Is Marc Gasol a Hall of Famer?
Breaking down the Hall-of-Fame case for Marc Gasol.
A little more than two weeks ago, Marc Gasol officially announced his retirement from basketball. I think now would be a good time to dust off the old Keltner List and put Gasol’s career under the microscope.
What is the Keltner List? It’s a series of subjective questions formulated by famed sabermetrician Bill James used to help assess whether or not a player should be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Although the system was designed to evaluate baseball players, with a few minor tweaks it can also be used to assess the Hall-worthiness of basketball players. In this post, I will examine Gasol’s case for the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Was he ever regarded as the best player in basketball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in basketball?
No, not even close.
Was he the best player on his team?
From his rookie season in 2008-09 through the 2014-15 campaign, I think Gasol was the Grizzlies’ best player. He had talented teammates like Zach Randolph and Mike Conley, so I wouldn’t peg him as the best player in all of those seasons, but I have him ranked as their top player a majority of the time (four out of seven seasons).
Was he the best player in basketball at his position?
Gasol was named the All-NBA First Team center in 2014-15, so I guess for at least one season he was. But did he have an extended run where he was considered the best center in the game? I would say the answer is no.
Did he have an impact on a number of NBA Finals or conference finals?
Gasol played in the Western Conference Finals once with the Memphis Grizzlies in 2013, and he played in the Eastern Conference and NBA Finals with the Toronto Raptors in 2019.
The Grizzlies were swept by the San Antonio Spurs in 2013, so Gasol’s impact was obviously minimal. He played well in the 2019 NBA Finals, averaging 12.0 PPG and 7.3 RPG with a 61.6 true shooting percentage as the Raptors beat the Golden State Warriors to claim their first (and thus far only) championship.
Was he good enough that he could play regularly after passing his prime?
Gasol started 42 of a possible 52 games playing for the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers in 2020-21 at the age of 36, so the answer is undoubtedly yes.
Is he the very best (eligible) basketball player in history who is not in the Hall of Fame?
No, as I’ve stated before I believe Chauncey Billups holds that somewhat-dubious honor.
Are most players who have comparable statistics in the Hall of Fame?
There are any number of ways one could attempt to answer this question. Here’s the approach I used:
Take Gasol’s top 10 seasons based on individualized wins*.
Order them from highest to lowest.
Repeat this for all eligible players and find the 10 players with the most similar pattern to Gasol (note that the word “similar” here refers to value, not style of play).
* This is my replacement for another statistic I created, win shares. Win shares, in my opinion, overrates low-usage/high-efficiency players and underrates high-usage/low-efficiency players.
Here are those players, in order of similarity:
Nate Thurmond (HOF)
Jason Kidd (HOF)
Chet Walker (HOF)
Larry Foust
John Drew
John Havlicek (HOF)
Vern Mikkelsen (HOF)
Larry Johnson
Andre Miller
Stephon Marbury
Note that five of Gasol’s top seven comps are Hall of Famers. Larry Foust, an eight-time All-Star in the 1950s, has a strong case for the Hall of Fame as well. While this does not make Gasol a no-doubt-about-it choice, it suggests his election would not make him an outlier (far from it, actually).
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Do the player’s numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?
Gasol’s Hall of Fame Probability is 4.2%, which is extremely low. If you look at the five eligible players directly above and below him, you’ll only find one Hall of Famer: Connie Hawkins, who had a brief-yet-distinguished ABA career which is not included in Basketball-Reference’s model.
Gasol’s Hall of Fame standards score is 34, which puts him in the “feasible candidate” range. He’s tied for 34th place among all eligible non-Hall of Famers by this measure, although Gasol himself is not yet eligible.
Note that both of the measures used above are based on past voting tendencies. In other words, they don’t necessarily reflect who should be elected to the Hall of Fame, but rather who will be.
Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?
