First Post! A Basketball player vs. an NBA player

In this article I want to delve a little into the idea of what  a “basketball player” is. I was inspired to write about this because of the debate this season over the NBA MVP and the language thrown around when discussing it. I’m going to try and define what a basketball player is in relation to and in comparison with what an effective NBA player is, and the difference between those two concepts. I think illuminating the difference between these concepts can help really stop silly arguments people have about these subjects. 

I’ve seen videos claiming that Giannis Antetokounmpo maybe isn’t this years NBA MVP (so far), which he definitely is. I’ve also seen recent videos saying that Kevin Durant isn’t in the top 5 NBA players for various reasons, and disparaging him against players like Giannis or Anthony Davis who are supposedly vastly “better” than he is. And all the time these arguments are couched in language such as “top basketball players on earth”, “best basketball player alive”, etc. etc.

OK, let’s get into it. 

What is a “basketball player” qua what a we all think of as a basketball player (to use some philosophical language)? When I say this I mean what is a “basketball player” as a concept. Let’s use an analogy. What is a “mathemetician”? Someone who can solve mathematical problems and holds a great deal of mathematical knowledge in their head. Maybe that’s the definiiton. What isn’t included in that definition is how tall they are, how “nerdy” they look, or what school they went to. Nothing like that is WHAT IT IS to be a mathematician. So let’s go back to the basketball player. 

A basketball player would be someone who possesses the skills required to play the game of basketball. That’s my operational definition of what a basketball player is. Now a supremely good basketball player is one with a very refined and high level of those basketball skills.  And just like the mathematician example, it wouldn’t include size, vertical jump, strength, any of those things that are more like attributes of one’s physiology than specific sport skills. They certainly effect your ability to apply those skills in various situations, but that doesn’t make them equivalent to those skills. 

Now you may ask yourself what are these “basketball skills” that I’m speaking of. What we should be thinking of here are skills UNIQUE to basketball. So running is not a BASKETBALL skill. Not only is it a skill in it’s own right, which is why it’s an olympic category, but it’s also a skill which would help in various other sports. Running very fast and well would be helpful in football, rugby, and other sports. So a basketball skill is one that is unique to the game of basketball. Now what are they?

Shooting, dribbling, and passing. I’m really only going to dive into any depth into shooting. Passing and dribbling simply don’t have measurable stats that I know of and would rely on. Shooting is clearly a unique basketball skill, as the physical motion and ability to shoot a basketball into a ten foot high hoop would never help you in any other endeavor. It is THE essential basketball skill of all of them. The purpose of the game is always to SCORE more than someone else. Not to pass it more or better than another person or team, or to dribble more or better than another person or team. While those things could in theory help you beat a team or someone else in a game, they don’t ultimately make the difference. OK, so let’s break down shooting. 

Shooting is when the ball leaves a players hand and travels through the air to enter the rim’s inner area where the player makes no contact with the rim itself. I’m defining shooting because I want to separate shooting from dunking. Dunking is not shooting (forget about Blake Griffin or DeAndre Jordan “throw” dunks, they are in a separate weird category). The point is that a jump shot or even layup is just different from a dunk. If someone jumps and without being contested can PLACE the ball into the hoop, versus throwing it (essentially what a shot is) either off the glass or directly into the hoop, those are qualitatively different actions. This isn’t to say that you can’t miss a dunk, you obviously can. But looking at percentages and then thinking about the nature of the attempt, we can see that there is something fundamentally different between a dunk and a shot. 

OK, so now we have a definition of what the primary basketball skill is (shooting) and what shooting is (jump shots and lay ups, not dunking). Maybe you disagree, I just don’t see how you can wildly disagree. Remember, this isn’t about being an NBA player, this is defining what  a basketball player is, outside of any consideration of the NBA. With that being said, I’ll move forward. 

Shooting can then be broken down even further. There are traditionally what we all see as lay ups, then very close to the basket shots, then more mid range jumpers, then 3’s. Basketball Reference actually breaks this down to five separate categories (0-3 ft., 3-10 ft., 10-16 ft., 16 ft. to the three line, and greater than three). I think just using three categories fits with what most people have in mind when talking about shooting though. So we’ll just go with lay-up/up to 3 ft., mid range, and three pointer. 

