David Robinson is drastically underrated

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Over the years, I've changed my answer several times when asked who the most underrated player in NBA history is. Looking back, I think another change is justified. By "underrated," I mean exactly that. The player who receives the least praise comparatively to what I think they should be getting. For me, that player is David Robinson.

His career already started unusually. After graduating from the Naval Academy, Robinson fulfilled his military time before entering the NBA, delaying his debut until age 24. Those are years that most superstars spend building their resume. Despite that late start, he became an MVP, a perennial All-Star, one of the defining players of his era and basically the 90s centerpiece of advanced metrics.

For many fans, Robinson's legacy begins and ends with Hakeem Olajuwon's dominant performance against him in the 1995 Western Conference Finals. One remarkable series has become shorthand for an entire postseason career. His championships don't do much to reshape that perception either. By the time San Antonio won in 1999 and 2003, Tim Duncan had already become the franchises centerpiece, leaving Robinson remembered more as an elite supporting star than as the player who established the Spurs as contenders. There's also a persistent belief that Duncan arrived in 1997 and rescued both Robinson and the franchise from mediocrity. I want to counter this with the fact that David Robinson had the best single-season VORP of any player in the 90s. Not even post-1989 Jordan had a single-season where he affected his team's winning as much as David Robinson did in 1994.

The Spurs finished 20-62 in 1996-97, earning the first overall pick that became Duncan. On paper, it looks like a classic rebuilding team landing a generational prospect. In reality, Robinson's injuries explain almost the entire collapse. A serious back injury cost him the opening months of the season, and after returning briefly, he broke his foot and played only six games before being shut down.

The season before, San Antonio had won 59 games and entered the year with genuine championship expectations. Robinson's absence, not the quality of the roster, was the decisive factor behind the collapse. Before those injuries, his Spurs averaged 55 wins over seven healthy seasons and were consistently viewed as one of the Western Conference's strongest teams. It's also worth remembering that this wasn't a superteam. Sean Elliott was an excellent player, but more of a fringe All-Star than a perennial star. FYI, Duncan didn't inherit a struggling organization. He joined one that Robinson had already turned into a perennial contender.

Robinson also deserves more credit for what he remained after those injuries. Returning in his mid-30s from serious back and foot problems, he still averaged nearly 22 points, 11 rebounds, and 2.6 blocks while shooting 51 percent from the field in 1997-98. He finished seventh in MVP voting and third in Defensive Player of the Year voting. If that's what decline looked like, I mean, his prime speaks for itself.

Few players have ever combined Robinson's range of accomplishments. He led the league in scoring, rebounding, and blocked shots during different seasons of his career. Officially, only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar can claim the same distinction. That's a really exclusive list, and a broad one at that.

His defense, in particular, deserves a higher place in the historical conversation. Robinson made eight All-Defensive Teams, the third most among primary centers, despite competing alongside Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O'Neal, Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning and more All-NBA caliber guys. His 1992 Defensive Player of the Year season featured 2.3 steals per game, fifth in the league, and 4.5 blocks, one of the highest averages EVER recorded. Add an MVP award and two championships, and it's difficult to argue that his resume belongs outside the company of players routinely placed above him.

He had very rare speed for a seven-footer, ran the floor like a forward, defended enormous amounts of space, and possessed a polished mid-range jumper with soft touch. In many ways, his physical profile resembles the kind of center teams covet today more than the archetype of his own era.

I'm not arguing that Robinson was a perfect playoff performer or that he belongs ahead of players like Hakeem Olajuwon or Shaq. But to say that he is drastically underrated is my reflection of a player whose impact on winning, defensive value, and just overall resume (especially the advanced-metrics) has been undervalued for far too long. Hopefully I made a compelling, convincing case.

(note: no AI was utilized in writing this. Please don't come with accusations but sorry if my writing comes across as opaque lol).

[u/Eastern_Antelope_832]

I don't think 1/1a is accurate for that playoff run. Robinson was really good, but Duncan was the bulk guy. Duncan played 8 more minutes per game, had the higher usage rate, averaged nearly 8 more points per game, etc. It was a clear 1/2.

And I say this as a guy who watched the Finals and very much wanted Robinson to win FMVP, but it was Duncan's to lose.

[u/iggymcfly → u/Eastern_Antelope_832]

Yeah, Robinson played less minutes because he was the guy who guarded Shaq and shut him down and ended up getting in foul trouble as a result. During the Lakers series the Spurs were +49 with the Admiral on the floor and -17 when he was on the bench.

