Parker and Ginobili: future HOF ?

[Mike G]

At least 3 times recently, I've heard the Spurs' Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili referred to as "future Hall of Famers". No "arguably" in the sentence.

It doesn't seem to depend on what they may do in the future; and Parker is only 31 years old. People seem to think they've done enough already. Ginobili is a 2-time All Star, and 3 times he has gotten MVP votes. At 35, he's looking to be well past his prime.

Parker, though, is still prime. He's been an All Star 5 times, won the 2007 Finals mvp, all-NBA 2nd or 3rd team three times.

Using b-r.com's Win Shares, here's the cumulative ranks of players current this season, with various multiples of their playoff winshares.
The first column is just ranking by regular season Win Shares: Playoff WS are multiplied by zero.
Subsequent columns re-rank players based on arbitrary multiples of playoff WS, added to regular season WS.
The column named *1 is just total Win Shares, RS+PO

Code: Select all

.   PO* 0      *1         2         3         5         10        20
    Garnett   Duncan    Duncan    Duncan    Duncan    Duncan    Duncan
    Duncan    Garnett   Bryant    Bryant    Bryant    Bryant    Bryant
    Nowitzki  Bryant    Nowitzki  Nowitzki  James     James     James
    Bryant    Nowitzki  Garnett   James     Nowitzki  Nowitzki  Nowitzki
    James     James     James     Garnett   Garnett   Garnett   Billups

    R Allen   R Allen   R Allen   R Allen   R Allen   Billups   Garnett
    Kidd      Kidd      Kidd      Billups   Billups   R Allen   R Allen
    Pierce    Pierce    Pierce    Kidd      Kidd      Wade      Wade
    Nash      Billups   Billups   Pierce    Pierce    Kidd      Kidd
    Billups   Nash      Nash      Nash      Wade      Pierce    Pierce

    PO* 0       1         2         3         5         10        20
    Marion    Marion    P Gasol   Wade      Nash      Ginobili  Ginobili
    Carter    P Gasol   Wade      P Gasol   P Gasol   Nash      P Gasol
    P Gasol   Wade      Marion    Marion    Ginobili  P Gasol   Nash
    Brand     Carter    Carter    Ginobili  Marion    Parker    Parker
    Paul      Paul      Ginobili  Carter    Parker    Marion    Marion

    Wade      Brand     Paul      Parker    Carter    D Howard  D Howard
    Hill      Ginobili  Parker    D Howard  D Howard  Carter    Durant
    McGrady   D Howard  D Howard  Paul      Paul      Terry     Odom
    A Miller  Hill      Brand     Brand     Terry     Durant    Terry
    D Howard  Parker    Terry     Terry     Bosh      Paul      Bosh

There's no "correct" column here. Playoff games and minutes might be 2 times or 10 times as relevant to Hall of Fame status. I'd say somewhere in between.
Win Shares are partial to high-percentage scorers on successful teams.
In regular seasons only, Parker and Manu rank #22 and 24 respectively.

[Bobbofitos]

The only player that appears multiple times on that list that will not be a HoF (nor should he) is Jason Terry. MAYBE Elton Brand.

Everyone else is a deserving HoF. So yes, Manu doesn't stand out when compared to other HoFers... But he doesn't look worse, either.

[Mike G]

Ginobili passes Nash in the "*10" column. But those last two, 10 and 20, are sort of "out there". Yet perhaps no more preposterous than the 0 and 1 columns, which count playoffs not at all or no more than other games.

Is Billups a shoo-in? Win Shares loves him inordinately. And he's had great playoffs.
Dropping off the chart as playoffs are magnified: Carter, McGrady, Hill, Brand.
Here's hoping Chris Paul reverses his postseason luck.

[jbrocato23]

Manu is unquestionably a hall of famer. Besides having a fantastic career with the Spurs, most notably in the playoffs, the guy led Argentina to an Olympic gold medal.

[Statman]

Manu is unquestionably a hall of famer. Besides having a fantastic career with the Spurs, most notably in the playoffs, the guy led Argentina to an Olympic gold medal.

Without looking at any stats - I think of them both as future HoFers.

[xkonk]

BBall-reference thinks that Parker has a much better chance than Manu: http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _prob.html . Given Manu's international play and his specific role in the Spurs' championships though, I can see him getting more credit than the model gives him.

[Bobbofitos]

Ginobili passes Nash in the "*10" column. But those last two, 10 and 20, are sort of "out there". Yet perhaps no more preposterous than the 0 and 1 columns, which count playoffs not at all or no more than other games.

Is Billups a shoo-in? Win Shares loves him inordinately. And he's had great playoffs.
Dropping off the chart as playoffs are magnified: Carter, McGrady, Hill, Brand.
Here's hoping Chris Paul reverses his postseason luck.

Billups has a finals MVP. He has that nifty streak/odd trivia about being the only played in the last X years to be in the conference finals 6+ straight years in a row or something silly like that.

He's also still adding to his numbers, albeit only marginally. For right or wrong reasons he was seen as the driving force behind the Pistons team.

I don't know if he's a "shoo-in", but he has a very high likelihood of getting in. (Shoo-in perhaps being 98%+ or so, Billups is likely 85-90%)

[Mike G]

Well, he has a .223 chance, according to b-r.com. I doubt that will increase, unless at 37 he returns to form and wins another title.
He posted all-star-like numbers as soon as he hit Detroit -- 20.4 PER and 2.04 ws/48 -- in 2003.
The Pistons suddenly were contenders, and some made the allstar team:
'03 to 05: Ben Wallace
'06: Wallace, Wallace, Hamilton, Billups
'07 : Hamilton, Billups
'08: Hamilton, R Wallace, Billups

So he was there 3 1/2 years, had won that Finals mvp, before he was ever named to an allstar team. And then it was as just one of 4 Pistons.
He was then 29. Late bloomer Steve Nash was 27 in his first allstar game.
Billups is 3-time all-NBA 2nd or 3rd team.

