Michael Grange of the Globe and Mail wrote a really interesting article on KG, here's the link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080513.WBwbbasketball20080513075925/WBStory/WBwbbasketball/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20080513.WBwbbasketball20080513075925Here's some excerpts
Can I have my MVP vote back?
Kind of cheesy, because I didn't have an MVP vote this year. But if I did I would have thought long and hard about putting Kevin Garnett on top. I had him and Kobe and 1 and 1A, with Chris Paul at 1AA, if that's possible.
On last night against the Cavs
The knock against the Big Ticket has always been that for an A-list player he's decidedly B-list in the fourth quarter.
Last night as the Celtics were sputtering against the Cavaliers it was pretty amazing to see little Garnett asserted himself in the second half. He kept letting Ben Wallace and Varejao tie him up on the block before kicking it out or settling for a fadeaway. He would rise for a shot and make a jump pass a sure sign of not being sure. One time he caught the ball in motion in the lane and instead of lifting for an eight-footer he spit it back out as soon as he touched it.
Garnett deserves credit for getting his team off to a good start on the road he had 13 points and eight rebounds in the first half but how does a player that good get two points and two rebounds in the second half and go scoreless in the fourth?
Studying the 82games clutch stats
According 82games.com's clutch stats' which tracks player performance (on a per 48 minute basis) in games where the margin is five points or less with five minutes or less to play in the fourth quarter or during overtime, Garnett has been disappearing all season.
Garnett appeared in 27 games that fit the category and shot just 41 per cent in the guts of those contests, compared with his overall mark of 54 per cent. And while Yao was earning 23.2 free throw attempts (per 48 minutes) in the clutch and Nowitzki 19.9, Garnett averaged just 7.9 trips. Chris Bosh did nearly twice as well, averaging 13.7. (Not surprisingly it's ball-handling guards and wings who dominate these stats the Kobe's and the Ginobili's, so I'm just looking at bigs.)
His plus-minus (again, not the greatest stat, but still) was -25, which is pretty bad considering Garnett only played 27 games that fit the category and Boston was 66-16 on the season. Oh, and Boston was just 15-13 in close games on the year.
LeBron was +141 to lead the league. Plus-minus is really a team stat, but consider that everyone else pretty much in the -25 range were good players on bad teams.
It's a good read, go check out the rest of the article.
Topic: KG Article (Read 2038 times)