22 Responses to “Do Guys Really Play Better With Kobe & Phil?”

1. Kirk Says:
   February 3rd, 2010 at 2:15 pm

   Sorting by whichever category, it seems obvious that those who have performed worse are typically the older guys who took on smaller roles with the Lakers, e.g., Malone, Payton, Green, Grant, Richmond, Harper, et al. The opposite side might be true too, that younger guys end up on the positive trend.** Is there anyway to normalize the list with aging curves?

   **Smush Parker stands out as an incredible case: in the prime of his playing career, and then basically out of the league.

2. Jason J Says:
   February 3rd, 2010 at 3:04 pm

   Similarly with a guy like Shaq, he got a lot worse post Kobe / Phil due to age, so his numbers might also normalize with an age curve.

   It's always tough to tell why a guy is peaking in a particular season. Age, chemistry, health, coaching...

3. Trev Says:
   February 3rd, 2010 at 3:54 pm

   Does anything happen when you include 2004-2005 under Rudy Tomjanovich and Frank Hamblen? There's also the 1996-1999 period under Del Harris, etc.

4. Kaveh Says:
   February 3rd, 2010 at 10:56 pm

   What you forgot to take into consideration is age. I understand the comparisons of say, Trevor Ariza who has been in his prime both with and without the two. But you have Karl Malone in there as well as Gary Payton. Now we are talking about all time top 25 players (sure i may have a high regard for the glove since i live in Seattle). However, when they went on to play with Kobe/Phil, they were broken men. They were not half the players they once were. The fact is that the Lakers have been title contenders for almost the entire tenure of Kobe. They have been to the playoffs EVERY year except 1, and have been to the NBA finals 6 times winning 4 of those. What does this attract? It attracts over the hill players coming to the Lakers to win a title before they retire. In this group you can surely put Ron Harper, Glen Rice, Horace Grant, Karl Malone, Gary Payton, AC Green, Horry, Aaron Mckie, Mitch Ritchmon, Isiah Rider, Byron Russell, Brian Shaq, Samakie Walker. And that's off the top of my head! Most of these players are hall of famers or soon to be hall of famers for goodness sakes. They only came to the Lakers after they were over the hill, in order to win a championship in their greatly diminshed states. This is a great portion of your list. And it is only from the top of my head.

   This throws a wrench in your stat based analysis. You need to factor out these players. This is a variable which is quite important and not taken into account. The only player i can see from this list that would potentiall be in the opposite is Shaq. But even Shaq would not work because he had many all star years before coming to LA, and statistically he perhaps played his best ball before coming to LA. He also had many all star season after leaving LA.

5. Kaveh Says:
   February 3rd, 2010 at 10:58 pm

   The last person on my list should be Brian Shaw and not Brian Shaq. Sorry for the confusion.

6. rk. Says:
   February 3rd, 2010 at 11:07 pm

   Age is not as confounding a variable as you might believe. I'm assuming Neil weighted everything (averages) by minutes played. Over a large sample, I feel confident saying minutes played is correlated with "effectiveness" as a player. Very few players are going to be playing significant minutes if there is someone younger and better than them waiting to play. Basically what I am saying is, it all comes out in the wash. This is a group study and *not* a look at specific players. There will of course be variance but that is why having so many player-seasons available is important.

7. Kevin Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 5:29 am

   I would really have to see the full definition of these statistics to believe this argument. I look at the list of players who "performed worse" (i.e., negative efficiencies or WS3Ks), and I'm seeing a bunch of guys who were playing out their last seasons in the league when they played with Phil and Kobe (Green, Payton, Richmond, Malone, Grant, Rider). One could look at it and say "these guys had way better seasons without Phil and Kobe", or be a little more reasonable and say "Obviously these dudes have had better seasons, they were an average of like 38 years old when they finally played with Phil and Kobe". I mean, two of these guys had cemented Hall of Fame careers before going to LA. Similarly, Shaq should maybe be removed because the prime of his career was spent playing with Phil and Kobe, and he has continued to play elsewhere as his effectiveness drops with age.
   What I think is telling is the number of young guys on this list who really did nothing before arriving in LA, and then managed to play better ball in LA with Phil and Kobe (Brown, Ariza); or look at guys who had decent-to-good careers in LA, and then left and have fallen off the map (Turiaf, Devean George, Vlad-Rad, Smush, juries out on Ariza still but he's looked good).

8. Mike G Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 9:38 am

   One way to to such a study is to compare only consecutive seasons, rather than whole careers.
   Comparing Payton's Laker time to the season before and after would be a lot more relevant than what he did in his prime, in a galaxy far, far, away.

   As for the metrics used, PER will almost always drop with a reduced role; DWS/min will almost always rise when going to a better D team.

