Knicks Morning News (2018.09.09)

Mo Cheeks was one of the guys I tried to play like growin up..obviously I’m short lol. But guys like him, Zeke, Mookie Blaylock, Stockton, Charles Smith (the PG from Georgetown lol), and even Starks and Gerald Wilkins to a lesser extent are guys I tried to emulate. Good for Mo..it’s about time. I didn’t think he’d make it

In the wake of Ginobili’s retirement, someone on this website compared Ginobili to Kobe. I couldn’t help playing around on B-R comparing Manu’s advanced stats to Kobe’s, comparing ten-year runs, best individual season, championship seasons.

I came to the conclusion that you can make a strong case that Ginobili was the better player. Last week, I was hanging out with a crowd of bball junkies, some of whom played college bball, and they thought I was crazy. I don’t think I am. Am I?

I am quite sure Ginobili was the better player overall. A lot of Manu’s stats and production are underrated by casual fans because the counting stats are affected by his bench role and the fact that he had few season where he was completely healthy. Kobe had some excellent seasons and was overall a very very good player, but I would take prime Ginobili on my team over him.

Yeah, Manu vs. Kobe debates have to have a spot on the Knickerblogger Greatest Hits over the years.

It’s a good debate that brings up all kinds of interesting sub-debates (longevity vs peak, usage/efficiency, etc.).

Personally I’d take Manu to start a team because Kobe, even at his peak, required a relatively particular kind of team around him to succeed. Namely you needed medium-to-high usage bigs who scored very efficiently and rebounded the hell out of the ball. Those…don’t exactly grow on trees.

There’s no doubt that Kobe was a great player who contributed in a major way to wins within that framework, but you could plug Manu right into literally any team and he’d be a stud.

Yeah, I was just about to point out that Kobe was a legit good defender in his prime. If I had to build my team around one of them, I’d pick Kobe, even if Manu had a better career overall.

I would probably pick Manu because I think it would be easier to build a team around him that works on a consistent basis.

Kobe was a fantastic player, but the gameplan has to revolve around him most of the time. Manu was a guy who could be similarly effective while being able to slot into lesser roles if necessary for the improvement of the team. That of course if I could create very good teams around both. If I had to pick a single star and then role players, then yeah, the choice is probably Kobe.

Manu Ginobilli was a “Carlos Beltran” type of player. Guys like Beltran, who are incredibly well-rounded, don’t get the accolades like guys who are incredibly great at one thing.

Yeah, for sure, if Manu and Kobe switched teams, SA would have less championships and LA would have more. For sure.

Sure.

The MPG argument is a good one in favor of Kobe. At his peak Kobe had freakish conditioning, and exerted an incredible amount of energy on both ends of the floor for a crazy amount of minutes. Kobe played 3,000+ minutes in a bunch of seasons, and Manu never played 2,500+ minutes in any season of his career. So you’re getting an extra 600-800 minutes of Kobe in a given season. That’s pretty significant.

Here’s their h2h stats:

http://bkref.com/tiny/Oac4g

Look at their playoff stats in particular.

I hated Kobe because the hype was so exaggerated for a player with his efficiency but I buy the comparison to Paul Pierce offensively, and a Pierce on offense with all NBA defense is an amazing player. Kobe was first team 9 times and overall 12. I wish the Knicks finish the next decade with so many selections as a team.

In the wake of Ginobili’s retirement, someone on this website compared Ginobili to Kobe.

That had to be me. #somethingsneverchange

I have always said that if you had five minutes left and had to choose between the two, it’s got to be Manu. But you can’t ignore Kobe’s (early) defense and his overall productivity. I’d say whichever way you go with it, it’s closer than most would think.

Also, Manu arrived in the league at age 25. At the same age Kobe had been in the league for seven years.

Manu is such a legend. How many guys have a Gold Medal, an NBA title, and a Euroleague Triple crown? I may go to Springfield for his induction.

This is a case where the classic cop out answer “it depends heavily on who I already have” applies.

It’s a cop out, but IMO it’s the right answer. That’s why earlier in the thread I was specific and said “if and he’s going to be your #1 scorer”, who do you take.

Kobe was one of the most versatile scorers to ever lace up. Manu was also versatile, but he’s more of a #2 option. Also, not mentioned is that Manu was a 6th man. As such, he probably played more minutes against backups than Kobe did even if Manu was on the court down the stretch.

