Friday, December 10, 2010

Pau Gasol vs Scottie Pippen

There are some silly people out there who've tried comparing Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. It's not a contest of course, MJ is the G.O.A.T. and Kobe hasn't ever been the best in the league. A more interesting contest is between their number 2s, Scottie Pippen to MJ and Pau Gasol to Kobe. It sounds absurd at first to compare Pau and Scottie, but Pau is one of the most under rated players in the game today and Scottie was over rated in his time.
First off, let's look at their place in my Top 5 ratings. Pau never shows up in the top 5 of any year. Pippen is the 4th best player in 93-94, but that was his best year and more importantly he was his teams star that year (MJ was playing baseball). Still, the edge here goes to Scottie.
Next, let's look at PER, a John Hollinger special. Specifically, let's look at their 3 best years as a #2.
Pau: 22.2 (08-09) 22.9 (09-10) 24.0 (07-08 and this year).
Scottie: 21.0 (95-96) 21.3 (96-97) 21.5 (91-92)
Admittedly, PER undervalues defense some, but the according to Hollinger's stats Pau is still better.
How about Win Shares? Here's each's three best years again.
Pau: 13.9 (08-09) 12.0 (05-06) 11.0 (09-10)
Scottie: 13.1 (96-97) 12.7 (91-92) 12.3 (95-96)
When he plays Pau is better, but thanks to his durability Scottie is more consistent. It's a pretty even draw.
One for Scottie, one for Pau, and one tie makes the two pretty even. Looks like it's a tie, which in a way makes sense. Kobe tried to match Mike with a great #2, a crazy guy (Artest for Rodman), a high level 6th man (Lamar Odom for Toni Kukoc), and of course Phil Jackson. All Kobe has to do now is win 72.

2 comments:

  1. You sir are epicly retarded. I know this is a long time ago but you need to answer me back. When Pau Gasol is a top 50 player of all-time and gets inducted in the HoF, start running your mouth.

    If you want to go by PER -

    Larry Bird's 1986 Playoff PER: 23.9
    Magic Johnson's 1988 Playoff PER: 22.9
    Pau Gasol's 2010 Playoff PER: 24.0

    Pau Gasol > Prime Larry Bird & Prime Magic Johnson


    When Pippen was without Jordan in 93-94, he averaged 22/9/6 on 49% shooting. Without Jordan, they won 55 games. You realize that the year they won 72 games, they had some of the best at their position, correct? Artest compared to Rodman is an absolute joke, right? Rodman is top 10 greatest rebounders of all-time and in the Hall of Fame. Artest is barely a top 25-50 defensive players of all-time at his peak. When he was on his one-year championship run with the Lakers, he was 11/4/3 in the regular season on 41% shooting and 11/4/2 in the playoffs on 40% shooting. Compare this to Dennis Rodman who averaged 5/16/3 during the championship run on 45% shooting. While Dennis Rodman has always scored few points, his defensive impact, rebounding, and even shooting percentage are so much better than Mr. World Peace, it's not even funny. Hell, Rodman was better than World Peace ever was. Obviously the better rebounder is Rodman, given his 7 rebounding titles. He has two DPOY awards compared to Artest's one. He's been on the All-Defensive first team 7 times and second team once. Ron Artest is two-time first team and two-time second team. Rodman is better than Artest at everything except scoring, which Artest did on around 40% shooting.
    Stop using PER and start using stats and recognized awards. Jordan had an incredibly stacked team in 90s. Hell, it's arguable whether Gasol is better than Rodman. Rodman was such a beast on rebounding and defense.

    "Scottie was overrated" and Gasol was "underrated" just proves your dumbassery. Gasol is a very good player with consistent scoring, rebounding, and is a reliable post player, and is borderline one of the top 5 prime power forwards of the decade, next to Dirk, Garnett, Duncan, and Webber. A problem is that Gasol has never won a playoff game without Kobe (0-16, I believe.) :) While Pippen has a winning playoffs record without Jordan. Meanwhile, in the playoffs, Kobe without Shaq or Gasol is 4-8 while Jordan without Pippen is 1-9. Keep in mind that Jordan was playing the East while Kobe was playing in the West.

    Win shares is a flawed system, sir.
    it's a misleading stat that benefits two types of players:

    -Defensive specialists with minimal offense, which is why Tyson Chandler was so close to Dirk in 2011, and why Ben Wallace almost led Detroit in 2004

    -High volume, high efficiency scorers.

    If you laid off the bias, you would be a pretty good writer. Oh, and last but not least -

    Gasol 2009 - 13.9 WS
    Duncan 2005 - 11.2 WS
    Duncan 2007 - 13.0 WS
    2002 Shaq - 13.2 WS
    1988 Magic - 10.9 WS
    1995 Hakeem - 10.7 WS
    etc.,
    etc.

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  2. This same stat had Ryan Anderson over Dwight Howard, Carlos Boozer over Luol Deng, and Marcin Gortat over Steve Nash this year.

    Not trying to rip on the stat or anything, especially since I'm not exactly an expert on it, but the stat obviously doesn't tell the whole story given those 3 examples (as well as Harden having more than Westbrook this year as well).

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