Peaks Project #11

[trex_8063]

RealGM Greatest Player Peaks of All-Time List
1. Michael Jordan ('91--unanimous)
2. Shaquille O'Neal ('00--unanimous)
3. Lebron James ('13--non-unanimous ('09, '12))
4. Wilt Chamberlain ('67--non-unanimous ('64))
5. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ('77--non-unanimous ('71, '72))
6. Hakeem Olajuwon ('94--non-unanimous ('93))
7. Tim Duncan ('03--non-unanimous ('02))
8. Kevin Garnett ('04--unanimous)
9. Bill Russell ('65--non-unanimous ('62, '64))
10. Magic Johnson ('87---unanimous)
11. ???????????????

OK, time to get started on the next 10. fwiw, target closing time for this thread will be late Wednesday evening. So let's....

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[trex_8063]

Tentative Ballot

4. Bird 86 +7.25 (+6.75 O/+0.50 D)

Spoiler:

5. Hakeem 93 +7.25 (+4.25 O/+3.00 D)

6. Chamberlain 67 +7.25 (+4.25 O/+3.00 D)

7. Garnett 04 +7.00 (+3.75 O/+3.25 D)

8. Duncan 02 +7.00 (+3.00 O/+4.00 D)

9. Russell 64 +7.00 (+0.00 O/+7.00 D)

10.Walton 77 +7.25 (+2.75 O/+4.50 D)

11.Robinson 94 +6.75 (+2.75 O/+4.00 D)

Perhaps you've already addressed this and I missed it, but why the huge disconnect between Bird's peak and Magic's (Bird at #4, and Magic apparently no higher than #12)? That seems like a sizable gap for two guys who were considered to have a lot of parity at the time, and who have very comparable statistical profiles.

[eminence]

West/Oscar haven't got much talk yet, but are assuredly legends of the game. Would someone more familiar with their playing styles mind giving me a rough overview on them? Mostly from statistical profile alone I have Oscar as a bit of a downgrade from Wade. West I'm a little more unsure on, he seems to have two distinct career phases- one where he was primarily a scorer, and the second as a facilitator.

[trex_8063]

Sorry. Killer schedule this week. I'm actually dying to have a Magic vs Bird, Walton vs Robinson discussion but just can't. I hoped the mined posts I put in would spark some of that, but no luck.

OK, I wanted to touch on Walton vs. Robinson, too. I'll give my take on it, beginning with some comments on overall narratives, and then looking various game components.....

"Walton led a bunch of scrubs to a title...."
Short answer: not true.
Was this a stacked team? Obviously not. But calling them scrubs is a false narrative designed to prop Walton up higher (I'm sure Walton himself would be the first to object to them being labeled such).
Several of the games from the '77 WCF and '77 Finals are up on YouTube, courtesy of Dipper, among others. Watch those games--->the Portland backcourt is excellent at two things (at least): 1) harrying the opposing backcourts with full-court pressure (that's the primary reason the Sixers had Caldwell Jones bringing the ball up the court half the time in the finals), and 2) running in transition (if you watch these games, take note of how many times the commentators praise/label them as the fastest backcourt in the league).

That backcourt of Lionel Hollins, Johnny Davis, Larry Steele, and Dave Twardzik was actually quite effective for what the team needed of them.

Bobby Gross was an entirely decent scoring SF.
And though Maurice Lucas is someone I'm not quite as high on the more I watch of him, he was still quite obviously a pretty good player (All-Star that year, fwiw). He takes on quite a bit of the offensive load for that team; and while his efficiency isn't particularly good, I do think his tendency to take a lot of mid-range shots is part of what opens the lane a bit for Walton to hit those cutters and work the two-man game with the guards. Lucas is also a solid rebounder and post-defender.

And lastly I want to make mention of Jack Ramsay. Great coach who I think is in no small way responsible for milking the most out of the talent they had.
Nowadays, offenses are predicated on motion sets, and most things that happen are to some degree by design. Coaches today are micro-managing everything from substitutions/minutes, offensive schemes, match-ups, the pace, defensive adjustments, etc etc. As recently as the 1960's, coaches were mostly just responsible for the substitutions/minutes, harassing the referees, occasionally saying something that may or may not be successful in motivating his players, and shouting the occasional vague game plan ("let's run on 'em" or similar). The 1970's appeared somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.......except in Portland.
Their offense seems (to my eye) well ahead of it's time. The constant motion sets, working the pnr or the two-man game, constant cutters, etc.......idk, but this seems like a very disciplined and well-coached team.

In summary: this group is as talented [arguably even a tiny bit more] as pretty much any supporting cast Robinson ever had in his prime, imo, and MORE well-coached (at least relative to era-standards).


Now on to some game components.....
Offensively
Since I've just mentioned this complex (for the era) offense that Portland ran, it's worth mentioning that Walton was the primary guy who made it go. He was super-elite as a passing big man, hitting cutters, working that two-man game (where they dump it to him on the low elbow and then the guy who made the entry pass runs by Walton, rubbing his man off on Bill, wherein Walton then hits him with a pass for a lay-up), and doing the occasional pnr. He's also often the one sparking the fast-break with his excellent outlet passes (and again: very fast backcourt).
Could Robinson have anchored an offense like this to the same degree of success? I don't think so. I don't think he's the same caliber of passer; I don't think he has the bball IQ to work the pnr and two-man game as beautifully as Walton; he's not quite the same caliber of defensive rebounder or outlet passer as Walton, either.

But on the flip-side: I don't think Walton was capable of doing what was being asked of Robinson either. I hear people say that Walton could have dropped 30 pts a night if it had been asked of him, but tbh I'm just not seeing it. Yes, we see examples of him scaling it up sporadically; but always within the context of their offense.
In '77 Walton was averaging 26.2 pts/100 possessions at 56.3% TS (+5.2% rTS).
Robinson in '95-'96 (I'm undecided, though somewhat leaning toward '96 as his peak year) was going for 36.0 pts/100 poss at 59.6% TS (+5.3% rTS).
If the game-plan were more crude: give the ball to Bill and get out of the way ("and hey Bill, you need to score 28-30 ppg).....I just don't see Walton as being capable of scaling up by 10 pts/100 possessions (bumping his usage up from circa-25% to circa-30%) on a night in/night out basis while maintaining the same efficiency (or even improving marginally). And this before considering turnovers too, fwiw: once that stat appears in '78, we can see that Walton was actually a touch turnover-prone.