9. Owen Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 11:28 am

   Superstars win games in the NBA. They don't make their teammates better, but they certainly make them look better, because everyone looks so much better on a winning team. Call it the Turkoglu effect (although any number of players make the point. He is now posting almost exactly identical offensive numbers to those he put up in Orlando last year. The ts% is exactly the same. But he looks a hell of a lot worse playing in Toronto....

10. P Middy Says:
    February 4th, 2010 at 11:34 am

    The Win Share is what sticks out for me. Obviously, the Lakers have been winning a lot of games over the past 11 years. The players might not necessarily be playing better, but you can say they're better off! If anything, it's easier to win games with Phil and Kobe. One could make the argument that's really what "making your teammates" better actually means: making it easier for them.

11. Tsunami Says:
    February 4th, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    Owen, so Magic Johnson, John Stockton, and LeBron James didn't (don't) make their teammates better?

12. Jason J Says:
    February 4th, 2010 at 2:36 pm

    I can't get to it right now because I'm at work and they block most sites, but there's a great quote from Steve Kerr about the effect Jordan had on his teammates. The gist was that Jordan made the practices so intense that the games felt easy. He instilled confidence and belief in players by forcing them to work extra hard in practice - if you managed to compete with MJ for a 3 hour practice, it should be relatively easy to compete against most everybody else for a 48 minute game.

    So in that sense a leader can "make" his teammates better by fostering an atmosphere that promotes mental toughness. What he can't do is add skills to their games (though if he's good enough he can make sure that they only have to do what they're already good at - a la Steve Kerr playing with Michael and Scottie where he didn't have to do any PG work and just did his job as a spot up shooter).

13. P Middy Says:
    February 4th, 2010 at 3:19 pm

    I disagree with that, J. Jordan's practice habits had the potential to make his teammates. But they had to step up to the challenge. There were plenty of guys who crumbled under that very pressure. Getting better is always up to the player himself. Credit goes to Jordan for fostering that environment, but again, I think that falls in the category of making things easier (in that the crucible was readily available, rather than seeking it out in the off season, or having to constantly push oneself) rather than actually making someone better.

    You can take a horse to water . . .

14. Jason J Says:
    February 4th, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    Not to hijack the thread here, but if you couldn't make it in practice w/ MJ wouldn't you get canned or traded and hence not be on the roster? Even sucks like Stacey King and Dickey Simpkins dealt with it and performed (sort of) when necessary.

15. Natty Says:
    February 6th, 2010 at 4:44 am

    First, the most obvious is that this analysis is ridiculously simple, simply measuring the difference between players performances on the Lakers with Phil and Kobe versus not on the Lakers. That obviously is going to lend itself to a skewed result, as first off it doesn't take into account what stage players are in their careers, what roles they'll be playing, etc. As the first commenter notes:

    "Sorting by whichever category, it seems obvious that those who have performed worse are typically the older guys who took on smaller roles with the Lakers, e.g., Malone, Payton, Green, Grant, Richmond, Harper, et al."

    Furthermore, not only is it older players who are going to be taking on a smaller role with the Lakers. Virtually any player in the league who joins the Lakers will have to take on a smaller role (Ron Artest for example), and thus will have a decrease in their numbers.

    The question of whether Kobe makes teammates better is questionable. But that Phil Jackson makes his players better? Looking at individual player statistics will tell you next to nothing-it's the win-loss column that counts, not to mention championships.

16. Jason Says:
    February 6th, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    I don't quite understand here why you'd try and over-complicate with win shares. Smush Parker was at best a fourth-string guard everywhere he played without Kobe; with Kobe he averaged 10 points...a game!! (And then he complained that Kobe was the problem)

    Kwame Brown had his best years with all normal averages (points, rebounds) with Kobe. Devean George the same. Both of them are barely hanging around in the league without Kobe!!

    Trevor Ariza can't create his own shot, but he gets more of them in Houston. But his best years will still have been with the Lakers. In Orlando and New York, he barely even made it off the bench. After playing with Kobe and Phil, he got an enormous contract from Houston, probably the last such big contract he'll get.

    Brian Cook hasn't been the same since leaving the Lakers and he, too, barely makes it off the bench in Houston. Slave Medvedenko, likewise, is no longer even in the league, but he was a viable role player with Kobe and Phil.

    The basic fact is that a lot of guys who otherwise wouldn't even be in the league--or if in the league, permanent bench warmers--have played out of their gourds with Kobe and Phil. Averaging 10 points a game--or even 5, 6, or 7 for some of these guys--is something they could only do with Kobe and Phil. Without them, well, they could always seek employment with 27-year-old Smush Parker right now, couldn't they?

17. Jason Says:
    February 6th, 2010 at 5:34 pm

    Oh, and I forgot Chucky Atkins. Where's he these days anyways?