Good defenders are usually the players who get shortchanged the most by traditional statistics, and there is evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, to suggest Gasol was an excellent defensive player.
In particular, Gasol won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2012-13, although somewhat strangely he was named to the NBA’s All-Defensive Second Team that season. That was the only season he was named to one of the All-Defensive teams, although he did receive Defensive Player of the Year votes in three other seasons (2011-12, 2013-14, and 2014-15).
Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame?
I think he is. The Hall of Fame has done a pretty good job electing centers, so there’s not one candidate in particular who stands out. Gasol’s closest competition is probably Bill Laimbeer, a four-time All-Star and two-time champion who twice led the NBA in total rebounds. However, Laimbeer did not win any major awards in his career, and he was never named to an All-NBA team.
How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?
Gasol garnered MVP votes in just two seasons, 2012-13 and 2014-15. He received a single fifth-place vote in the former season and a single fourth-place vote in the latter season.
How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the players who played in this many All-Star games go into the Hall of Fame?
Gasol earned just three All-Star selections, an extremely low total for a Hall of Famer. There are only four players in the Hall of Fame who were selected to play in exactly three All-Star Games: Maurice Stokes, Charlie Scott, George McGinnis, and Jamaal Wilkes.
Stokes is not an apt comparison, as he was selected to play in the All-Star Game his first three seasons in the league before suffering a career-ending brain injury at the age of 24. Scott and McGinnis aren’t great comparisons, either, as both players were multi-time ABA All-Stars.
If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win an NBA title?
Not likely, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Gasol was the best player on a Grizzlies team that reached the Western Conference Finals in 2013. While that team did not advance to the NBA Finals, Gasol played a large role in them being in that position in the first place.
What impact did the player have on basketball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way? Was his college and/or international career especially noteworthy?
Gasol had a noteworthy international career. In 2007-08, at the age of 23, he was named MVP in Liga ACB, the top professional division of the Spanish basketball league system. Gasol moved on to the NBA the following season.
Gasol played for Spain in international competitions, winning World Cup gold medals in 2006 and 2019 and Olympic silver medals in 2008 and 2012. He also led Spain to two gold medals, one silver medal, and two bronze medals at the quadrennial FIBA EuroBasket championships.
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The Verdict
Gasol is held back by his lack of eye-popping statistics:
He was a good scorer (14.0 PPG in 32.2 MPG), but not a great scorer.
He was a good rebounder (7.4 RPG), but not a great rebounder.
He was a good passer (3.4 APG) — very good for a center, in fact — but not a great passer.
His scoring efficiency was good (55.7 true shooting percentage, one percentage point above the league average), but not great.
He was a good shot blocker (1.4 BPG), but not a great shot blocker.
However, if a player has all of the attributes above and is also a great defender, then you have someone who’s incredibly valuable. In other words, when it comes to Gasol, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
In my opinion, Gasol’s NBA career puts him very, very close to the Hall-of-Fame line, if not over. And when you add in his international accomplishments — which are considered when the voters evaluate his case — you have what I believe to be a Hall-of-Fame career. Gasol would get my (imaginary) vote.
Good article, Justin. I have a couple disagreements: I think Gasol is a great passer for a center: 3.8 AST/36, 4.1/100, and 17.1 AST%, which are some of the highest marks ever for a center. He's a bad rebounder for a center (13.3 TRB%). He's an average scorer (15.7/36) and slightly above average efficiency (103 TS+). His advanced stats say that he was a very good defender. Finally, he played only 28K MP, ranking only 205th all time. Based on all that, I'd say no to HOF. But with much more longevity (say 40K MP) at the same quality, I'd say yes: Like most passer/defender/lower scorers, he's underrated. I think if he had been a component piece on a multiple-championship team (like Parish or Draymond), he'd have a much higher profile and reputation and likely be in HOF, even at the same quality and MP.
He has done enough, he had a better career then grant hill let’s be honest and hill is in so not sure why this even a discussion