Pandas pivot produces "ValueError: Index contains duplicate entries, cannot reshape"

Try pivot_table:

df
   anger_metric metric_name  angle_value
0       71.0991        roll      14.6832
1       71.0991         yaw       0.7009
2       71.0991       pitch      22.5075
3       90.1341        roll       4.8566
4       90.1341         yaw       6.4458
5       90.1341       pitch     -10.1930

result = df.pivot_table(index='anger_metric', 
                        columns='metric_name', 
                        values='angle_value')
result.columns.name = None

result
                pitch     roll     yaw
anger_metric                          
71.0991       22.5075  14.6832  0.7009
90.1341      -10.1930   4.8566  6.4458