Is it fair to say I like our 2nd round picks better than our 1st.

[Guest]

Oh man this is great how we're having yet another Malone - Horford debate where @AHF is actually having to put in time looking up stats.

Sometimes there are debates that you just can't win no matter how much effort you put in.

[AHF]

John Stockton.

PnR/PnP PF. Who did you list that was also a PnR/PnP PF? 

Apparently Utah had a lot more of these guys than I remember.

 

The reality is that if Horford could create his own offense he would have a higher usage rate.  

[Admin]

Now if we could just get @Wretch and @MaceCase and @TheNorthCydeRises all putting in their essay posts this thing could really get long winded. 

[Guest]

[NBASupes]

Apparently Utah had a lot more of these guys than I remember.

 

The reality is that if Horford could create his own offense he would have a higher usage rate.  

Look at Boozer before and after Sloan? 

 

Look at Malone before and after Sloan? 

 

Look at Deron before and after Sloan? 

 

Horf has to create his own offense as it is and still has a TS% higher than most of the NBA. 

[NBASupes]

Buck Williams doesn't even play like, have the body like, Al. He's a garbage man. That's what he is. His PER is always average at best. Al hasn't played that role since his 3rd year. 

[AHF]

Horf has to create his own offense as it is and still has a TS% higher than most of the NBA. 

 

Which is why >70% of his FGs are assisted which is greater than the team as a whole.  The rest of the Hawks are assisted on 66% of their FGs.

 

The numbers don't bear out your idea that Horford is "creating his own offense."  The last two years his assisted FG% rate is .771% and .709%.

 

In comparison, Paul Millsap was assistted on .641% of his 2pt field goals.  The only starter in each of the last two seasons who is more reliant on someone to assist him is Korver.  

 

Horford's reliance on others to set him up due to his limited ability to create his own offense will continue to depress his point totals.  It is predictable and you can see it in the numbers.

[NBASupes]

Which is why >70% of his FGs are assisted which is greater than the team as a whole.  The rest of the Hawks are assisted on 66% of their FGs.

 

The numbers don't bear out your idea that Horford is "creating his own offense."  The last two years his assisted FG% rate is .771% and .709%.

 

In comparison, Paul Millsap was assistted on .641% of his 2pt field goals.  The only starter in each of the last two seasons who is more reliant on someone to assist him is Korver.  

 

Horford's reliance on others to set him up due to his limited ability to create his own offense will continue to depress his point totals.  It is predictable and you can see it in the numbers.

Al is heavily assisted. We know that, he is a movement player which is the same as Malone. So what. The bottom line is find me a movement player with an elite playmaker and I'll fit you a great fit. 

 

 

I have always heard people argue whether Malone was great because of Stockton or whether Stockton was great because of Malone, or whether both would have had similar production even without a legend as their pick and roll partner. Rather than attempt to answer all of these at once, I decided to at least start with the most common one I have heard: that Stockton would not have had other worldly assist numbers without Malone as the finisher on pick and rolls.

I am by no means trying to make this the definitive answer to this two decade long question, and want to get some caveats to everything I'm about to write out of the way now:

1. There are limited advanced statistics from Stockton and Malone's prime years, or at least, I am struggling to find them. Some of the most useful for answering this question, like the number of pick and rolls that were run, percentage of baskets assisted, and overall league numbers pertaining to those two things during that era, as well as accurate on/off numbers or even how much time Malone and Stockton DID NOT share on the court. As such, I am working with what I can.
2. Because of the above, I am forced to make some logical (in my opinion) leaps and assumptions about the vicinity of those stats that may or may not have a semblance of accuracy.
3. Since there is no data analyzing to whom and how often Stockton passed, I did not feel comfortable making precise assumptions about how many of his assists went to each player and instead played it on the safe side for the sake of the critics (this will be covered below).
4. When analyzing what the Jazz would do without Malone, I did not bother to add additional usage rates to other members of the Jazz. While this would inevitably happen, it is impossible to say who would receive the largest bumps and how it would affect efficiency so I purposely left it out because I didn't think I could make anyone totally happy.
5. When evaluating league-wide stats compared to Malone's, I used the arbitrary search limitations (via BR) of C-F's, F's, C's, and F-C's that started at least 41 games. I used this because I saw it as necessary to assume Malone's replacement and competition would be starting caliber bigmen (its logical to assume he wouldn't play against or be replaced by below average bigs) and that group seemed to fit the bill the best. However I recognize that there are some weird outliers (like Larry Bird) who aren't the best comp's but it was the best I could find. Also, since fg% was a factor, I feel obligated to point out that some of the players in this data set shot threes, which lower overall fg% (unless your Curry or Korver), and are an extremely unlikely result as a roll man in a PnR, but the average 3's per minute attempted by this group was extremely low, and I deemed them insignificant noise, but they are noise all the same.
6. Everyone must understand that the Jazz at this time were running the pick and roll largely IN SPITE of the rest of the league. It was considered an outdated offense that wasn't adapted by the rest of the league until the 2000's (it is now the most common play run in the half court set, and by a wide margin). As such, many speculate that the Jazz had an advantage because pick and roll defenses were much less refined and practiced than they are now, so players within the Jazz's system would see a boost in production/efficiency. There is some evidence supporting this, but it isn't conclusive and I did not assume this because of that.
7. On a similar note, there is no way to say whether the lethality of the Stockton to Malone duo helped draw in double teams and thus opened easier dishes, and consequently assists to outside shooters or bigs under the basket. I do not take this into account because of that, as well as I think it is fair to assume many of those assists would have come from Malone after the double team hit him which would not affect Stockton's assist numbers, as well as there are often double teams even in PnR's with lesser players than Malone.