[schtevie]

I offer this comment with some regret because "Who is HoF worthy?" discussions inherently tend to be nutrition (and flavor) free.

Though there is no formal sense of false advertising (the Hall only asserts Fame as a criterion, after all), the misperception generally remains that only its inhabitants are the greatest basketball players of their generations. (What is of course nonsense: both in terms of who is in that should be out and who is out that should be in.) So what inevitably transpires are weird meta-conversations about whether specific players have the attributes and resumes consistent with the beliefs and preferences of voting sportswriters who, on average, are highly ignorant about player value.

Today's outrageous case in point: Manu Ginobilli.

It is with wry amusement that I see that his current probability of getting in the HoF, per B-R's model, is 0.1331. This is more than a wee bit short of the 0.5 "required". (In fairness to the model, it doesn't incorporate the foreign player phenomenon, where the NBA was joined mid-career, and MG had a glorious, pre and extra-NBA career. This said, MG having entered at the relatively young age of 25, he might not fare much better if such variables could be added.)

But we here are not so easily fooled. We are all familiar with these new-fangled analytical techniques based on +/- statistics that strongly suggest that he is one of the two greatest shooting guards of his generation, and perhaps such evidence should be brought to bear in "Hall of Best Basketball Players" discussions.

You can look at Ilardi and Barzilai's multi-year weighted APM regression for 2008, where you see MG as the #1 2 and the fourth best player in the league (http://www.82games.com/ilardi2.htm#table). That is to say he was then measured as being marginally better than Kobe, whose probability of being in the HoF, per B-R, is 1.0000!

Alternatively, if RAPM is your preference, you can look at what remains on Jeremias' site, and there too you see that MG has been a much more productive player than Kobe on a per possession basis, not just for a "single" year but over their comparative NBA careers (and this is a low-ball comparative estimate of MG, I should think, as I believe he enters the regression at age 25 with a replacement-level prior, whereas Kobe does not). It is only when you account for MG's fewer minutes played per game (what is a limitation imposed by Gregg Popovich) that their per game contributions equalize (and then Kobe pulls ahead absolutely based upon fewer games lost to injury).

But the point should be very clear: In a hypothetical "Hall of the Best Basketball Players", there is no "arguably" in the claim that Manu Ginobilli would be a future member, even completely discounting his pre-NBA career. Perhaps if the good folks at B-R would add a "now that's a bad boy right there" dummy to their HoF model, justice might eventually be better served.

[Statman]

Exactly Schtevie - we (well, most of us here I think) have known their real impact for a long time. Unlike many of their contemporaries - their "production" has almost always been very meaningful. Thus, my quote:

Without looking at any stats - I think of them both as future HoFers.

[dtjmcauliffe]

My lazy mans guide to the HOF: Rank by draft class. If players are in the top 3-5 of their class, they're probably solid contenders, unless the year is horrible(2000)

[schtevie]

Exactly Schtevie - we (well, most of us here I think) have known their real impact for a long time. Unlike many of their contemporaries - their "production" has almost always been very meaningful. Thus, my quote:

Without looking at any stats - I think of them both as future HoFers.

Erm... The Gods of +/- have favorites, and Tony Parker hasn't been among them, not never until perhaps very recently. I recall talkingpractice's spreadsheet showing him as having been among the elite this past year, and maybe the IPV special sauce would elevate him beyond what J.E.'s RAPM results show for previous years .

What I find interesting about the case of Tony Parker is that it is an apparent illustration of something that I believe is true, and what I expect will eventually become conventional wisdom: that productivity in a +/- sense, at least for better players, peaks later than commonly believed. (What I infer from having played around with the data at http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/.)

Another point not to forget is the "biases" (positive and negative) that point guards face in +/- land. On average, they are a liability (see http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2008 ... lus-minus/ for a result that I expect still holds, and is, in the instance, historically relevant). So being one of the best PGs in the NBA doesn't translate to being one of the best players in the NBA, but the Hall must have PGs! Because....Tony Parker!!!!

[DSMok1]

What I find interesting about the case of Tony Parker is that it is an apparent illustration of something that I believe is true, and what I expect will eventually become conventional wisdom: that productivity in a +/- sense, at least for better players, peaks later than commonly believed. (What I infer from having played around with the data at http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/.)

That's an issue with J.E.'s construction of RAPM, not reality--he does not adjust for aging decline from one year to the next, so his results are systematically biased towards older players. It's not necessarily what's really happening at all.

[schtevie]

What I find interesting about the case of Tony Parker is that it is an apparent illustration of something that I believe is true, and what I expect will eventually become conventional wisdom: that productivity in a +/- sense, at least for better players, peaks later than commonly believed. (What I infer from having played around with the data at http://stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com/.)

That's an issue with J.E.'s construction of RAPM, not reality--he does not adjust for aging decline from one year to the next, so his results are systematically biased towards older players. It's not necessarily what's really happening at all.

Ah! One waits to see what "reality" produces. I think we all are looking forward to seeing regression results with aging effects incorporated. (And ones that don't subsequently get shoved down the memory hole.) One issue is whether such results show that productivity maxes out at the 25 to 26 years (if I recall that correctly) or something just a bit later, another is the degree to which decrepitude encroaches post-peak. Again, my sense is that the old timers have a bit more to offer than is conventionally recognized.

[Statman]

Again, my sense is that the old timers have a bit more to offer than is conventionally recognized.

I have three letters for you - HGH.