Here's how I view their capabilities as scorers......
Walton is a better back-to-the-basket scorer (that was never really Robinson's forte). But even there, I don't see Walton as having this dazzling array of post-moves (a la Olajuwon or McHale), nor a single unstoppable move (a la Kareem). Honestly, I'm not sure he's any better (or probably even as good) as Duncan in back-to-the-basket scoring. Walton's got a nice little jump hook; if he can get posted up low enough he's got an effective (though I wouldn't say devastating) drop-step; reasonably nice turnaround. That's about it.
The other area where he's better than Robinson is working the pnr. The screen, the roll.....they are perfectly executed and perfectly timed when Walton runs it.
Outside of those things, Robinson is better at basically every other mode of scoring (and sometimes by a profound margin):
a) Face-up game--->Walton simply didn't have the explosiveness of Robinson to exploit opposing centers by facing up and attacking the rim and/or getting to the FT-line (consider that Robinson averaged more than double the FTA/100 as Walton). Walton wasn't even as effective as Tim Duncan (jab-step/bank-shot) in his face-up game. The difference between Walton and Robinson in this regard is massive.
b) FT-shooting--->Robinson is a solid 5-7% better FT-shooter at their respective peaks.
c) Transition scoring--->No contest. Robinson is on another planet in this regard.
d) Offensive rebounding--->Walton in '77 avg 4.1 OREB/100 with OREB% of 9.8. Robinson in '95 (playing much of that next to Rodman-->a rebounding spounge) managed 3.9 OREB/100 with OREB% of 9.1. In the 88 rs games after Rodman left and before Robinson got hurt he averaged 5.5 OREB/100 with OREB% of 12.4.
So imo, Robinson was at least a little more effective on the offensive glass.
e) Finishing--->Walton was a very good finisher. Robinson was a finisher more in the company of Dwight Howard and Shaquille O'Neal. Just near-devastating if he got the ball within 3 ft of the rim.
f) Mid-range shooting--->Walton had decent touch out to around 12-14 feet, though even there I personally don't think it was AS good as Robinson's touch from the same range. And then Robinson can extend it out even further (to at least 18-19 ft), whereas I've seen nothing to suggest Walton could effectively go that deep.
g) Ball-control???? I'm not sure, it could be a function of the role Walton played thru much of his career. But just putting it out there that he was clearly much more turnover-prone in his career than Robinson.

So overall, offensively......
Walton clearly the higher IQ, clearly the much better passer in the halfcourt, better "system player", better outlet passer. Robinson clearly the much more gifted scorer, less turnover-prone, better able to carry a complete mediocre offensive cast in a relatively unsophisticated system. So who's better offensively? idk, I'd tend to give Robinson a tiny edge on the basis of being a more effective scorer and turning it over less. And playoff "failings" sustained (though I'm kinda leaning toward '96 as his peak now, where he def did NOT fail offensively in the playoffs), it's not as though his huge volume didn't yield team results: in his 3-year peak ('94-'96) the Spurs offense was +4.1 (4th of 27), +3.4 (5th of 27), and +2.6 (9th of 29).


Defensively
Both are clearly in a very elite class. I was super-impressed in watching some of the '77 playoffs recently. Walton is in on just about everything: he's pointing and talking, he's jumping out on perimeter players to cut of the drive before it gets to the hoop; in addition to blocking shots (4.1 blk/100), he's clearly changing lots and lots of shots. I like the way he keeps his arms out almost horizontally when he's off-ball in the paint (to take up as much lateral space as possible, making passes to cutters, etc difficult). Really excellent.

Robinson is averaging around 4.5 blk/100 (he also changes quite a few); and he did this in an era where there's more outside shooting and where the floor is more spread out. He's also hedging and recovering very very nicely on pnr defense, he plays passing lanes (gets around 2.25 stl/100, which is ridiculous for a center; that's like Lebron James territory). In '96---which I'm leaning to as his peak year---while also being the offensive anchor, he anchored the #3 defense (-4.1 rDRTG) with a supporting cast of Sean Elliott, Avery Johnson, Vinny Del Negro, Chuck Person, Will Perdue, and 34-year-old Doc Rivers.

So who's better? I again tend to go with Robinson by a tiny margin; I just think his athleticism (which is miles ahead of Walton) allowed him to do a touch more in the way of help defense. But it might be splitting hairs.


Rebounding
Mostly referring to defensive rebounding, as I already sort of lumped offensive rebounding into their offensive comparison. Here it clearly goes to Walton. Robinson was a very good defensive rebounder.....Walton was a ridiculous defensive rebounder. I like how he blocks out, too: the arms out horizontally, both to provide marginal impediment to anyone trying to sneak by him, but also as "feelers", so he can now if someone is coming from either side and thus he knows which way to shift his weight to box out without turning his head to find someone to put a body on.


So in summary here's who I see doing more/better while on the court (more on that in a moment) over a variety of scenarios in various areas of the game:
Offense--->near wash; maybe small edge to Robinson, imo.
Defense--->I'd again tend to give tiny edge to Robinson, but it's not a big margin..
Rebounding--->edge Walton.

But this is while they're on the court; then there's the factor that Walton is going to miss 16-18 games, and only play 34-35 mpg when he does play. Whereas Robinson will basically give you 81-82 games at ~38 mpg. Void this consideration, I otherwise see it as a very close comparison (with possibly even a tiny edge to Walton); but THIS is the factor that tips it back to Robinson for me. Those durability limitations are going to be relevant factors in some situations.

Anyway, that's my 2c.

