Was 40 Year old Malone in 04 the best Laker PF since 80's AC Green?

[LAL]

Or did i miss someone? Worthy was a SF right?

[Charlie Sheen]

Or did i miss someone? Worthy was a SF right?

Perkins

[L.Kizzle]

Elden Campbell

[LAL]

Perkins

Hmmmm interesting.. I don't know if Perkins would have been a better help than 40 year old Malone in 04 who was still solid on both ends, knowing your facing that Detroit team. Good call.

[LAL]

Elden Campbell

Malone was still better imo. Would be pretty sad if Elden was the best pf the lakers ever had between 1991 and 2008.

[Charlie Sheen]

Malone was still better imo. Would be pretty sad if Elden was the best pf the lakers ever had between 1991 and 2008.

Elden was such a frustrating player. He had flashes of all star level play on both ends. It always felt like if he had confidence or a better motor he could've have tapped into that potential.

[000]

Odom???

[Charlie Sheen]

Odom???

traded for shaq

[000]

traded for shaq
What

[LAL]

Elden was such a frustrating player. He had flashes of all star level play on both ends. It always felt like if he had confidence or a better motor he could've have tapped into that potential.

I know right, Elden never pushed it offensively, big body, good touch, rebounding but yeah.. "Easy" you know.

[LAL]

Odom???

You're right, but he sucked until Pau came along. Played a lot of SF pre 08 if i remember correctly. Good call.

[Charlie Sheen]

What

Odom came after Malone. He was part of the Miami package of players that was traded for Shaq.

[LAL]

Odom came after Malone. He was part of the Miami package of players that was traded for Shaq.

I'm an idiot, you're right i was talking about 91 til 2004 lol

[000]

Odom came after Malone. He was part of the Miami package of players that was traded for Shaq.
What does that have to do with anything

Edit: Ok nvm although I did see a lot of "2008" in this thread

[Charlie Sheen]

I'm an idiot, you're right i was talking about 91 til 2004 lol

I could have been the idiot and misunderstood the thread. :lol

Either way, really enjoying the thread. It's a fun stroll down memory lane as a Lakers fan. :cheers:

[LAL]

I could have been the idiot and misunderstood the thread. :lol

Either way, really enjoying the thread. It's a fun stroll down memory lane as a Lakers fan. :cheers:

LOL nope just lost my focus there because of bronstan with the odom comment.. his fault.

:cheers:

[iamgine]

Magic Johnson in 1996

[LAL]

Magic Johnson in 1996

:oldlol:

You're not wrong or anything..

[000]

LOL nope just lost my focus there because of bronstan with the odom comment.. his fault.

:cheers:

Bronstanz!!! :eek:

[coastalmarker99]

While Stockton retired at the conclusion of 2002-03, Karl Malone was made an offer he couldn't refuse.

The three-time defending champion Shaq/Kobe Lakers had been eliminated by the eventual champion Spurs in the second round of the 2003 playoffs, and the team was at a bit of a crossroads.


Kobe's free-agency was a year away, and it was no secret that he was itching to get out of Shaq's shadow; Shaq himself was 31 and, although still producing at an elite level, was not exactly watching his weight and was known for coming into training camp out of shape in recent years; in addition to this dynamic, their supporting cast had become pretty thin, with some guys aging and some leaving - most notably Robert Horry had defected to the Spurs in this same time period, leaving the team without a PF.

So when the soon-to-be 40-year-old Malone and soon-to-be-35-year-old Gary Payton were asked to sign on, there was a feeling of it being a hail mary, of loading up for one more run with this iteration of the Lakers before big decisions had to be made.

The new-look Lakers jumped out to a 19-5 start in their first 24 games; in this stretch, Malone put up 14.5ppg and 9.9rpg on +5.7% rTS over 23 games(he'd been suspended for one game). Their MOV(wins and losses included) in those 23 games was +7.416.



Simply put, the team looked like a juggernaut, and he was their clear-cut third-best player. Their momentum came to a screeching halt when, minutes into a game against Phoenix just before Christmas, Malone went down with a knee injury. Initially diagnosed as a sprain, it was actually a torn MCL(apparently there was some drama within the organization about that), and he missed the next three months rehabbing it without surgery.

The Lakers won that game against Phoenix that Malone had started and gotten hurt in to move to 20-5, but then went 22-17 without him until his return on March 12. Now, at first I was taken aback by the stark difference in those records, but then I realized that Shaq and Kobe also both missed significant chunks of time while Malone was out, so I went back and painstakingly figured out what the team's record was during Malone's absence only in games that both Shaq and Kobe played in, to make it a fairer comparison.