Now, someone who had a high level of basketball skill would have a high level of shooting skill. That’s the essential basketball skill. What would that mean? It would mean having a high traditional shooting percentage from EACH of these areas. Why would that be? Well, if you were good at only two of these but awful at a third, we would clearly think that you were missing a SUB-skill set. To make this simple, to have a great shooting skill means to say that you have a high level of skill in these areas. That doesn’t mean you have to be as good at each one. You could be very good, say 90% skilled in two of them but also 95% skilled in the last one, which would mean that overall you had a very high level of overall shooting skill. 

OK, so to recap. To be a good basketball player is to possess a high level of skill in basketball specific skills. The main basketball skill is shooting. Shooting can further be broken down into three categories of shooting: lay-up and around the basket, mid range, and three pointers. 

Alright, now that we have that ground work we can get into current NBA talk. 

We’ll start with the MVP race. Who’s the MVP in the NBA so far in the 2018-2019 season? The Greek Freak, Giannis Antetokounmpo. let’s look at some stats and then consider the bigger picture. 

First the stats. I’m only going to use stats on a per 100 possessions basis and a few advanced stats. This helps take out of the equation playing time, missed games, etc. Here are Giannis’s points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks so far this season on a per 100 possession basis: 36.8, 17.6, 8.4, 1.8 and 2.1. Those are monster numbers. The only players in that same territory for points and rebounds are Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. But both of them are at 5.7 and 5.0 assists per 100 possessions respectively. Still very good. (Embiid has the best argument here, since he’s averaging more points and rebounds per 100 possessions than Giannis). Add to that that he’s on pace to set the all time NBA dunk record for a season (He's actually going to smash the record) and it’s easy to see why Shaq labeled Giannis the new Superman (Shaq). He’s almost unstoppable right now.

Now lets peak at win shares. Win shares attempt to calculate a players contribution directly to team wins for offense and defense. Giannis leads the league in win shares per 48 minutes. And even for regular win shares he’s still third in the league and only .4 behind Anthony Davis. Now throw in that Giannis is second in PER (player efficiency rating) and has a 63% true shooting (I call it scoring) percentage. He’s killing it right now. 

Now the bigger picture. The Milwaukee Bucks are in first place in the Eastern Conference. The Milwaukee Bucks have not finished a season in first place in the East since the 1973-1974 season. Let that sink in. So Giannis’s success has translated into team success, in a big way, at least so far. Second, he’s not playing with another all-star. He’s playing with other very good players, but he’s in a different situation than the Golden State Warriors, Oklahoma City Thunder, or other teams with multiple all star or even MVP caliber players. 

It’s all those things together that I think show he’s the MVP. He’s way up there in all personal stats, advanced stats that show he contributes win’s to his team and is efficient at doing it, and his team is actually winning a lot, putting them in place to do something they haven’t done in 40 years. 

Now the bad part. I don’t think Giannis is in the top 5 BASKETBALL PLAYERS in the world. This goes back to the distinction laid out earlier. What does it mean to be a good basketball player? To be a good shooter, and dunking isn’t a part of that equation. It’s just a different definition. 

Giannis is an incredibly EFFECTIVE NBA PLAYER. That’s what the stats show and what his team’s wins show. But that’s different from a BASKETBALL PLAYER. Not only because it’s the NBA in 2019, but because it’s a specific era of the NBA, a specific scheme from a unique head coach, and specific team around the player that invariably will effect his game and stats. 

Let’s use another widely talked about player to compare with Giannis, a player someone on ESPN (Max Kellerman) recently said wasn’t in the top five basketball players: Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant is definitely a better basketball player than Giannis, without a doubt. He’s just not as effective of an NBA player as Giannis is right now. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they are two different things. 

Let’s look at the shooting, then we will expand out to at least talk about other things. 