So for me, if I was building a team from scratch and needed a #1 option, I’d take Kobe and it’s not even close (better defender and more versatile). However, if I already had Durant, Nowitski, Jordan or someone like that on my team and I was looking for Robin, It’s a much tougher call. Kobe is still the better player, but I’d be able to count on Manu to play his #2 role efficiently whereas Kobe might keep gunning some bad shots even if his usage was lower.

dudes we are like 2 weeks from training camp!

We are probably going to suck until KP comes back and hits stride (assuming he does), but I haven’t been this optimistic about our position in a long time. Setting aside the Hardaway and Baker overpays, we are positioned exactly where we should be given where we were when Mills/Perry took over. I haven’t agreed with every move, but they are mostly good moves and I like our draft a lot.

But if role and situation matters the discussion is kinda pointless, as in hypotheticals we’ll never know what’s Manu’s career would have looked like in other circumstances. He was the unquestioned #1 on an Olympic gold team and played heavy minutes against the other teams best players in 4th quarters his whole career. He had around 26-27% usage in his peak and specially when Parker was younger he carried the creative load for these Spurs for the most part. Now, was he a sixth man for his whole career because that’s his best role or because he happened to be drafted by the Spurs with Duncan already on the team? I have no idea, but my guess is the second option.

Kobe was also always better when he had a more talented teammate alongside him, with Shaq, and he was pretty good as a #1 option but he had amazing teams around him too when he won. People really underrated how amazing the Lakers core was on their two last titles, Gasol was easily a top 15, maybe 10, player and Odom, Ariza, Bynum and even Artest when he joined were very strong players.

It’s offensive and/or borderline stupid to imply that Manu wasn’t defended like he was a #1 option. He was a volume scorer in the playoffs from ‘03 through the end of the decade. His ridiculously good playoff performances are a sign that he was on a deliberate restriction in the regular season, which is a silly thing to knock him for. The guy showed up to ball and no one was better at the SG position for the greater part of that decade.

Deng signed with the Wolves.

Is there anything less than a 100% chance that Thibodeau would sign Noah if we bought him out? I wouldn’t even offer you 1-25,000 odds because I would never throw away a dollar like that.

Hopefully he wants to play bad enough to leave some money on the table like Deng did.

His ridiculously good playoff performances are a sign that he was on a deliberate restriction in the regular season, which is a silly thing to knock him for.

I’m not knocking it as in “he was just a bench player”.

I am suggesting that when you come off the bench, you are defended by bench players. At the margin I think that helps your boxscore stats. It’s kind like playing in the G league helped Burke’s stats. The impact is just smaller in the NBA because NBA rotation players on average are much better than G League players.

Kevin McHale was in a similar role at times. He was great player too. He came off the bench because given the makeup of the Celtics, that was the best way to maximize the output of both the 1st and 2nd unit. After he retired, McHale was asked how he felt about that role. He said he loved being defended by bench players and laughed.

You and I both value stats.

The difference is we value different stats.

I view the boxscore in the same way I view the final time of a horse race. The final time of a horse race tells you how fast a horse ran. That’s one of the most important pieces of information. But it doesn’t tell you what the pace was, whether he was inside or outside on the turn, whether he was all out late, whether the track favored his style etc…

All that supplemental information is called “trip handicapping”.

It’s the next step after you learn how to use final time figures. It’s kind of like basketball in that it’s very difficult to quantify some of these things. You can underweight something, overweight something, not fully understand it and all the inter-relationships etc… It’s a learning process. But the one thing you can’t do is ignore it. If you do, you will be wrong a lot of the time.

Manu not being able to start has always been so dumb to me since he finished every game when it counted. He wasn’t the Ironman that Kobe was, that is for sure. But it always seemed a thin line between being a 28 and a 34 minute per game kind of guy. I don’t know why Pop chose the former so much when Manu was clearly the second best player on the team. Whenever Manu had to play the extra minutes, his numbers never suffered. It just seems like one of those things that became a thing without ever being all that real.

But anyway, I would go live in Manustan if I could. So anything that I say on the matter needs a large grain of salt. I hope he comes back to coach.