The answer is 12-6. So the difference isn't nearly as big as it at first seemed. Still, 19-5 is .791 and 12-6 is .666. A 12-13% difference is still significant, even given the smaller sample size of the latter record. Also note that of those 12 wins, only 4 came against .500 or better teams(11 of the 19 wins with Malone came against .500 or greater competition). Their MOV for these 12 games was +4.666, a 2.8ppg drop from where they'd been with Malone.

When Malone came back, his production took a dip; he put up 12.1ppg and 7.7rpg on +1.6% rTS over the final 18 games of the regular season. Still, with the Mailman back in the fold, the team finished the season 14-4, including an 11 game winning streak(8 of those wins were against .500 or greater competition).

That's a .777 winning percentage, again greater than the .666 from his absence. Still, their MOV over these 18 games was +4.222, closer to what it'd been without Malone than what it'd been with Malone pre-injury. All told, the team had a +6.048 MOV with Malone for the season, and a +4.222 without(when Shaq and Kobe were both playing).


For the season, Malone averaged 13.2ppg, 8.7rpg, 3.9apg, and 1.2spg in 32.7mpg - 14.5/9.6/4.3/1.3 PER 36 - on +3.9% rTS.

His advanced stats further illustrate his impact: his 2.8 RS BPM fell in the top 7.2% of the league that year(and his 1.7 DBPM was the highest of his career!); his .151 RS WS/48 fell in the top 11.9% of the league. His TRB% was 15.1, in the top 14.7% of the league.

His RAPM was 0.24, and of all the players we have RAPM for, this was the one that made the least sense to me. Virtually every other metric suggests his impact was greater than that. I can only guess that the fact that Engelmann's dataset combines RS and PS hurts Malone(see below). His RS RAPM from https://basketball-analytics.gitlab.io/rapm-data/season/2003-04/regular-season/ (which I think is also NPI but not sure) is 1.75, which seems more reasonable.

All told, the team went 34-9, or .790, with all of Malone, Shaq, and Kobe, and 12-6, or .666 with just Shaq and Kobe(and Payton). Again I realize 15 games is a small sample size, but I'm just illustrating that Malone was still good enough to be very important to the team even at age 40.

Malone's knee still wasn't really right - he'd have surgery to repair it after the season - and as a result, his play sort of deteriorated as the high-intensity playoffs wore on. This wasn't helped by the gauntlet of interior defenders he was going up against. In the first round, it was the Yao-led Rockets; Malone actually had his best series of the playoffs here, putting up 18ppg/10.4rpg on 51.8% TS(the Rockets had allowed 51.1% in the RS) in 38.8mpg.

In the second round, he was up against more-or-less-peak Duncan and the Spurs, where he put up 10ppg/8rpg on 48.3% TS(the Spurs had allowed 48%) in the RS) in 40.5mpg.


In the WCF, it was absolute-peak KG and the Wolves, where he recorded 12ppg/9.3rpg on 48.3% TS(the Wolves had allowed 49% in the RS) in 39.5mpg.


Overall, he averaged a 49.5% TS over those first three rounds vs an average oppositional allowance of 49.4%. Yao, peak Duncan, and peak KG back-to-back-to-back on a bum knee while playing 38-40mpg consistently, at the age of 40? Of course, he broke down. It's impressive he was still able to shoot a positive rTS(compared to what his opponents had allowed) in two out of three series and play decent defence to boot.

It should be noted - and I found this out as I was looking at videos of Malone from 2004 on YT(see the video list below) - he seems to have played pretty good defence on Duncan in that series, despite never really being known for his defence, having held TD to under 40% FG for three of the final four games of the series, and under 50% for all four. So he was still contributing positively even his offensive efficiency had taken a dip.

He was playing through some degree of pain the whole time. He aggravated the injury the second game of the WCF vs the Timberwolves and, though he said it wasn't related to the initial injury, it's hard to believe it wasn't. After getting his knee drained during the break before the Finals, he said he felt fine.

But then in the second game of the Finals, he aggravated the knee yet again. After a reported spat with trainer Gary Vitti(I guess he wanted Malone to leave the game and Malone didn't want to), Malone finished the game ineffectively. He played reduced minutes in what ended up being the last two games of his career, games three and four - which he later admitted he shouldn't have done - and then finally sat out the fifth and final game altogether. He had surgery that summer to repair the knee once and for all, and announced his retirement the following February after fielding several offers from other teams, the Knicks and Spurs among them.

[clipps]

Karl Malone is a child molester.

[HoopsNY]

Elden Campbell

Definitely agree with this. Campbell had to take a back burner to a lot of guys in his career. His post moves were Tim Duncan before Tim Duncan.

I remember when Shaq got injured in '97, Campbell took over putting up something like 22/9/2 with 2 blks on 47%. He dropped 40 in one game for his career high and was just dominating. Those Lakers teams were incredibly deep.