The Big Fundamental Outlier And The NBA At The Twenty Percent Mark

[m33p0]

The author also conveniently failed to mention that this was practically a new team with Mason and Hill and that the Spurs also didn't start the season with Hill (thumb injury).

KD may or may not offer more to the table than Duncan except for one major thing, clutch.

[ShoogarBear]

Hoopswor . . . uh, I mean, . . . Hollinger.

[ambchang]

Man, there are some homerific posts here...

The logic seems to be:
Duncan is way better than Garnett, because Duncan is obviously way better than Duncan. (therefore berri is an idiot)

If you read what he said, and what he has said in the past, he considers them approximately equal in production. Who knows how Garnett would perform as the best player with the best teammates in the playoffs--well, besides last year, that is.

The way I read it, the author suggests that Garnett is slightly better than Duncan, and the proof is that Garnett has a lead in win shares.

We do know how Garnett produces with great teammates in the playoffs, he took a backseat. It happened with Sota with Sprewell and Cassell, and it happened last year with Pierce.

Berri's basic theory is that each player has an efficiency rating, and if you add up all those ratings, including bench players, you more or less get how good the team is. This doesn't jibe with the NBA marketing angle that it's really all up to the "gods", the Jordans and Duncans, and nothing else matters.

Of course the ratings that was used (win shares), which actually had Bob McAdoo perform better in a season than Duncan and Garnett, T-Mac, Dirk, Gilmore and Chris Paul ranking above Hakeem ever did (these are per season numbers, and I chose the best season for each player).

According to his stats, Duncan and Garnett have been the best players of the last decade, comfortably, but apparently even mentioning the two in the same sentence is sacriledge!

His predictions have been pretty good--he said the Celtics and the Lakers were the two best teams last year, and he said the Lakers would be scary once they got Bynum back. He also said Barry was a very important part of our team.

Everyone said the Celtics and the Lakers were the two best teams last year (well, except Spurs and Pistons fans), everyone new that Bynum would help the Lakers, and is Barry that important to the Spurs?