The longevity of Stockton and Malone makes this even harder to answer because there are so many years to analyze. I could average their prime years, do the equations to convert them into advanced stats and go from there, but frankly I am a college student without that much time and patience and their ridiculous longevity also calls into question exactly what would be considered their "prime". Because of this, I chose a single year that I determined to be the best average year for both of them within their "prime". The year I chose was 1991-1992, a solid year for both Stockton and Malone, but neither had a career high in any relevant stat to his question, and at the same time it wasn't close to any career low.

In 1991-1992, Stockton averaged 13.7 assists. Malone averaged 28 points on 9.9 (is it fair to call that 10?) made field goals a game. In order to understand how many of those "10" field goals were assisted, we have to look at modern day equivalents since that data is not available before 06-07 (if this data exists PLEASE tell me where). In order to find a similar number, I looked at modern day bigs who had high usage rates, played with a good passing point guard, and ran the pick and roll a lot (I also looked for players with similar skill sats and roles as Malone). Some of the players I used to help you get a feel were (in no order, according to Hoopdata): Amare in 10-11 (ran the PnR with Felton [he was decent that year ok?] a ton. 52.6% assisted), Amare again in 06-07 (dat PnR wit Nash, 64.9% assisted), Scola 10-11 (ran it with Lowry. 64.3 assisted), Boozer in 09-10 & 10-11 (ran it with Deron, then with Rose. Interestingly went from 74.2% assisted to 64.7% assisted), Blake Griffin in 12-13 (with Chris Paul, 64.1% assisted), and David West in 10-11 (with Chris Paul, 60% assisted). I looked at some other examples as well, but you get the gist, teams with a good pick and roll duo, who ran the pick and roll a lot, generally had a roll guy with an average assist percentage of approximately 64% (As an interesting aside, starting bigs actually seem to have a higher percentage of their baskets assisted when they are not in a pick and roll heavy offense or are not the primary roll man, the league average for PF's was closer to 66-67%, not what I would have expected). I have often heard that many teams in the current era of the NBA run the PnR even more than the Jazz did in the 90's, but there is no way to prove this aside from me watching film and counting pick and rolls, so let's assume the assist percentage translates somewhat accurately. Let's say that Malone had 64% of his baskets assisted.

It is safe to assume that not 100% of Malone's assisted baskets came from Stockton, but it IS safe to assume it was the vast majority, and since there is no number I could pull that wouldn't be 100% guesswork, we are going to assume that Stockton was indeed responsible for all of Malone's assisted baskets, just to stop the haters (that's a joke). So that means 6.4 baskets to Malone were Stockton assists, and 4.6 weren't.

Let's assume then that Malone got traded to another team early in his career (heaven forbid!) for an average starting power forward (this is the list I used for the upcoming analysis btw). In 91-92, the average big shot 49%, compared to Malone's 52.6%. The average big also had a usage rate of 19.7%, compared to Malone's leading 30.3%. The average turnover rate for starting bigs was 12.9%, surprisingly Malone's was only 11.6%. Let's assume that the Jazz's primary PnR man is exactly average, and that the Jazz still stick with a PnR based offense (Sloan is still the coach, so we can be pretty sure of this), so 64% of his baskets are assisted. We'll also assume this player absorbs all of Malone's minutes (37.7 per game is a lot, but then again, back then starters played more minutes. 17 bigs in 91-92 played over 37 mpg, this year only 14 players total averaged that much). This average player would make about 6.3 buckets a game. This means 4 (4.032) of those a game would be assists from Stockton (sticking with the "Stockton makes ALL the assists" assumption [reeeeal bad meme reference]).

Doing the simple math gets us to our conclusion: Stockton would average less assists a game, dropping from 13.7 assists to about 11.3 assists per game. This is a significant drop, but still outstanding assist numbers, especially with the understanding that there would be an additional 7-8 shot attempts to be disbursed in Malone's absence, some of those probably resulting in additional Stockton assists.

