How about making your own analysis?

No need. The info is right there. But you'll just dismiss because of your obvious bias.

And why doesn't it show up in the results, that the Lakers are so bad?

It did.

And yet, Mike Brown has one hell of a great track record in plays after timeouts, he also constantly overachieved with his teams in terms of wins over expecations.

He overachieves because he's had great players. He hurts more than he helps. Would anybody but a **** coach turn Pau essentially into a mid-range player whose pretty much abandoned the post? Would they make Bynum the black-hole into a #2? Would they be stupid enough to play Bynum/Pau together even though it kills the Lakers spacing and isn't a good fit? Would they play their 16th year veteran 39 MPG? Would they have problems with almost every player on the team? I could go on. He's horrible. Period.

There are far worse coaches in the NBA than Mike Brown.

Nope.

Especially defensively he is one of the best in the league.

Yet the Lakers were worse after his arrival. Let me guess. It's Kobe's fault.

If he would be, there wouldn't be such a discussion.

There's a discussion because it's Kobe. There's obviously a large anti Kobe/Lakers bias on this forum. You'd have to blind not to see. But if anybody else had his 2012 resume they'd comfortably be in top 5 considering how weak a year it was.

Don't you think. I had Bryant within my Top5 EASILY in multiple years before and the numbers supported that EASILY

And he's easily top 5 this year. Of course, there's far more to the game than just numbers.
.

So, if Bryant is still such a great player, why didn't play the Lakers much better with him than without him?

They'd be significantly worse without him over a full season. So yeah, he is a great player.

He made a slightly below average team without him play slightly above average level basketball.

He took a team that would have been in the lottery without him to the #3 seed in a very tough conference and had the 6th best record in the entire league. Yup.

That's hardly Top5 worthy.

[/quote]
Yes, it is.

So is 30/5/5/ and 25 PER/109 ORTG/#1 OWS(for the geeks) over 12 games in the post-season.

Try again.

[drza]

At the end of the regular season Dirk, Paul and KG finished 1, 3 and 5 respectively in RAPM, which gives a more accurate view of their overall effect on games than the limited box scores do. All three were vitally important cogs in strong teams, with similar levels of impact.

Good post drza. Made a lot of valid points.

RAPM still has its own biases like any "all-in-one" stat, but just looking at the regular season, I would put Paul on a tier above Dirk/Garnett. 3rd in RAPM, 2nd in both SPM and WS/48 - he had a dominant regular season across the board. If not for LeBron James, he would be collecting an MVP award (and for those who like "storylines", how could you not like the Clippers return to "glory"?)

Shame that his injury limited his production in the playoffs.

You make a good point about RAPM having its own issues, but the rest of your post kind of depends on how you choose to do your statistical analysis. The more traditional approach is to rely heavily on the box scores with little-or-no +/- consideration, which is still probably the default among much of the basketball-watching world (including many commentators and personalities). Then there is a moderate approach in which the various advanced stats (box score or +/-) are all weighed into the mix fairly equally to give kind of a weighted sum...that seems to be what you'd advocate based on your response, and I've explored that approach through the years (example here from 2011 season: http://rotosynthesis.rotowire.com/Best- ... BD2766.htm ).

But my current approach to statistical analysis is a bit different from that. For a good background write-up to support the approach I tend to favor, I reference Doctor MJ's blog http://asubstituteforwar.com/2011/03/26 ... tatistics/ and specifically this figure from that write-up:



The target on the left represents the box score stats. They are "reliable" in the sense that there isn't a huge amount of variance in a great player's box score stats...it doesn't take a whole lot of games to realize that Durant is going to average in the upper 20s on good efficiency. However, since the box scores only cover part of the game and completely ignore or poorly measure other parts (such as defense, spacing or floor generalship) they will never be fully "valid" as a standalone way to measure the game.

The target in the middle represents the +/- stats. The shots are all over the place, representing the main weakness of the +/- stats as you referred to...they aren't as reliable as box score stats. There are issues such as separating correlation from causation, isolating one teammate's impact from another's, and the huge amount of game-to-game variation that one might see in +/- scores for an individual player. The best solutions to these issues are increased sample sizes, but even a full season might not be enough sample without additional math tricks (such as the "R" in RAPM) and studying multiple years at a time can come with its own issues.