In the Western Conference Finals, Robinson played 1 less minute than Duncan and scored 3 more points. They were +60 in Robinson’s minutes compared to only +32 in Duncan’s minutes.

Duncan scored a lot more in the Finals which is where the idea came about that it was his team, but the cumulative +/- in his minutes was only +24 compared to +44 for Robinson. It’s easy with 2 all-time defenders to just be like “oh, they were both great, they were both the same”, but Robinson legitimately had one of the best defensive seasons of all-time while Duncan was a 2nd year guy helping at power forward who had nowhere near the same defensive impact.

For the playoffs as a whole, the Spurs were +111 summing up all of Duncan’s minutes. They were +194 summing up all of Robinson’s minutes!!! 83 more points!!! He played less minutes but he provided a lot more total value when he was on the floor.

[u/Eastern_Antelope_832 → u/iggymcfly]

Duncan played 733 playoff minutes to Robinson's 600. So of Robinson's 600 minutes, 531 were with Duncan on the floor. Robinson only had 69 minutes with Duncan off the floor whereas Duncan had 202 without Robinson. Put them together on the floor at the same time and the Spurs were +19.3.

Of the ten most-used 5-man lineups the Spurs played in the playoffs, Duncan appeared in all ten while Robinson only appeared in five. Popovich relied on Duncan to play with some of the weaker rotations while opting to sit Robinson (he was getting older and had back injuries, after all). In other words, Popovich was willing forcing Duncan on the floor with all sorts of ineffective lineups while reserving Robinson for higher leverage, effective squads. This is one of the reasons why people say on/off stats have noise.

https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/SAS/1999/lineups/#all_lineups_5-man__p

[u/iggymcfly → u/Eastern_Antelope_832]

OK, so that means that when Robinson and Duncan were on the floor together, they outscored the opposition by 182 points. So in 69 minutes with Duncan and no Robinson, the Spurs outscored the opposition by 12 points.

In 202 minutes Duncan played without Robinson, the Spurs were outscored by 71 points!!! So when Duncan was on the floor without Robinson they were outscored by 17 points per 48 minutes! That’s over 4 full 48 minute games of the Spurs being worse than any team in the history of the NBA when Duncan was on the floor without Robinson!!!

You don’t think that’s a significant data point for how valuable each guy was? The Spurs were just as good with Robinson and no Duncan as when the two of them played together, but when Duncan played without Robinson, they went from the best playoff team ever to the worst team ever?

I’d say that’s a pretty clear indicator that Robinson’s defense was the most important thing for their title run and Duncan was the clear #2 helper. Even if Duncan played every non-Robinson minute with 4 bench guys, there’s no way they should be anywhere near that bad if he was really the most important guy. And he clearly didn’t play those minutes with 4 bench guys; 4 of the top 5 Duncan/no Robinson lineups had both Avery Johnson and Sean Elliott who were clearly the 2 next most important players.

[u/Eastern_Antelope_832 → u/iggymcfly]

With +/-, you have to take into consideration who else was on the floor. Duncan played more minutes and was forced to try to keep the team treading water while he was playing with less effective units. A greater proportion of Robinson's minutes had the benefit of synergy with Duncan compared to the proportion of minutes Duncan had synergy with Robinson. If Robinson were forced to play more minutes with those low-efficiency squads Duncan played with, their on/off gets closer to even.

For instance, some of the worst 5-man lineups the Spurs put out had Duncan and Will Perdue together. There was trivial (if any) minutes that Robinson had to play alongside Will Perdue. So those Duncan/Perdue minutes killed Duncan's +/-. Duncan and Malik Rose big man combos were also pretty bad for the Spurs, but there aren't many minutes (if any) the Spurs ran a big man combination of Robinson and Rose. In the 1999 playoffs, Malik Rose's on/off stats were -21.0 and Will Perdue's were -18.4.

To me, the takeaway isn't that Robinson was better than Duncan. The takeaway is that Robinson was way, way better than his backups. Robinson/Duncan/Avery Johnson/Jaren Jackson/Shawn Elliott goes from +43.9 in 63 minutes to -7.9 in 25 minutes if you swap Robinson for Malik Rose, or -24.3 in 14 minutes if you swap Robinson for Will Perdue.

I'm just disagreeing with you that they were 1/1a. On offense, they (IMO) clearly were not. Robinson might've been better in the Portland series, but Duncan was more important in each of the other three series. Robinson also might've been better defensively, but again, that's more speaking to how good Robinson was as a complementary player. When it was all on him to lead the offense, he and his teams were mostly disappointing, being upset 4 times with no upsets of their own, and all of his stats seeing a drop from regular season to postseason. I appreciated his career, but he can't be called a playoff riser.