[The-Power]

Up now: a long post about Curry and why I have him in my ballot. At the end of the post I'll cast my ballots.

Steph Curry

Defense

I wrote a short essay about his defense and my 'theory' of mediated defensive impact not long ago. I believe it is enough to make my argument clear and it certainly should be enough to start a fruitful discussion in case of disagreement.

Spoiler:

I'll elaborate on the Curry part and won't focus on Bird. Let me start off by stating that Curry's defense visibly improved last season. It wasn't even a steady progress, his defense was there from day one and I actually started a thread on the Warriors board only a few weeks into the season. It was pretty clear from the beginning that he tried hard to silence the critics who were focussing on his supposedly (and I tend to agree) below-average defense. There were several moments indicating that he took it personally. It was repeatedly mentioned that he talked to Ron Adams prior to the season and he told him that even though he has great defensive possessions every game, he doesn't have enough of them. So he focussed on constant defensive awareness and intensity. Green and some others told the media more than once that Steph was especially proud of his defensive improvements even at a time everyone considered him to be a serious MVP candidate mainly because of his offensive performances.

However, this doesn't mean Curry became a completely different player defensively ability-wise. He has his strengths (playing the passing lanes effectively without gambling too much, battling against stronger guys, staying relatively focussed) but also some (natural) shortcomings. He isn't slow but also not fast enough to constantly defend the fastest point guards without help at the rim. He bangs with bigger guys but his physical stature only gets you so far and sometimes he tends to play help-defense too often or too early. His effort isn't consistently great when comparing him to the defensive studs of the game but it's there most of the time and certainly nothing to worry about (in fact I see him playing with more effort than the average player with a lot of offensive responsibility).

What we do have to take into account is the identity of this Warriors' team. It's defensive intensity, led by one of the most intense players in the league in Draymond Green, and it helps not only to stay focussed on defense as a player but it's also an environment a player like Curry can succeed in. Not only the intensity but also the abilities of his teammates like Green, Bogut, Igoudala, Ezeli and even Klay, Livingston and Barnes makes the defensive success of the team possible. At a first glance, Curry's far away from being the main driver of this success. In all honesty, he might be the least important player of the main guys strictly looking at ability and relative importance of the position he fills. We also need to take his importance for the team's offense into account, which leads to less responsibility on defense. The way our team is constructed allows Curry to play the passing lanes more than usual, but it has to be considered a strength of him nevertheless, though.

The stats you mentioned can be a little bit misleading here. Box score based stats can't really capture the defensive performance of a player, which is even more true for perimeter players (and less for bigs, although we have the same issue there as well). His role on the team, which includes playing the passing lanes and grabbing defensive rebounds for fast-breaks, contributes to a decent DBPM for instance. Individual DRTG (which you didn't mention, but I like to address it as well) is influenced in Curry's favor not only through steals and defensive rebounds but also by every defensive possession not resulting some kind of box score event, since it's splitting the credit evenly for every player on the court then. Anyway, Curry was a positive in DRAPM (it's probably better to use it than DRPM, at least I prefer the approach of the former) and this passes the eye-test, albeit one can't rule out some collinearity-issues. His DFG% is also quite decent, although it can be influenced by the presence of his teammates at least for shots near the rim (and by the fact that a good defense collapses less often than weaker ones).

All in all, I'm comfortable calling Curry a clearly positive defender in this environment at the very least. And looking at the rest of the league, I'm comfortable calling him an average to above-average defender on any team relative to his positional peers.

However, what I'd like to address as well is Curry's importance for the Warriors defense in general. And by doing so, it's necessary to - probably counterintuitively - looking at his offensive production. We all know DRAPM, for instance, can be positively influenced by being efficient on offense as a player - working by the same principle what likely makes good offenses resulting in better defenses all things being equal, in terms of team-performance. Curry's focus on 3pt-shooting, especially from the top, might have an influence as well. Not only does efficient offense lead to less fast-break opportunities, Curry's shot-selection allows him to be back on defense faster than players with different shot-charts, possibly enhancing his defensive performance and value to the team. Tiring out opposing defenders by doing a lot of work off the ball so that they can't pressure him on defense as much or can't hit their shots with their usual accuracy might contribute to it as well, but I'm not going to speculate any further since there is no way to prove it yet.

More important is the fact that Curry proved to be a very capable offensive anchor without having elite offensive players (with the exception of Klay at times, though we still don't know how much he relies on Curry to be as good as he was and we also know he still has problems with consistency, creating for himself and others and shot-selection) around him. Green, Iggy, Bogut and Livingston are smart, they are good passers, they are decent playmakers - but one would hardly call them great players because of their offense. They have some really useful skills on offense, but just like Barnes they play within their role and do what they can do. Credit to Kerr for utilizing the players to their strengths, but I also give Curry a ton of credit for making the whole system work, being the engine of the team's offense. Whether it's on-ball or off-ball, he impacts every possession to a visible extent and that's the reason why the others can play the way they play the best, he's the main reason why a defensive-oriented team was that successful on offense last year.

The conclusion one can draw is the following: ultimately, Curry is the reason why we can run this awesome defensive unit in the first place. In a certain way, we have to give him credit for the defensive performance of the Warriors completely independent of his own defensive performance. The fact that he defends at an above-average level on top of that is just the icing on the cake. Do we want to consider it defensive capability? Well, probably not. But I would argue that it's definitely impact and in the end that's what I'm ultimately looking for. I do think Curry's defense in a vacuum undersells him in terms of importance to the Warriors defense, even if this importance happens to arise from indirect/mediated impact. And by the way, a similar logic can be applied when talking about first-tier defensive anchors with the difference that it's usually easier to find fundamentally sound and willing defenders than capable offensive players.

Just some food for thought and I'll leave it at that. It's too late for me to elaborate on Bird but I'm sure others will do if necessary and I'm not as familiar with Bird's defense than I'm with Curry's anyway, for obvious reasons. But some of what I wrote can be written about Bird as well, for what it's worth.