I am suggesting that when you come off the bench, you are defended by bench players. At the margin I think that helps your boxscore stats.

Manu actually played over 12,000 minutes as a starter in his regular season and playoff career. His per 36 numbers and efficiency in those games are statistically identical (actually modestly better) to his numbers coming off the bench. Evidence beckons.

Kobe scored 81 doe….
–Millions of Americans

Manu actually played over 12,000 minutes as a starter in his regular season and playoff career. His per 36 numbers and efficiency in those games are statistically identical (actually modestly better) to his numbers coming off the bench. Evidence beckons.

Interesting.

I’m making the case there are lots of things that impact boxscore stats “marginally”. They are difficult to isolate & measure because there are offsets and complex inter-relationships.

In racing, if a horse runs wide on the turn, there’s no doubt he ran further, but there will be days when those outside paths are fastest, some horses prefer running outside, the pace matters etc…

I know for certain that ground loss matters in racing. The problem is it could be swamped by other factors for a given day/week/month, at a given racetrack, for a specific horse etc… The data will sometimes show ground loss not only doesn’t matter, but that it’s an advantage. It will obviously be wrong. We at least know the math for ground loss.

There are similar things going on in basketball. I personally think there are many advantages and disadvantages to playing with better or worse teammates that impact boxscore stats.

Typically there are marginally better players in the starting lineup. So it’s more likely you’ll be defended by a better player playing against starters than bench players. This is the case you were also making about Burke and the G league. The difference being that the G league impact is large enough to swamp other factors and stand out more often.

Unfortunately, there’s a 0% chance I can isolate everything that was going on with Manu that impacted his stats as a starter vs. bench player. But I’m not going to suspend my belief that he benefited on offense from being defended by bench players because it’s not easy to find in the data any more than I’d abandon my ground loss example. Impact is just small enough to be hidden by other factors.

@48

But then you would have to also acknowledge that Manu, while he faced weaker opposition coming off the bench, also played in lineups with overall worse players, as his minutes were often staggered early in games with Duncan and Parker. He was playing against worst players, but also with worst teammates, and yet his production remained excellent in both scenarios.
I would also argue the actual difference is in fact minimal because of two factors: Manu always closed games for the Spurs as a de facto starter, and the years he came into the NBA was a time when superstars played major minutes. Kobe himself averaged 40+ mpg many times in his career, just like Iverson, Pierce, McGrady, Carter, pretty much all of the elite guards / wings Manu faced. Even a guy like Raja Bell averaged around 37-38 minutes in those years. Considering all of those guys played crunch time minutes and Manu did too, which brings a lot of overlap, the actual window where he was facing weaker players is probably around 4-7 minutes at the most. I agree it could be significant but all things considered, it’s far from the most important thing (as also, opposing superstar guards would have a 5-6 minute window at the start of games where they wouldn’t have to defend Manu).

But how many assists Kobe generated going 6 for 24 in that game 7 clutch performance? That’s what I want to know.

I had forgotten how awful that game was until looking it up. Ray Allen went 3/14, Metta somehow shot 18 times and hit only 7, the entire Lakers team combined for 11 assists and 11 turnovers, Kobe somehow ended with 15 rebounds and Gasol with 18 and the Lakers shot 20 more free throws than the Celtics. I remembered it was a garbage game but not this bad.

I don’t buy the “he was advantaged by playing against bench players” argument either. What I DO buy is the argument that he did not play anywhere near the same amount of MPG argument, and to me, that argument makes all others moot. Again, look at their head-to-head numbers in the playoffs. Kobe played 14.4 mpg more than Manu! So regardless of whether they were both in at the end of games, one player was in after getting 5.3 minutes of rest and the other was in after getting 19.7 minutes of rest. Not to mention that Kobe had a far more prominent role on both ends than Manu, requiring more energy.

The pointzz argument is stupid as well because it is so utterly one-sided.
37 vs. 15
27 vs. 17
39 vs. 8
35 vs. 13
36 vs. 7
20 vs. 10
31 vs. 11
15 vs. 15
22 vs. 17
42 vs. 21
22 vs. 8
26 v. 16
27 vs. 10
22 vs. 7
30 vs. 30
28 vs. 7
39 v. 9

Oh, btw, Kobe shot .472 in those games. Manu shot .449.

Case closed.