In summary, Stockton would at LEAST average 11.3 assists in our 1991-1992 isolated example, and if you assume that 1991-1992 is a good indicator for the entire Stockton-Malone era, Stockton would have ended his career with somewhere between 12,200 and 12,800 assists (depending on minutes for him and the replacement player). He would have had at least 6 seasons of double digit assists. This means he would still be the all-time assist leader (by a smallish margin), and in all likelihood still considered a top 5 point guard of all time. Again, this is all WITHOUT counting those left over possessions in Malone's absence. Given that Stockton dished an assist on 14.3% of all the Jazz's possessions in 1991-1992, if we include those possessions in the discussion then Stockton probably averages just over 1 assist more per game, which seems small but brings his average that year to 12.3 assists. Career wise that would mean he dishes between 13,500 and 14,200 assists, still giving him a very large lead in the record books and would mean he likely still holds at least 4 of the top 10 assists per game seasons (although no longer the top spot).

Basically, John Stockton was a beast of a point guard with or without Malone. Malone's absence would have been a significant hit to Stockton's production but he would still put up otherworldly assist numbers.

[NBASupes]

The biggest difference between Horf and Malone I see is just one thing. Aggressive on offense from Malone. Hence how many FT's a game he gets and Horf defensive versatility consistency is much better than Karl's. That's the area where i will quickly say one is better than the other. Other then that, they are similar players talent and skill-set wise. 

[AHF]

Malone averages > 25 ppg without Stockton.

 

If Horford > Malone, then shouldn't we see Horford do this over at least one 20 game period of his career?

 

Horford hasn't even averaged 20 ppg, let alone 25 ppg.

The biggest difference between Horf and Malone I see is just one thing. Aggressive on offense from Malone. Hence how many FT's a game he gets and Horf defensive versatility consistency is much better than Karl's. That's the area where i will quickly say one is better than the other. Other then that, they are similar players talent and skill-set wise. 

 

Talk to Marvin Williams about how big of a difference aggressiveness makes.  

 

Horford isn't close to Malone offensively.  Few players have been.

[Duff_Man]

What the hell happened in here? I click to read about the 2nd round picks and there is some stupid debate about Horford and freaking Karl Malone.

[NBASupes]

Malone averages > 25 ppg without Stockton.

 

If Horford > Malone, then shouldn't we see Horford do this over at least one 20 game period of his career?

 

Horford hasn't even averaged 20 ppg, let alone 25 ppg.

Without Stockton, what is his TS%, his usage, his attempts, and his team's pace? You can't throw out that stat with no power behind it. Because just pumping stats avoids what we can see. His skill and talent. 

 

The first thing you notice is horrible defense and how small the players aside from Malone are. In the NBA today, a lot of PF's have good size or better size. Much less the fact that Al has to play center lol. 

 

Then you notice the horrendous team defense which Philly today would do a better job of. 

 

Just watch: 

 

Edited June 27, 2014 by nbasupes40retired

[Guest]

What the hell happened in here? I click to read about the 2nd round picks and there is some stupid debate about Horford and freaking Karl Malone.

You must be new around here. Lol

[hawkman]

What the hell happened in here? I click to read about the 2nd round picks and there is some stupid debate about Horford and freaking Karl Malone.

You've just been 'suped'.

[Duff_Man]

Stockton had TWENTY THREE assists in that game. WOW!

[Guest]

What the hell happened in here? I click to read about the 2nd round picks and there is some stupid debate about Horford and freaking Karl Malone.

Lol @Dolfan23 needs to remove them from this heading give them their own thread.

[NBASupes]

Stockton had TWENTY THREE assists in that game. WOW!

Shit was crazy. He had estimate of 5k assist to Malone alone. Wow! Him and Malone stayed on fast breaks. 

[AHF]

Without Stockton, what is his TS%, his usage, his attempts, and his team's pace? You can't throw out that stat with no power behind it. Because just pumping stats avoids what we can see. His skill and talent. 

 

You expect me to do too much of the legwork.  Compare them yourself and report back.  I have shown that Malone is much better with or without Stockton, at every age, and that it isn't the usage rate or point guard that explains the difference between Horford's average of less than 1 30 point game per season.  I have exhausted my energy on this subject for today.

[NBASupes]

You expect me to do too much of the legwork.  Compare them yourself and report back.  I have shown that Malone is much better with or without Stockton, at every age, and that it isn't the usage rate or point guard that explains the difference between Horford's average of less than 1 30 point game per season.  I have exhausted my energy on this subject for today.

I have video that shows Malone and Horford are extremely similar players. I rather use the real eye test than stats where we already know the outcome.

[nathan2331]

I have video that shows Malone and Horford are extremely similar players. I rather use the real eye test than stats where we already know the outcome.

Are you trying to say they are similar in how they play, or that flat out Horford is the better player. I've never seen Malone play, but I'm sure even Horford would laugh at that claim. Horford wasn't born with that fire Malone possessed. Had he been I guess I could see how you say he could be as good. However he wasn't, and I'm not expecting that mentality to change.