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/posting.php?mode=quote&f=64&p=44600945#start_here

Offense

This is where more elaboration is needed. But first of all I want to make entirely clear that I consider it odd if people refuse to believe that current players might have peaked as high or higher than some all-time greats. It's not that big of a problem here, at least it is not openly admitted, but unfortunately this stance is prevalent in many discussions about peaks of current players versus former, highly-touted – mostly due to career-accomplishments - ones. So, if anyone does think players like Curry or Paul don't even belong in the discussion - by default or any kind of abstruse logic - yet, I'll strongly oppose.

Let's move on to Curry. It is well-known what makes him special, his 3pt-shooting, but I believe many people have yet to realize how special it makes him. He is the best in-game 3pt-shooter by a big margin, to me that's evident. His volume combined with efficiency and, which makes his volume possible in the first place, the ability to constantly create for himself is unprecedented in the history of basketball. We're in the era of the 3pt-shooting and Curry is the king of it. 11.6 or 12.1 (depending on source) 3PtFGA/100 on 0.443 FG%, i.e. 0.665 eFG%. And it is extremely reliable, given that he upped his 3PtFGA/100 to 13.9 or 14.4 in the generally tougher playoff-environment without signs of losing accuracy (0.422 3P%, which is worse but a single game can influence this rating heavily and overall there is little indication that Curry's shot has been less reliable in the 2015 playoffs).

His box-score production during the RS was elite and absolutely compares to the best of all-time with only a few exceptions. Per 100 possession PTS/REB/AST/STL/TOV are 35.5/6.4/11.6/3.0/4.7, 122/101 individual ORTG/DRTG, 28.0 PER, 0.288 WS/48. He was incredibly efficient (0.638 TS%, +10.4 rTS%) while being a high-volume scorer and the main focus of defenses. But the box-score production only tells us a small part of how much Curry impacts the game, otherwise the drop-off in box-score production in the playoffs might be valid as an argument against Curry. I would argue that Curry on offense was one out of two players whose offensive impact of their scoring-game is severely underrated relative to what the box-score suggests – the other one would be Kyle Korver, who didn't have the output in numbers Curry had which makes him as a scoring-threat probably even more underrated in relation. Nevertheless, this is an advantage Curry has over almost any other star-level player in the league, currently and historically, the way I see it. This means we have to put Curry's non-box-score impact heavily into consideration.

This is the first year Curry was used to his strengths, it was the first year in which he really got the keys to the offense and in which the offense was constructed to suit Curry's – and ultimately the other player's – strengths. I give major credit to Kerr and the coaching staff for seeing the need of new system/approach and eventually implementing it. But make no mistake, this system happened to be as successful as it eventually was because they had Curry to rely upon. Curry led an only slightly above-average talented supporting cast on offense to a 116.6 on-court ORTG (102.3 off-court ORTG, +14.3 which is by the way slightly higher than the drop-off the Houston offense faced with Harden on the bench). Green and Bogut are great defenders and probably a plus on offense but a lot of their offense is predicated on having a system like the Warriors did have last season and the offensive system, as I mentioned before, needs Curry's scoring-game and gravity. The only valuable thing Barnes brings to the table on offense is his 3pt-shooting from the corners and the reason why he gets plenty of good looks is the system fueled by Curry. Klay is a great shooter, and this is very valuable to the Warriors' offense, but a) he is nothing special in any other category on offense, i.e. he isn't a second star-level player and b) therefore he isn't very reliable when he doesn't get good looks. Livingston and Iggy are heavily flawed scorers but their passing and – especially in Iggy's case – BBIQ makes them overcome this major flaw and provide solid contribution on offense. Anyway, one would hardly consider them to be very good offensive players. So what Curry accomplished with this team on offense has been remarkable. A team that fits well together but only because Curry manages to hide some of their weaknesses. The question is: how did he manage it? And the answer can only be found in his shooting, his gravity and the fear he instills on opposing defenses.

The current NBA is dominated by the 3pt-shot. The 3PAr increased constantly and has been at an all-time high in 2014/15 at 0.268. The four teams with the highest 3PAr are the Rockets, Cavaliers, Clippers and Hawks – the #1 and #2 seed of the EC and the #2 and #3 seed of the WC. The Warriors had the seventh highest 3PAr. The teams with the best 3PtFG% in the league are, in order: Warriors, Hawks, Clippers, Spurs, Cavaliers. It should be evident that the best teams in the league rely heavily on the 3pt-shot. Having a great and reliable 3pt-shooter is therefore extremely valuable, but so is having one who can create good looks for his teammates. Curry combines both like no other player in history. With Curry on the court the %FGA 3PT is at 35.3 (tied with Draymond for second highest on the team, behind Bogut), with him off the court it's only at 22.0 (last on the team, second last is Draymond's off-court %FGA 3PT number). Obviously there is a lot of co-linearity going on there, but looking at some WOWY stats with Curry on, Green off and vice versa, although it is a relatively small sample size, suggests that Curry probably is the main driver of the 3pt-shooting (30.7 to 28.2 %FGA 3PT) even if the only difference might be himself – and this agrees with the eye-test. But not only that, with Curry on the court the team's 3P% is at 41.3 (third on the team, behind McAdoo's (an obvious outlier due to the low minutes, namely 137) and Bogut's splits), without him the 3P% is at 34.9 (by far the worst on the team). No player comes even close to the on-off court difference, not even players where a lot of co-linearity is to be expected (like Bogut, Klay, Green). The on/off-splits for overall scoring are painting the same picture: the TS% of the team is the highest with Curry on the floor and no other controlled variable on or off the court, and the lowest with him on the bench and nother other controlled variable off or on the court.