Here are Gianni’s shooting stats by distance, all from Basketball Reference (0-3 ft., 3-10 ft., 10-16 ft. 16-three line, and beyond three line): .80, .30, .36, .42, .15. 

Here Durant’s: .76, .52, .48, .48, .36. 

That should really speak for itself. Now Giannis doesn’t take a lot of outside shots, almost 60% of his shots are within three feet, where as Durant takes only about 18% from there. But that’s a good thing, since Giannis wouldn’t make many further out. Durant is just obviously a better shooter. He’s not only a better shooter by the numbers, but his form is simply better. He looks smooth and has great shooting form. And these numbers hold up over years and years of data. Giannis hasn’t played as long in the league as Durant, so only time will tell what his shooting will look like in the years to come, but it’s safe to say for now that Durant is a definitely better shooter than Giannis from just about anywhere. 

Now let’s address some other areas: passing and dribbling. I don’t know any dribbling specific stats (turnovers don’t work), so I really don’t have an answer here. This would be 100% subjective, and I’m willing to just make it equal. Let’s say they are both as skilled handling the ball. There also isn’t a reliable passing metric (turnovers are from dribbling AND passing primarily). They both average right around 8 assists per 100 possessions, which gives at least some sense that they know how to throw the ball around. Again this would be almost 100% subjective, so I don’t see anyway to really decide it definitively. Let’s call it roughly equal as well. 

So there we have it. Durant comes out clearly ahead as the better BASKETBALL PLAYER because his shooting is superior to Giannis’s. While he isn’t as effective this season he’s still the better basketball player qua what a basketball player is as a concept. And he is still doing well enough in all individual stats, advanced and old school (2nd in points per game, 4th in PER behind Giannis, 10th in VORP). But Giannis maintains his lead in being the most effective NBA player in the world right now. 

Now what are the problems with this theory? 

The biggest issue with the theory is that it completely discounts the defensive side of the game. I’ll just take this criticism in stride. The theory is heavily weighted toward offense. When it comes to defining a certain set of skills or at least one skill to define an overall talent like basketball though, I just don’t know what you filter down to for definable skills for defense. There are certainly stats, but are they really definable skills? Stealing the ball? What SKILL is that? hand speed? It really isn’t clear. So I’ll leave that there for someone to define for me the unique basketball skill which basketball defense is or contains. Then we could take it into account if it makes sense. 

Maybe you would make the argument that there are players outside the NBA, or even at your local park that according to this theory are better basketball players than Giannis or other NBA players you’d pick. To handle this quickly, Giannis still does all his shooting IN THE NBA, at the highest level, against the biggest and best defenders the world can currently offer. We don’t know what Joe Schmo from Venice Beach or some player from Europe or China could do in the NBA until they actually are there and have the chance. Maybe they would be better, but it’s not an apples to apples comparison. And realistically everyone probably thinks that if Giannis played in a league below the NBA he’d score 100 a game while the great player from Venice Beach wouldn’t get on the floor in the NBA. So while the definition seems open to this criticism, you at least need to prove your skills in the same competitive arena as those players to be compared with them. 

There are obviously some unique aspects to modern NBA basketball that make it virtually impossible for any “average” person to just build up their skills, get in the league and then prove how good of a pure basketball player they are. The standard height of an NBA player has been 6’ 7” for about 30 years. There aren’t amazing stats on this, but according to livestrong.com there isn’t a developed nation in the world where average adult male height is over 5’ 11.25”. That means the average NBA player is over 10% taller than that, and in the U.S. it’s probably more like 15%. These are unique humans, both in size and just overall athletic ability. Durant and Giannis are listed at 6’ 9” and 6’ 11” respectively and both have over seven foot wing spans. The NBA is definitively now a game built of outliers. 

But being an outlier, or being maybe the greatest outlier of all (Giannis? Shaq? Lebron?), along with some level of skill automatically prove that player’s dominance in the skill based test of who is the best basketball player. In the end the difference just comes down to a distinction between basketball skill and NBA effectiveness. Being clear about which category one is speaking about at any one time can really clear up a lot of confusion.