18. Neil Paine Says:
    February 6th, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    Well, the flip side of that is Artest struggling to fit in this year, Tyronn Lue turning into a borderline starting-caliber PG after the Lakers didn't re-sign him, VladRad going from a solid contributor in Seattle to an increasingly marginal performer in L.A., Rick Fox going from underrated with the C's to massively overrated with the Lakers, etc. I think you can find cases either way, but the question I was trying to answer wasn't "Will any random player play better when he joins the Kobe-Phil Lakers?" as much as it was trying to determine whether the following statement is true or not: "In the past, players have played better with Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant than without." Do you see the distinction? There's some overlap, but the former is a question of cause and effect, while the latter is simply a factual statement. I'm not saying a random player wouldn't have a better chance of playing better with L.A. than with another team, I'm just saying that in the past, players who have played with both the Lakers and other teams have (at best) played the same in both places.

19. Walter Says:
    February 6th, 2010 at 6:28 pm

    I think the study absolutely supports the Kobe makes teammates better argument. Look at the WS/3000 minutes so that the stats are normalized for games and minutes played and the results are staggering....
    I am going to focus on Kobe's second era 2004-2010 (the one without Shaq) and list the change in WS/3000 minutes for those players who played with Kobe and with another team during that era:
    Shannon Brown 8.6
    Smush Parker 5.7
    Trevor Ariza 5.2
    Pau Gasol 4.7
    Brian Cook 3.2
    Lamar Odom 2.9
    Ronny Turiaf 2.7
    Chris Mihm 2.2
    Didier Ilunga-Mbenga 1.6
    Derek Fisher 0.9
    Vladimir Radmanovic 0.8
    Ron Artest 0.4
    Kwame Brown 0.4
    Josh Powell -1.1
    Maurice Evans -2.3

    So out of the 15 players who played with Kobe and without Kobe, only 2 played worse with him than they did without him. Both of those players were also back-ups who played very few minutes with Kobe so the fact that they are negative is not a surprise as all.

    Also, it would be interesting to see what the FG% is for players during seasons on the Lakers and seasons not on the Lakers. Most of the players that have played with Kobe and another team have had there career highs in FG% with the Lakers. Kobe may not get the assists that Nash or Paul get, but he draws so much attention with double and triple teams that he creates the opportunities for his teammates to get better looks than they typically have on other teams. This I would say is "making teammates better".

20. Matt Says:
    February 12th, 2010 at 1:05 am

    Very interesting thread. I agree that age should be accounted for. I also see two other major questions.

    First, how do we know that any differences are due to Kobe and Phil and not some other factor? For example, how does being on a good team affect individual stats? Were these Lakers different in effect from any other top team? This should be easy enough to figure out by adding team record as a hypothetical independent variable and testing whether it correlates to better or worse individual stats. It would also be interesting to compare the one Jackson-free season to the others.

    Second, should we really equate individual stats to "better play"? Players are asked to play different roles on different teams and a reduction in stats doen't necessarily mean they are playing worse or vice versa.

21. Alvy Says:
    February 13th, 2010 at 6:26 pm

    Actually, Phil Jackson does make players better, I'm sure D. Berri published something about this. Also, the way you conducted the research is silly. Since when is same player still comparable even after huge age gaps? In essence, if an old Grant played well with the Lakers as he did with the Bulls, then the support goes in favor of PJ&KB., etc.

22. Adam Says:
    February 18th, 2010 at 11:06 am

    Ive heard the argument for some time now that Phil Jackson's greatness is overstated because he has had the fortune of having arguably the three most dominant players of the last quarter of a century (Jordan, Kobe, Shaq) so how hard could it be to win with those guys? Or so the theory goes. Because Red Auerbach, the previously crowned King of Coaching had to deal with such slouches as Bill Russel, Bob Cousy,Tom Heinsohn John Havlicek, and KC Jones. While there are many flaws in that line of thinking, among them, how obvious it is that basketball is not a game that allows for the possibility for one player to take a team all the way to the championship solely on his back. (see KG's playoff history in Minny). Even Jordan needed Pippen. Other than that, this theory ignores the real issue of coaching Mega super stars. Egos. The Zen Master is and has been, well, a master at managing the many different egos on his teams. Jordan's tremendous ego has been well documented (see his HOF induction speech) as has Pippen's (his famous refusal to re-enter a game in the fourth quarter) Dennis Rodman's various transgressions and moody behavior...as well as almost his entire team's almost constant feuding with GM Jerry Krause. Through it all he managed to coach the moody, arogant bunch to six titles in eight seasons. In LA, the land of high salaries and enormous egos, he managed to keep the relationship between Shaq and Kobe together long enough to win a championship...before it finally imploded. We still don't know the whole story of what really happened. Then in recent seasons, with the Lakers seemingly falling from grace, and Kobe the superstar threatening retirements and demanding trades, Jackson managed to squelch those flames and rally both his superstar and his underacheiving supporting cast to what turned out to be his 10th coaching title. So...I think you could say he does make players better, but I think its more that he gets his players to act better, and the result is better play, and more wins.