Let's look at Curry's teammates, Green and Barnes. Green is Curry's main PnP-option and Barnes is the guy who stands in the corner and waits for good looks. I'll start with Green: 54.6% of his 3PA are wide open, his efficiency is good at 0.408 3P%. 93.3% of his 3PA are either open or wide open. It's even more ridiculous when you look at Barnes. 76.3% of his 3PA are wide open, another 20.9% are open, i.e. 97.2% (!) of his 3PA are not hardly contested and he hits them at 0.41 3P%. Opponents let a guy, most of the time in the corner at that, basically uncontested for highly efficient shots almost every time he shoots. Obviously we can't credit Curry alone for all that, the ball movement and opponent's game plans are crucial to this as well. But why do players on the court react in a way that leads to the consequence of frequently leaving a player open who shoots >40% on 3's in these situations or why do coaches accept this type of shot as the preferable outcome? To answer this question you won't be able to avoid mentioning Curry as a or the main driver of it. It's mostly him they gameplan against, and ball movement is supposed to break defenses which gives you the good looks and Curry breaks them down more than any other player on the Warriors' roster by a huge margin. The numbers regarding the attempts, by the way, don't really look any different in the playoffs, i.e. these situations as such were reproducible.

How does Curry's impact manifests in a team-context? Well, he has an impact on his team's shooting (and scoring in general) in three different ways like no other player ever had in combination. 1) He impacts the game with his own shooting. As I stated earlier he shoots a high-volume of 3's, unprecedented for a volume-scorers, at an elite efficiency. He can create his shot whenever he wants, unless defenses overplay, because he has the handles, because defenses need to be cautious regarding his drives as well and because he can make tough (for any other player) shots at a rate that we can hardly call them tough for him. 2) His off-ball game distracts defenses to an extent which is fascinating. He creates space for other players by simply running around or setting a simple screen in the middle. When he can't get open himself to get a shot off it is very likely that there is significantly more space to operate for his teammates. Also, Curry's willingness to move a lot off-ball, which is extremely exhausting because you have to be fast and avoid being screened (and also because defenders grab his jersey ridiculously often and the refs don't call it at all), is sometimes underestimated but actually very crucial to the success of the system – and I'm not sure how many star-level (perimeter) players are willing to spend that much energy playing off-ball when it's frequently leads to no note in your box-score. 3) Curry is a skilled play maker. Not only does he score the ball like no other from behind the arc, he also has several moves to counter defensive reactions which means you can't simply try to take away his scoring as good as possible and call it a day. That's because you can only take away his scoring in general and 3pt-shooting in particular by severe overplaying and he can handle it. He struggles at it at times, granted - although that has been less of a problem in 2015 -, but that's partly because defenses play him like no other player has been played so far. Even if it works every now and then, more often than not it leads to 4vs3 opportunities for his teammates and finally they were able to take advantage of it even though less successfully so during the playoffs. Curry isn't the pure PG Paul is or Nash or Magic were, but it doesn't automatically mean he creates less for his teammates – he just does it in a different way, often times without getting any credit for it in the box-score.

This impact is there every time Curry's has a foot on the court. It doesn't matter if he is 2/10 from long distance, it doesn't matter if he gets credited with 10 assists or not. The scoring-threat remains, therefore his impact is extremely reliable. And this reliability carries over into the postseason. What actually happened when we saw the decline in box-score production during the playoffs is the shift from quantifiable impact by basic numbers to a more subtle, less obvious (in terms of raw numbers) impact. He didn't play poorly aside from a few games. The most obvious change was the drop-off in assists while the turnovers increased. The reason for it was the slightly different way defenses played him, but they had to sacrifice other things to do so – it was nothing but a gamble. And the gamble worked to an extent, but rather because the team couldn't punish them enough for their diverging strategy. It isn't a viable strategy in general, though, a good team like the Warriors adjusts like they eventually did even in the last playoffs and also because you can't bet on Green, Barnes and Thompson all shooting worse from long distance despite similar looks compared to the RS or scoring on worse efficiency in general. In the finals, Iggy didn't save the Warriors offensively in a sense that he did something outstanding on the offensive end, he simply converted what the defense happily gave him mainly in order to avoid getting beaten by Curry. Iggy's late showing on offense doesn't diminish Curry's impact during the finals, it actually is a clear testament to it. What Curry showed was that you can take away his play making (not really his scoring, though, and this shows how great of a scorer he is) and force him into mistakes, but you always have to do it at the expense of something other and gamble on the result. The ability to maintain non-box score impact regardless of circumstances is what separates him from most of the other players. And there is reason to believe that this non-quantifiable impact actually increases when there is a clear drop-off tendency in box score numbers. The reason for this is that he has an impact during every possession for the reasons I stated earlier and there are more possessions without him getting credited for anything which makes the impact less visible. But therefore, consequently and based on my prior analysis, the less-visible impact relative to the box score augments. Ultimately, that's why I don't believe in the narrative of a severe drop-off in playoff-impact this year. And let's not forget that the result was a dominant playoff-run, not only record-wise but especially because they eventually dominated their opponents in every series – often enough, people see the playoff-run as less impressive and make it closer than it actually was because the Warriors had a couple of poor games against Memphis and Cleveland, even though they blew them out after they figured out how to adjust both times. I don't want to address the injury-narrative here because I don't believe the injuries actually changed anything regarding Curry. If someone disagrees with it I can look for a post I made a few weeks ago in which I elaborate on it a little bit.

However, back to Curry. The ability to actually produce way more than the numbers suggests led me to believe that he deserves a spot that high. There are still great players out there, but I don't believe anyone can claim the non-measurable impact by basic stats as much as Curry. The closest one to him in this regard would be Dirk, but I do believe Curry's superior play making and gravity towards the perimeter outweighs any advantage Dirk had due to his size. Bird would be another player often credited for great off-ball play and therefore off-ball impact. Relative to his peers I absolutely agree with it, but the way the game was played back then – by teams but also by Bird himself – didn't allow that much off-ball impact, especially as a perimeter-player. Someone might want to argue that it is an unfair stance, since Bird in today's era would have much more off-ball impact as a consequence. I could agree with that. However, two remarks: 1) Bird still wouldn't have the gravity of Curry, there is no indication to believe that he would even come close to Curry's shooting – which is the main driver of gravity towards the perimeter. And 2) if we want to credit Bird with more off-ball impact mainly in the form of spacing and making use of it, we consequently have to take things away from him. Offensive rebounding for instance, as well as some of his post-play. And his defensive impact would likely be lower in today's era given Bird's reputation as a decent post-defender – his calling card whenever his defense is mentioned – and the lack of post-play today, especially from the non-Center spots. We can't simply project his off-ball impact into today's era without looking at other facets of his game, it doesn't work that way. I wrote someting about this topic earlier in the project, in case someone is interested and/or want to share his/her thoughts.

