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by SmellTheGlove 3333 days ago
If you have a team of 6, sometimes the best individual 6 people are not the same group of 6 that you put out there to solve a problem.

Let's continue to use hockey as an example, because I love ill-fitting sports analogies and I also love hockey. For sure, we already know we need 3 forwards, 2 defensemen and a goalie, so for the sake of argument, even if your 6th best skater is Wayne Gretzky, he's going to sit because you need to put Neuvirth in goal (to pick on my own team for a second). But let's think about forward lines only for just a second. Pittsburgh has Crosby and Malkin centering different lines, even though they're the best two guys on the entire team - they do the same job, they're playmakers first, goal scorers second (even though Crosby is the league's top goal scorer). Washington has Ovechkin playing the wing with Backstrom, because even though he's their best player, his job is to take a pass and fill the net.

That's a really long-winded way for me to say that "best" has a situational component, and teams have compositional elements that often involve roles. The 10 best people at that level in the company may all fill the same role, but on a team of 6, maybe there's only 3 of that role, and the other 3 are complementary parts. Best is situational.

1 comments

Gretzky is great example because he was not the best player because he scored the most. He was the best because just him being on the ice lead to others scoring as well. Just being out there he was able to help the rest of the team score as well. Contrast this with a player like Kobe Bryant who was a great individual player but horrible team player. Kobe did not get along with his team mates and other than the points he put up on the board Kobe did not really contribute much to the Lakers. Kobe was such a ball hog that they refer to a missed shot that is rebounded and scored by the offense as a kobe assist because it was only way he was going to give up the ball
Kobe is top 30 all time assists. What are you talking about?

I detest the man, but you can't use statistics to argue against him.

http://stats.nba.com/featured/kobe_by_the_numbers_2015_11_29...

But he played ball for 20 years. I think average number of assists per game is a better stat here, where he was ranked 136th according to this link [1].

[1] http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ast_per_g_career...

There have been over 3000 people to play in the NBA. Ranking 136th still makes him better than the vast majority of people to have ever played the game. Especially as a two guard on a team that primarily ran the triangle, an offensive system that devalues traditional pick/roll dribble creation and generates most of it points on secondary actions (eg hockey assists) off high post play.