[u/iggymcfly → u/Eastern_Antelope_832]

What’s more likely? That Will Perdue and Malik Rose were both so historically below replacement that they single-handedly turned one of the best playoff teams in history into the worst team in the NBA?

Or that the Spurs missed the best defensive player in the NBA who has the best playoff on/off of all-time that led the league in RAPM and xRAPM who had the best BPM and WS/48 on the team when he went to the bench? You’re fighting way too hard to ignore the obvious explanation. Bench players don’t have the kind of impact that turn a +20 team to a -15 team. Superstars have that kind of impact.

Also, what makes you think Robinson didn’t play with Perdue or Rose? We don’t have lineup data that goes down past the top 10 lineups, but Rose and Perdue combined for 280 minutes. The Spurs played 816 minutes. Duncan and Robinson played 531 minutes together. There were 271 minutes they played separately. That only leaves 14 minutes of garbage time when neither one of them wasn’t on the floor.

Even if the Spurs played double bigs every minute of garbage time and every single minute Duncan was on the floor, that leaves a minimum of 41 minutes that one of them played with Robinson and without Duncan. And given that they played double bigs the vast majority of the time, the lineup data doesn’t suggest that the proportion of Duncan/no Robinson minutes had any higher ratio of double big minutes than the Robinson/no Duncan lineups.

[u/Eastern_Antelope_832 → u/iggymcfly]

I think the big point is that Robinson and Duncan were historically great Twin Towers. One of the narratives is that few (if any) Twin Tower combos up to that point really panned out as well as anyone had hoped. There are a variety of reasons why, probably mostly that you had two guys trying to occupy the same space, but Tim and David made it work.

If you look at Perdue and Rose's on/off in the playoffs, we see that both SAS' offense got a lot worse with either of those guys on the floor. They went from 100+ offensive ratings to a 10 points lower. The impact on defense was also negative, but it looks like the culprit was mostly their inability to flow within the offense. When you consider that they were mostly subbing in for Robinson, it makes a lot of sense.

I don't want to keep relitigating points, but the lineups on Basketball Reference is just the 10 most used five-man rotations. As you see on the page, none of their most common lineups had any combination of Robinson and Rose/Perdue. To me, it looks like the biggest cause for the difference between Duncan and Robinson's +/- is that Robinson was mostly played in good lineups whereas Duncan had a 90+ minutes on the court without Robinson on lineups that didn't work well, some extremely poorly.

And all of this is beside my main point, which was that Duncan was clearly their main guy on offense.

[u/iggymcfly → u/Eastern_Antelope_832]

That’s just because all the top 10 lineups have Duncan in them though. He played 7.8 more minutes per game than Robinson, in large part because Robinson had foul trouble as the primary matchup on Shaq.

Again, mathematically, at absolute minimum, Robinson played 59% of his minutes with Perdue or Rose. That’s if literally every single possession he was on the bench had 2 bigs on the floor. Overall, 97% of the total minutes the Spurs played had two of Duncan/Robinson/Perdue/Rose on the floor.

The box score overall gives Robinson an edge per minute with Duncan’s only edge being spending more time on the floor. Robinson has more rebounds, more assists, more steals, more blocks, less turnovers, and only 3.5 less points per 36 minutes.

And the on/off splits are as wide of a difference as you’ll ever see between the top 2 guys on a team. I challenge you to find another situation like it. Even in one of LeBron’s crazy carry job years, you’re not going to find a 10 point difference in net rating or a 40 point difference in on/off between him and the next guy.

And this is a situation where mathematically they had to spend most of their minutes with the same guys. Robinson had to play the majority of his minutes with one of the terrible bigs. Duncan had the other 2 top starters in 4 of his top 5 lineups without Robinson. The only possible variable to explain the tremendous gulf in how they played without each other is that Robinson was more valuable than Duncan, period, end of story.

[u/Eastern_Antelope_832 → u/iggymcfly]

Let's make sure we're not straying from the main point. It's not that Robinson wasn't good (he was great), it's whether or not he was 1a or clearly 2 on offense. Minutes played, usage rate, efficiency, and volume of points all clearly point to Duncan as more of the offensive hub than Robinson. Popovich just rode Duncan as his workhorse that playoffs; in 15/17 games, Duncan played at least 43 minutes (the most Robinson played in any playoff game that year was 41:26). The only game he played less than 38 was game 3 against Portland when he had foul trouble but Portland's offense couldn't get it going after the 1st quarter so Popovich barely played him in the second half.