Spoiler:

I would like to discuss his off-ball impact during the era he played in. If you would like to defer this discussion until more people have picked Bird that's totally fine by me. I believe his off-ball impact, while great for his era, doesn't compare to the elite shooters of today's league and this mainly has to do with the way basketball was played back then and is played nowadays. But I'm genuinely interested in your opinion on that topic because I got to know you as a smart and knowledgeable poster – maybe you can convince me in this regard.

During the 1980s the effective of spacing was extremely limited, for basically two reasons: a) the half court offense was predicated on low-post offense and the space close to the basket was crowded. It is always great to watch a game from the 80's and directly after that recent games. The difference in the approach of basketball is like night and day, something I tend to forget at times when I'm watching straight hours of 70s, 80s or even 90s basketball. Offenses don't really make use of spacing outside of 18ft or so. And b) defenses dared their opponents to defeat them from outside, sometimes even from mid range. Sure, some players were better contested and Bird has to be the prime example but the degree was still blatantly different compared to the elite shooters these days.

I re-watched most of the 1984 and 1987 finals with a particular focus on Bird and Magic. Therefore Bird's off-ball game was something I looked at intensively and at least the special spacing effect wasn't apparent to my eyes. Some observations: Bird rarely positioned himself further outside than 18ft in order to free up space. Overall, he seemingly behaved like most of his peers who could shoot the ball at least with some accuracy – they would be prepared to catch and shoot the ball, but they still absolutely preferred to establish position as close to the rim as possible while being an option to pass to. He was simply more successful at it. So we can't criticize Bird for it and since he had a good post-game it also made some sense to not constrain himself for the sake of spacing by not being close to the rim. But all in all, it was obvious that the fundamental concept of spacing and pull-out gravity was only very rudimentarily developed.

Still, opponents didn't want Bird to shoot mid range shots. They were more contested than the average shot from those spots, there was help more often. But I've never seen the defense doing everything they could to avoid him getting the ball far away from the basket. I've also seen multiple instances where players visibly sagged off of Bird when there was some distance to the ball and I've rarely seen the defense panic when he got the ball in a spot to shoot without a defender nearby, therefore rarely saw them overplaying but let him shoot instead. It wasn't the plan but still not the end of the world. It were still only two points on a jump shot. And this sentence is of particular importance to me. Extreme spacing can only work when opponents fear your 3pt-shot, the extra point is what it's all about. And this wasn't the case with Bird and if only because of the era he played in. In 1986 he took three 3pt-shots per 100 possessions. Many for his era, nothing compared to modern players who can shoot from long distance (and mostly worse than Bird, at that). The league-average 3PAr was 0.038 in 1986 and 0.268 in 2015. The increasing use of the 3pt-shot has been unbelievable on a historical scale. On a side-note, the lack of spacing also led to visbily less drives right to the rim in half-court sets.

This is why I don't see him as a GOAT outside-shooter, nor as someone who was able to distract defenses due to his shooting like some other players in history did and do, all of them playing in the post-Bird era for that matter. And this leads me to question the greatness of his overall off-ball impact. Off-ball impact is not only about shooting but it is by far the most important part unless we're talking about the exception Shaquille O'Neal is. Among his peers I believe in his comparatively incredible off-ball impact but I doubt it at a historical scale. In an era with more emphasis on the 3pt-shot and also, because of that, more spacing his off-ball impact would be higher. But the era also had advantages for his game: he was able to be a positive defender because he was a good post-defender and rebounder, both of it would be of less use in the modern era. He also was good at post-ups on offense and a good offensive rebounder, both of it would be of less use in the modern era. And his shots from longer distance were less contested overall and he didn't have to work very hard to get them and get them off (note: I'm not talking about mid range shots here, that would need further assessment). So when we decide to prop him up for being the shooter, rebounder, post-defender and post-player he was – which is only fair and sensible – we should by the same token probably re-think his off-ball impact when we're making cross-era comparisons. At least in my mind, feel free to disagree.

By the way, Bird is another case I hate to not have plus/minus data, on/off data, comprehensive shot-logs and some gravity data. Would make it much easier to rate him as a player for me, as of now we have to rely on the limited amount of data, rational reasoning and the eye-test. It can work but still makes is much more difficult.

http://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=44631943#p44631943

Other noteworthy players for the 2nd ballot of mine are Wade, Walton, Paul and arguably a couple of others (some might bring up Oscar and West, for example, and make a good case for them, or Steve Nash). I do have reasons as to why I rank them lower, but I won't go into detail about it unless the question is being raised – especially since most of it refers to what I wrote here.

1st Ballot: 1995 David Robinson
2nd Ballot: 2015 Stephen Curry
3rd Ballot: 2008 Chris Paul***

***note that this vote might change. I'm not sure about this ballot yet (and mentioned other players whom I can see arguments for) but I have to vote and take Chris Paul for now. Can't really elaborate on it presently but if I have to do, so that my vote can be counted, I could come up with some basic numbers and write them down here - although I don't see the benefit of it.

[70sFan]

1st - Julius Erving 1976
2nd - Larry Bird 1986
3rd - David Robinson 1995
Although I voted for Dr J and Bird over Magic, I'm very happy that he's in top 10. He's one of my favourite player ever, GOAT offensive player in my opinion.
I became less optimistic about David peak being in top 10, but still his defensive impact combined with very good offensive game is a must-top 10. I have him over Walton mainly because Walton would never play full season and he could play only about 32-33 minutes. Also, as good as Walton was as a defender, I would still take Admiral because of his athletism (similar to Duncan/Hakeem situation). David was also better man defender in my opinion.
Next players will be: Oscar, Walton, Moses and probably Dirk.

