Originally appearing at gladwell.com:
The Case for Kevin Garnett
NOTE: Technically this is Malcolm quoting
something written by Dave Berri, so the number of
words written by Malcolm is only twenty or so.
Still, these are very good words from Malcolm and anytime he quotes something
written by us, that is good.
Here's an excerpt from a recent post
by David Berri, one of the Wages of Wins guys, on his
blog.
Anyone who believes in the
conventional, adhoc methods of valuing basketball
players has to answer for the injustice done this year to Kevin Garnett:
I analyzed
the 2005-06 season and the player who led the league in Wins Produced was Kevin
Garnett. Garnett finished the season with 26 Wins Produced. This marks the
fourth consecutive season Garnett has been the most productive player in the
NBA. Yet the sportswriters didn’t show KG any love when it comes to the MVP
voting. Not a single sportswriter named him on an MVP ballot. He also wasn’t
named to the All-NBA First Team, Second Team, or Third Team.
The problem for KG is not his game,
but his teammates. In 2002-03 Garnett produced 31.5 wins. The rest of his team
produced 15.1. The next season Garnett produced 30.5 wins while the rest of the
T-Wolves produced 25.3 victories. The increased productivity of his teammates
allowed the writers to notice Garnett and give him the league MVP award.
In 2004-05, as we note in the book,
Garnett was essentially the same player who won the MVP. He produced 30 wins,
but his teammates only produced 14.8 victories. This past season, just to make
life even less fun, his teammates only produced 9.4 wins. So over the past four
seasons, Garnett’s teammates have averaged 16.1 wins per year. Although Garnett
is averaging close to 30 wins per season, it is not enough to overcome the
performance of his co-workers.
This past season no player in the
league had less productive teammates. Only two of his fellow T-Wolves posted an
above average wins production per-minute played – Wally Szczerbiak and Eddie
Griffin – and one of these was traded away during the season. And Griffin was
only barely above average.
And that is the tragedy of Kevin
Garnett. Year after year he is the most productive player in the league. And
year after year he plays with many players who are not only
not average, but quite a bit below average.