Kobe just one star defying aging curve

Bill Simmons. Again.

What do these three have in common?

They’ve all managed to put off The Change.

I was there when it happened to Julius Erving: Nov. 9, 1984, Philly at Boston, the night his five-year rivalry with Larry Bird went up in smoke. Bird outscored Erving 42-6 in three quarters before words were exchanged and, incredibly, two of the league’s biggest stars started fighting at midcourt. Imagine two kids getting their picture taken with Santa, then imagine their faces if Santa got into a brawl with the Easter Bunny. That was Bird fighting Erving. Their scuffle was so preposterous that it overshadowed the real story: Julius Erving had gone through The Change. He was great, and then he wasn’t. And it happened overnight.

Sift through NBA history and you’ll notice that, for modern superstars, The Change occurred somewhere between the 900th and 1,200th career game (including playoffs) for everyone except Karl Malone and John Stockton, who fended it off because of their extraordinary work ethics, their signature play (an unstoppable pick-and-roll that they could have run into their 50s), Utah’s altitude (which may have given them a conditioning advantage) and the little-known fact John Stockton is actually an alien. An NBA career is really pressure over time: knees are Shawshank’s prison wall, games are Andy’s rock hammer, and that hammer just keeps chipping away. Eventually, your career gives out. That’s the rule.

Or, that was the rule. Because Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant are fending off that rock hammer in ways that have to make us wonder if we’re headed for a historical revamping along the lines of the steroids era blowing up baseball like an “Angry Birds” grenade. Everything we thought we knew about basketball is changing … and for all the right reasons, too. (Well, unless you’re Rashard Lewis and O.J. Mayo.) They are beneficiaries of undeniable advantages over everyone who played before them: better doctors, surgical procedures, dieting, drug testing, trainers, computers, video equipment, workout equipment, workout regiments, airplanes … even pillows are better.

Check out the career numbers (regular season and playoffs) for Allen, Pierce, Nash, Nowitzki and Bryant for games, minutes, minutes per game and seasons played.

AGING STARS

RS Min = regular season minutes; PL Min = playoff minutes; RS MPG = regular season minutes per game; PL MPG = playoffs minutes per game

PlayerGamesPlayoffsRS MinPL MinRS MPGPL MPGSeasonsBryant106719838,8877,81136.539.414Allen106710139,5353,98737.139.515Nash105711833,0554,22831.335.815Nowitzki95610334,9804,30136.641.812Pierce92910134,4804,03237.139.912

All right, get ready for a second group of perimeter stars that also includes two other pieces of information: the season they went through The Change, as well as their drop in win shares from the previous season. (Note: I’m not a huge fan of win shares, especially because the stat doesn’t show how someone like Jason Kidd or Gary Payton slipped defensively almost overnight, but it’s the simplest statistical way to show a player’s decline.) And keep in mind, Bird’s career and Magic’s career ended prematurely; Jordan missed multiple seasons because of his two retirements; and Kidd is obviously still playing (post-Change). Anyway …

STARS OF YESTERDAY

Change = Season in which “The Change” in the player’s productivity took place; WS = Decline in win shares from the previous season.

PlayerGamesPlayRS MinPL MinRS MPGPL MPGSeasonsChangeWSStockton150418247,6746,39831.835.81914-5.6Miller138914447,6195,30834.336.91816-0.8Payton133515447,4175,48235.335.61713-3.5Erving124318945,2277,35236.438.91614-2.5Kidd123112145,5104,95337.040.91714-3.4Pippen117820841,0698,10534.939.01712-1.7Drexler108614537,5375,57234.638.41513-5.2Wilkins10745638,1132,17235.538.81513-2.1Jordan107217941,0107,47438.341.81514-12.5Thomas97911135,5164,21636.338.01312-2.1Iverson9147637,4853,20541.145.11413-8.5Magic90616033,2457,53836.739.71313-11.8Bird89716434,4436,88638.442.01310-14.5

Translation: If you’re a perimeter guy, no matter how talented you are, you should go downhill between Season 12 and Season 14 unless you’re a freak shooter (like Miller) or an actual alien (like Stockton). So how do you explain our five aforementioned career freaks? Let’s look at them again through last Wednesday’s games measured by the per-36 minute averages for points/rebounds/assists, field goals/free throws/3s attempted, and percentages for field goals/free throws/3s, as well as advanced metrics for usage rate (the percentage of possessions which involve that player when he’s on the floor), player efficiency and win shares per 48 minutes:

ALMOST AS GOOD AS EVER

Player/Yr/AgePtsAstRebFGAFTA3PAFG%3P%RatePERWS/48Kobe ‘08 (29)26.25.05.819.18.44.746%36%31.424.2.208Kobe ‘11 (32)27.15.25.520.78.14.446%31%34.324.7.198 Allen ‘08 (32)17.53.13.713.53.36.245%40%21.616.4.177Allen ‘11 (35)17.43.13.712.52.94.851%45%20.417.9.182 Nash ‘08 (34)17.811.63.712.53.04.750%47%22.021.1.181Nash ‘11 (37)18.912.84.012.74.12.753%42%23.224.3.195 Dirk ‘08 (29)23.63.58.617.17.12.948%36%28.824.6.223Dirk ‘11 (32)24.22.57.416.96.42.852%39%29.023.7.200 Pierce ‘08 (30)19.74.55.113.86.14.648%36%24.819.6.207Pierce ‘11 (33)19.23.55.413.55.33.751%43%23.620.9.222

I know, I know. You expected a sports column, not an AP math exam. But for each player, the differences between 2008 and 2011 are so subtle, you can barely tell the years apart. If Jennifer Aniston looks as good three years from now as she does right now, you’ll know she had some work done. If Obama’s hair doesn’t look any grayer than it does right now, you’ll know he colored it. But five elite players defying all laws of career gravity like that?

Really, it’s the first wave of something Malcolm Gladwell and I tackled 13 months ago, when we wondered if Kobe’s generation would accomplish things we had never seen before. I listed those modern advantages (training, dieting, etc) and mentioned that basketball players have a better chance of succeeding now. Gladwell piggybacked the point by bringing up capitalization rates (how efficiently any group makes use of its talent), deciding that “there isn’t more talent than before, but there is — for a variety of reasons — a more efficient use of talent.” Somehow we never connected the dots to Gladwell’s concept of outliers: that outside factors can affect someone’s success or failure more than we realize.

Nash, Pierce, Kobe, Allen and Nowitzki? NBA outliers. All of them. Their extended primes might last 15-20 percent longer than anything we’ve seen from a perimeter player before. A closer look………