West/Oscar haven't got much talk yet, but are assuredly legends of the game. Would someone more familiar with their playing styles mind giving me a rough overview on them? Mostly from statistical profile alone I have Oscar as a bit of a downgrade from Wade. West I'm a little more unsure on, he seems to have two distinct career phases- one where he was primarily a scorer, and the second as a facilitator.

Well, I think both West and Oscar were better than Wade at their peak (it's close). West always was good playmaker, his scoring just declined in 1970s because of age.

[Dr Positivity]

Same top 3 as last time

Ballot 1: Walton 1977

Ballot 2: Robinson 1994

Ballot 3: Bird 1986

Walton and Robinson continue the theme of big men like Hakeem, Duncan, etc. who provide both defensive anchor, passing and good scoring. I see Bird as positive defensively while providing an all time great offensive combination of scoring, spacing and passing ability

[Clyde Frazier]

Bird and Dr. J will still be my first 2 ballots. Will be looking over many of the others mentioned here tonight. Glad to see west and oscar getting some attention now.

[JordansBulls]

1st ballot selection: Bird 1986 - Great overall season dominant in the season and playoffs with a great overall playoffs record of 15-3 also considered on arguably the greatest team of all time.

2nd ballot selection: Wade 2006 - Put on a show in the playoffs especially the ECF and the NBA Finals pretty much singlehandedly dominating the finals with the highest PER ever for a finals.

3rd ballot selection: Moses Malone 1983 - Dominant Season and playoffs and went 12-1 in the postseason. Won league and finals mvp.


--------- RS PER, WS48, --------- PER, WS48 playoffs
Moses Malone 1983: 25.1, 0.248 -----25.7, 0.260 (13 playoff games, title)
Bird 1986: 25.6, 0.244--------------23.9, 0.263 (23 playoff games, title)
Dwyane Wade 2006: 27.6, 0.239-------26.9, 0.240 (23 playoff games, title)

Others to consider:
Julius Erving 1976: 28.7, 0.262-----32.0, 0.321 (13 playoff games, title) - ABA

[drza]

Bird, Walton, Dr. J. Robinson and Oscar are the most in play for me right now. I'm willing to listen on Curry and Paul, as I didn't have either of them nearly this high, but I'm willing to re-evaluate. But I'm assuming my votes are coming from that first group of 5. I'm not sure if today maps out to any better time-wise than yesterday was, but hope springs eternal that I'll be able to step back in with some thought on how some of these guys compare to each other. They all have great resumes, but I think the more interesting stuff happens when we start comparing them directly and seeing what falls out.

[trex_8063]

Bird, Walton, Dr. J. Robinson and Oscar are the most in play for me right now. I'm willing to listen on Curry and Paul,

How about Moses? Seems like he comes into the picture somewhere around Curry/Paul (ahead of Curry for me; in same general vicinity as Paul).

[E-Balla]

Bird, Walton, Dr. J. Robinson and Oscar are the most in play for me right now. I'm willing to listen on Curry and Paul,

How about Moses? Seems like he comes into the picture somewhere around Curry/Paul (ahead of Curry for me; in same general vicinity as Paul).

Don't forget the other ATG Gs too (Kobe, West, Oscar, Wade, T-Mac). I don't see Curry or Paul as peaking over any of these five.

[mischievous]

Ballot 1: Larry Legend 86/87. Seems you can pick either one of these years although 86 is the more popular one probably because he won the title. All around great player, scored on efficient volume, ultra elite playmaking from the forward spot, very crafty, great rebounder for his size and position(small forward these years). In either season, was a 25-28 ppg 9-10 rpg, 7-8 apg ts% ranged from 58-61 % generally, in both regular season and playoffs.

Ballot 2: 76 DR J. Quick raw numbers: 29.3/11/5 56.9 ts% 27.7 PER. Upped his game absurdly in the playoffs en route to a title, 34.7/12.6/4.9 61 ts% 32 PER!!. The footage on the Doctor is a little limited, but his scoring was very elite as the numbers indicate. Very good rebounder for a small forward, i can't really get a good feel for his ball handing and passing skills by the footage there is, but i would guess it is probably roughly around the level of someone like a KD or Prime Pierce which isn't on the level of say a Lebron or something like that but still pretty good. Dr J is awfully close to Bird, but i still prefer Bird because his passing is simply on another level.

Ballot 3: 2009 Dwayne Wade. Regular season stats: 30.2/5/7.5/ 2.2 spg/1.3 blk 57.4 ts%, 30.4 PER. The only players with a higher PER in nba history are MJ, Lebron, Shaq, Wilt, AD, and David Robinson. Still respectable in his playoff series, although back spasms limited him to some degree, still did roughly 29/5/5 on 56.5 ts% 26.3 PER. Wade was a great defender in 09, made 2nd team defense, 3rd in DPOY, elite help defender, very good man defender, excellent shot blocking for a guard. Team success often hurts Wade when it comes to this season but i think sometimes people fail to realize how bad his team was. Wade's best teammate was a Rookie Beasley who averaged 13.9 ppg, after that he had 27 games from a washed up Jermaine Oneal, then half a season from a banged up past prime Shawn Marion.

Wade had a ridiculous 13 game stretch that year where he averaged 37.2 ppg 5.9 rpg 10.4 apg 2.9 spg 1.4 bpg 55.3 fg%. This is certainly one of the greatest stretches of basketball played by anyone.

[trex_8063]

Bird, Walton, Dr. J. Robinson and Oscar are the most in play for me right now. I'm willing to listen on Curry and Paul,

How about Moses? Seems like he comes into the picture somewhere around Curry/Paul (ahead of Curry for me; in same general vicinity as Paul).

