kayess wrote:colts18 wrote:I want to hear the arguments from the KG people on why he is ahead of Shaq. They were contemporaries and absolutely no one had KG ahead of Shaq during that timeframe.
This doesn't account for the possibility that the people watching at the time simply didn't evaluate them correctly.
I don't think KG is ahead of Shaq, but many things in multiple fields get panned during their time and, when looked at in a new light, or analyzed with better methods, the paradigm changes - you see this everywhere: art (paintings, even films, e.g., Blade Runner), science (continental drift theory, germ theory of disease->handwashing)... even civil rights (and I hope I don't have to give examples here).
There's so much precedence that to simply cling to this logic of "well no one thought it at the time so it couldn't have been true" is greatly, greatly insufficient.
That said - I would like to see why they have KG over Shaq. I think Shaq was clearly more impactful at his peak [for reasons I alluded to earlier], and Garnett's gap in longevity isn't enough to overtake him. Would like to see what others think.
General thumbnail review for KG's case that isn't a specific KG vs Shaq post (don't have the time/access to do that kind of comp post justice at the moment):
1) Garnett is one of the great floor raisers in NBA history. People often focus on 2006 and 2007 to suggest that KG couldn't raise the floor as well, but my contention is that those were not the kind of casts people mean when they say "not a great cast" for other players. No, the 06 and 07 Wolves are "worst casts in the history of ever" level casts, as I described & quantified here: http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=56691827#p56691827 .
Garnett was actually an outstanding floor raiser, in large part because of his versatility. He was an elite defensive anchor, he was a Hall of Fame level scorer that could do so from many places on the court, he was able to generate team offense as a primary distributor, and he had the kind of motor and energy that could power a team through the season. Plus, his skillsets tend to allow others to be the best that they could be as well. Which meant that limited players could still get by as starters, as KG either covered for them (often on defense) or bolstered their weak spots (often with passing/spacing/gravity). Put that together, and KG took casts and generated overall team results that were better than they should be.
When I had thought that this project was going to just be kicking off this week, I had thought to use the last couple of weeks to do some new analysis/articles. One of them was going to be about great floor-raising efforts in NBA history, using some consistent methodology to evaluate cast strength and then seeing who did the most with the least. Unfortunately, I didn't get to write that article. But, I searched my blog and I do have an article written around 2009 or 2010, where I gave my opinion on the four best floor-raising efforts of the 2000s, and I picked Kobe 06, TMac 03, Wade 09 and KG 03 ( http://hoopslab.rotowire.com/post/146871534316/best-solo-missions-of-decade-kobe-wade-tmac-kg ). Whether you agree with my rankings or not, the information within (and more detailed examination of that team) supports my point here.
2) Garnett is one of the great ceiling raisers in NBA history. When he joined the Celtics in 2007, there were doubts that bringing KG, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen together at that point in their careers would produce a title (literally zero of the 18 ESPN voters in this article predicted the Celtics to win, just before the season began http://www.espn.com/nba/preview2007/news/story?page=Experts-NBAChamps ). But, that team came together and played extremely well, in large part because Garnett's impact was almost purely additive. A Pierce/Allen-led team could have made the playoffs in the East that season, and best case could have been a pretty solid team built around their offense. But, when you take an MVP-caliber player and add it to the team, and he's able to complement them perfectly and CONTINUE to make an MVP-level impact without any diminishing returns, it boosts a solid squad into historical season/champion level.
The reason that Garnett is such a great ceiling raiser is that he doesn't have to do everything in order to maximize his impact. If a team doesn't need him to run an offense, he can still be an impact offensive player as a volume finisher. If a team has a great offense, he can shunt energy that he would have used on offense to maximize a defensive impact. It's kind of the other side of the coin from versatility...there are other players that can do a lot of different things to carry a team, but KG is one of the few that can also maximize even when the team's needs are more specialized.
3) Garnett is one of the biggest impact players in NBA history. This one is a bit of a dilemma, in these projects. Because we all believe our own eye tests and evaluation processes. But there's a growing body of evidence built around attempts to tie a player's presence on the court to his team's scoring margins. This gives quantitative support to the previously nebulous concept of "impact".
But, here's the problem. No matter how much anyone writes about WHY we might believe that Garnett's impact is ridiculous, most of those descriptions can be ignored because they are inherently subjective. In this project, for example, I've written one post that goes through year-by-year in KG's early years, examining the team situation, KG's contributions to those teams (both qualitatively, and with boxscore stats), utilizing videos to illustrate some of the tools and mechanisms by which he made his impact ( http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=56862875#p56862875 ). I wrote another post about how I believed Garnett and Wilt were contemporaries as far as having some of the most tools of any player in NBA history, and how Wilt maximized his awesome tools by focusing on individual accomplishments/records while Garnett maximized his on-court versatility by tailoring his game to maximize team success in just about every situation ( http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=56889221#p56889221 ). Colbini wrote an outstanding description of the tools that help make Garnett's on-court impact so ridiculous, complete with videos and charts ( http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=56914274#p56914274 ).
But for those that didn't already believe that Garnett was worthy of discussion this early, there's pushback that ranges from polite to aggressive that all asks, in some manner, "Yeah, but where's the EVIDENCE that his impact is that big?" And some have already started dismissing our posts out of hand as being "KG biased" or "too RealGM".
But. There actually IS that growing, increasingly more adopted analytics approach that gives the most objective, detailed impact estimates that we have public access to (and by the way, the actual NBA teams are universally investing in this type of analytics). And those impact stats strongly support that Garnett has had as large of an impact as any player in the last 24 years. Which, I then might use to support some of the book-like but subjective posts from above. To me, that makes a pretty strong case from top to bottom. But in practice, at least in the last Top 100 project, was once RAPM started to be seriously utilized as evidence, there was a huge pushback against RAPM and a vocal group suggesting that RAPM was the ONLY argument that could support KG. As though the other book-like posts never happened. Which is frustrating, but I guess it is what it is.
For the record, KG doesn't take a backseat to anyone in those impact stats, not even Shaq. Shaq and LeBron, in fact, are his only real peers in those measures. If someone believes that Shaq had the higher impact, it's certainly a valid opinion, but it would be hard IMO to build an objective case for either Shaq OR KG that suggested that there was a big difference in impact between them, at their peaks, in either direction. For whatever that's worth.
4) KG does have excellent longevity. All-Star (and deserved) by year 2; All NBA level by year 3 or 4, MVP-level by year 5, still strong out to at least year 18. That's upper tier longevity
5) KG did have a historic peak. His 2003 & 2004 stand up to anyone. It ranked #8 in the last peaks project ( http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1404723 ), and could reasonably have gone higher.
Conclusion: Historic peak, outstanding longevity, one of GOAT floor raisers, one of GOAT ceiling raisers, very short list of greatest measured impacts of last 24 years, a group which includes 2 already voted in. I think that's the backbone for a very solid case
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