In a perfect world our statistical analysis would look like the target on the right, both valid and reliable. Since our world is imperfect, I ask myself what's the best way to approximate the target on the right...where should I start? And my answer is that using the box score stats as a primary determining factor will never get me to the target on the right, because they just don't cover enough of the game. No matter how hard I look at them, how much box score data I have to work with, or what type of math trick I apply to them I will only be getting part of the picture. So to me, the statistical place to start is with the +/- data...it gives us a (potentially very) noisy starting point, but one that under all that noise should be valid (or accurate).

So I'd start with the +/- data, then apply my "basketball knowledge" to that base to decide how reliable I think the +/- data is. And under the "basketball knowledge" umbrella comes everything from the box score stats to the "eye test" to the analysis of others to just the things I've learned in a lifetime of watching basketball.

So I might go down the list of this year's top RAPM performers, for example, and decide how much I buy it:

1) Dirk Nowitzki. This tells me that Dirk's presence on the court correlates with the degree of his team's success more than any other player in the league, to the degree of accuracy that RAPM can estimate. So...do I buy it? Well, I know that Dirk has a history of being near the top of the league in this measure, even at times when his box score stats wouldn't have placed him quite as high leading to the theory that his offensive spacing impact is very high and not captured in the boxes. I know that the Mavs' entire offense is built around him, and that last season he was able to lead that team in a way that made me vote him top player in the league. His defensive RAPM values are surprisingly high, but they've been that high 2 years in a row now which suggests some repeatability to his having a positive defensive impact at this stage of his career on this team. All told, I buy that this result is reasonably accurate...at least within the first couple of rings on the bullseye. Enough to say that he MUST be #1 because he was #1 in RAPM...of course not. But definitely enough that I consider this strong evidence that he is somewhere near the top of the list, even this season in which he is not viewed to be as elite as he was a year ago.

3) Chris Paul. Paul's elite RAPM status is easier to justify, because as you pointed out his box score stats also argue that he's elite. In addition to things like his history of excellence and the obviousness of his impact from watching the games.

6/7) Bonner and Collison. Both are role players that play limited minutes with a specific skill set...both can be brought into the game for specific situations that favor them and taken out when the match-ups don't work. Thus, my common sense-o-meter tells me that their high marks suggest that they fulfill their roles well but this doesn't make them more valuable than the other players behind them that have much larger roles on their teams.

Etc.

The difference between how you and I look at Paul vs Dirk this season is that, based on what you said, Paul's eliteness in both the box scores and the +/- arenas would combine to boost him to another level over Nowitzki. I disagree...I think that Paul's elite box score stats help to justify his elite +/- results because a lot of his impact comes in ways that can be measured by the boxes, while in Dirk's case we have to look outside of the boxes to corroborate his elite +/- results. But at the end of the day, their impact (valid, and reliable to the extent that I can make it based on all of the factors I can examine) was similar this regular season.

[mysticbb]

Try again.

Why? The only response I get is your opinion without anything to back it up except of "ppg". As if "ppg" would be the only thing to consider. And why would it matter, if player 11 to 15 are worse on the Lakers than on other teams? They don't get many minutes anyway. The Lakers 2 to 10 are matter, when it comes to the reality. And somehow those players where able to be just fine without Bryant playing. Those are the facts. Bryant didn't make as big of an impact as at least 5 other players in the league. That is the reality, that's what really happened on the court. If Bryant passes the ball to a 35% 3pt shooter, it will still be better than taking a bad shot with 29% success rate (Bryant's 3pt% when he is creating the shot). Those are the facts. Deal with it!

[MacGill]

Why? The only response I get is your opinion without anything to back it up except of "ppg". As if "ppg" would be the only thing to consider. And why would it matter, if player 11 to 15 are worse on the Lakers than on other teams? They don't get many minutes anyway. The Lakers 2 to 10 are matter, when it comes to the reality. And somehow those players where able to be just fine without Bryant playing. Those are the facts. Bryant didn't make as big of an impact as at least 5 other players in the league. That is the reality, that's what really happened on the court. If Bryant passes the ball to a 35% 3pt shooter, it will still be better than taking a bad shot with 29% success rate (Bryant's 3pt% when he is creating the shot). Those are the facts. Deal with it!

My hats off to you mysticbb, another solid breakdown/recap. You have a lot more patience than I do in dealing with the 'I am right', 'no, I said I am right', 'don't you know that I am right'? 'Why would I need to keep an open mind when I am right'?