Don't forget the other ATG Gs too (Kobe, West, Oscar, Wade, T-Mac). I don't see Curry or Paul as peaking over any of these five.

He mentioned Oscar, fwiw.

[Clyde Frazier]

Bird, Walton, Dr. J. Robinson and Oscar are the most in play for me right now. I'm willing to listen on Curry and Paul,

How about Moses? Seems like he comes into the picture somewhere around Curry/Paul (ahead of Curry for me; in same general vicinity as Paul).

Don't forget the other ATG Gs too (Kobe, West, Oscar, Wade, T-Mac). I don't see Curry or Paul as peaking over any of these five.

This is the first Kobe mention as far as I can tell. Never been a huge fan, but I'd say it's time to at least start looking at him.

I noticed he had an on/off of around +12 in 05-06. Not sure if that's the highest of his career.

[mischievous]

Bird, Walton, Dr. J. Robinson and Oscar are the most in play for me right now. I'm willing to listen on Curry and Paul,

How about Moses? Seems like he comes into the picture somewhere around Curry/Paul (ahead of Curry for me; in same general vicinity as Paul).

Don't forget the other ATG Gs too (Kobe, West, Oscar, Wade, T-Mac). I don't see Curry or Paul as peaking over any of these five.

Not only that, i don't see it as a given that those 2 belong above Dirk, Barkley or Ewing at their peaks. Curry was amazing last year but its a little strange to see him possibly going in as a top 15 peak.

[The-Power]

Not only that, i don't see it as a given that those 2 belong above Dirk, Barkley or Ewing at their peaks. Curry was amazing last year but its a little strange to see him possibly going in as a top 15 peak.

The question is: why? Why does it feel strange to you? Even if you don't look at in-depth analysis like I tried to provide earlier, there is nothing strange with having him this high to me - regardless of what criteria you apply. Dominant RS on a historically dominant team, impressive box score stats (advanced ones or those extrapolated to 100 possessions), MVP. Then we have a dominant playoff-run and a title with him as the main guy and - albeit slightly worse - still very good raw numbers. We don't even have to get into analysis, impact evaluation etc. to see: this guy had an all-time great season most likely.

To me, and please correct me if I'm wrong by providing sensible and detailed reasoning, it looks like you simply can't fathom that a player right in front of your eyes might have peaked that high but you don't know why. For what it's worth, it also took people a few years to have 2009 LeBron at the top of an all-time peak list (and I'm not implying that 2015 Curry is equal to 2009 LeBron). Sometimes there is recency bias in the opposite direction. And I understand it to an extent. One reads a lot about old players, watches highlights etc. and one gets the impression that player A never missed a shot, player B never made a mistake on defense, player C dominanted every game he played in - to overstate the case. But then one actually re-watches games and realizes: this isn't true at all. And we all need to be aware of this simple fact.

[eminence]

Excellent post by The-Power on Curry's impact, pretty crazy to see quantified how many open looks his teammates get because of him. I could see myself putting him @ #2 pretty easily right now.

[trex_8063]

Up now: a long post about Curry and why I have him in my ballot. At the end of the post I'll cast my ballots.

--snipped--

Epic post, and thanks very much for taking the time.

I'm going to make two statements, at least one of which will no doubt surprise you:
1) I agree with your analysis almost completely.
2) I'm still not going to be lending Curry my support in this project for at least a little while.


If I'm not mistaken, the 2nd statement probably surprised you. How can he agree with my analysis and still not consider Curry a viable candidate right now? Well don't worry, I won't leave you in suspense. It's for two primary reasons.....

Reason the first
You cited advanced metrics (PER and WS/48, also BPM) and per 100 statistics; you multiple times referred to his impact, and made statements such as "every time he set foot on the court" and so on. Well, that's just it: "every time he set foot on the court". I don't disagree with you in the least about the quality of his play and the impact he was having when he set foot on the court. Impact (and measures thereof) is just that: assessment of how he effects the point differential when he's playing. PER, WS/48, BPM are all per minute stats; per 100 stats are subject to playing time as well.

Those stats and indicators are fantastic, and I basically agree with you wholesale about the impact Curry was having when on the court. But Curry was only on the court for 32.7 mpg this past season, which is considerably less than almost everyone else we're considering at this stage.
If I were to put it to you in a RAPM type of argument.......
Suppose Curry was having a near GOAT-level (at least near greatest in the period we've had impact data) impact as measured by a non-scaled PI RAPM of +8.0. Realize that because he's only playing 32.7 mpg, he's still having just marginally less impact per game than a guy who's playing 37.5 mpg at +7.0 RAPM; or less than the guy who's playing 35.0 mpg at +7.5; or the guy whose playing 40.5 mpg at +6.5 RAPM.....etc etc (you get the idea).
And frankly, there's multiple other characters in consideration who fall into those categories.


Reason the second
You went into great detail about how we're currently witnessing the 3pt era, where 3pt shooting is one of the most influential factors in team success (and Curry, as you stated it, "is the king"; arguably the greatest outside shooter the world has ever seen). But that is just this era. Are we only setting out to measure how good a player is within a specific set of circumstances? If dominance within his era-specific circumstances were the only thing we were attempting to define/quantify, we without a doubt should have voted Bill Russell in at 3rd or 4th---at worst---in this project. But how his impact translates to other eras was a big consideration for many. If we're going to apply that criteria to him, we should do so for others (including Curry).
drza and I both stated that perhaps we should be striving to answer the more broad question of "How good were they?", and not just "How well could they do in these very specific circumstances?". e.g. How good would Steph Curry be in a league with no 3pt line? How good would he be in a league with a 3pt line, but where hand-checking is allowed?

As we're comparing players across generations, and across a vast array to rules and trends, these are questions which need consideration.

And speaking for myself: my perceived answers to these questions, as well as considerations about his small minutes, leave Curry out of consideration at this point in the project. (not that I think he's terribly far off, fwiw).

[thizznation]

Checking in here. Got tied up during the period I planned on making my post. Will try to get votes and post in by tonight.