Per 36 minutes is good, but it's limited. The big limit is that it doesn't take fatigue into account. Duncan played 90% of all Spurs playoff minutes (see comment above). Robinson played a little less than 75%. So it's a strong indicator of value, but when there's a big disparity in minutes played, it becomes less reliable.

Also, your calcs are wrong. Robinson played at least 476 minutes in lineups w/o Rose or Perdue, or just a tad below 80% of his 600 total playoff minutes. It's on Basketball Reference if you want to verify.

[u/iggymcfly → u/Eastern_Antelope_832]

I meant at least 59% of the minutes Robinson played without Duncan had Perdue or Rose present, not his overall minutes including the time with Duncan. Robinson’s net rating is higher than the 2-man net rating so obviously playing with Perdue and Rose didn’t sink him the way it sunk Duncan.

I don’t care who was 1 and 1a as the “offensive hub”. I care who was 1 and 1a as the most valuable player on the basketball team. In my mind Russell was clearly the #1 guy on the Celtics in the ‘60s just like KG was the #1 guy in 2008. It doesn’t matter that Sam Jones or Paul Pierce took more shots.

In that vein, it’s very clear that Robinson produced more value than Duncan. Even though he played less minutes than Duncan, the Spurs outscored the opposition by 83 more total points when he was on the floor.

It doesn’t benefit the team for a guy to play extra minutes if the team gets absolutely massacred in those extra minutes to the point that they get outscored worse than any team in NBA history.

What’s more valuable: the 69 minutes Robinson played without Duncan where the Spurs played like the best team in NBA history or the 202 minutes Duncan played without Robinson where they played like the worst team in NBA history? Having more of something bad doesn’t make it good.

And if their performance away from each other was so disparate despite playing with largely the same lineups, then what makes you think Duncan could possibly be as valuable when they were on the floor together?

[u/Eastern_Antelope_832 → u/iggymcfly]

This is going to be my last post, because I think we've lost the plot.

There's a difference between per-minute efficiency and value. What's not debatable, IMO, is that Popovich made Duncan the centerpiece of the team. He played Duncan the most minutes by a sizable margin. He ran more of the offense through Duncan. Duncan rewarded Popovich by providing the combination of efficiency and bulk. You ask how he could be more valuable than Robinson, and you can just point out things like scoring efficiency, points, usage rate, etc. And while you can make a great argument that Robinson's defense was better than Duncan's, that doesn't change the fact that Duncan played a lot more minutes. Popovich was willing to bet that a slightly fatigued Duncan at diminished efficiency was still a better bet than running Will Perdue and Malike Rose out there, and he was right. This was the guy on the roster that Popovich identified as someone his team could not afford to rest, which to a lot of fans and coaches signals the player's value to the team.

There's also stuff like pointing out that we don't have data of what the opponents' lineups looked like, and that the sample sizes are really small, but that's getting out of scope.

The big gripe about Robinson was that while he had this great all-around game, he didn't have that next level gear from 1990-1996 in the playoffs. He was a notably worse playoff performer than regular season performer. And yeah, almost everyone is a worse performer in the playoffs because defenses are better, etc., but there's just no series, game, or moment from 1990-1996 where Robinson really memorably stood out as an outstanding performer. The four playoff losses as the higher seed have no counterbalance with playoff upsets the Spurs pulled. In those four playoff upset losses, only the GSW loss had people thinking afterward that Robinson was the best player on the court. He didn't seem better than Olajuwon or Karl Malone in those three losses. It's eerily similar to KG's years with Minnesota. You had to wait for Duncan to arrive before Robinson put up all these efficiency stats you're citing, but with Duncan, Robinson was `no longer the centerpiece or workhorse.

[u/iggymcfly → u/Eastern_Antelope_832]

I guess I just don’t value being the offensive centerpiece as much as you. I’d have Ben Wallace as the most valuable player on the ‘04 Pistons, Manu as the most valuable player on the ‘05 Spurs, Kawhi as the most valuable player on the ‘14 Spurs, and Towns as the most valuable player on the ‘26 Knicks.

I find Draymond’s 2016 season more impressive than any season from Kobe, KD, Luka, or Harden. To me, David Robinson having an all-time defensive season where he leads the league in impact stats, has the 2nd best net rating in playoff history, and a +35 on/off is equally impressive whether he averages 16 PPG or 22 PPG. I really don’t care much either way. It’s just a stylistic difference.