Prime Larry Bird vs 14-15 Stephen Curry on defense?

[Dr Positivity]

There is an argument to be made for Bird being an above average defender. He finished on 2nd team All-Defense 3 times and has elite DWS, even finishing 1st in the whole league in the stat 4 times. He puts up good steal numbers and had elite defensive rebounding for his position.

When looking at Curry in 15 he beat the stereotype for what a PG with ok size+athleticism is supposed to do on defense. He put up solid steal numbers, had -3.5 on/off defensively and was 2nd in DRPM for PGs. He used his IQ and better lateral speed than in other athletic areas to good use. Is this a good comparison for what the "Larry Bird was actually good on defense" version would be, but with better rebounding? Or do you think Curry was faster and better on D?

[The-Power]

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.

[70sFan]

That's why I'm thinking that Bird defense is underrated. Above average PF-size forward have much more impact on D than point guards.
Bird is more impatfull without a doubt

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Curry is small to be an off guard defensively and is a little below average speed as a point guard defensively but Curry has a ridiculously high basketball IQ and reeds plays correctly. Curry is now a slightly better than average man to man defender and a quite good team defender.

Bird was a good man to man defender of power forwards and a very good team defender. The story of Bird being a bad defender comes from Bird being a bad defender of small forward that put the ball on the floor against Bird. Seeing McHale who is clearly not a small forward being given the defensive assignment of defending small forwards created the idea that Bird's Bad defense was being covered for by giving Bird the easier defensive assignment. Bird was in fact given the easier defensive assignments because McHale was the better defender, because it was good for Bird to conserve energy for offense due to the fact that Bird expended a lot of energy on offense, and Bird was such a good sneaky help defender that having Bird on a man that Bird could cheat off of enabled Bird to be diruptive on defense.

The Celtics chose to play 2 guys who were power forwards defensively without playing a small forward. This was not Bird's fault. Bird, McHale and Maxwell were all power forwards defensively but Maxwell had decent foot speed and McHale had arms that were extremely long so McHale and Maxwell were better man to man defenders of small forwards than Bird was.

Bird and Curry are both good defenders despite being a step slow for the position that they play on offense. Prior to this last year Klay Thompson was often playing the McHale like role of using his length to defend quicker ( point guards ) so that Curry would not have to defend quicker point guards.

[thizznation]

Curry is a very disciplined and focused defender. He seldomly "spaces out" and utilizes his high bbiq on almost every possession. His hands are extremely quick and active and he is able to keep the man he is defending uncomfortable while they handle the ball. Curry isn't going to lockdown his man and throw away the key but he is going to make it tough on them and give them no freebies.

[JuanCesta]

Bird and it's not even close. Curry is one of the worst defenders at his position, probably the worst. Much worse than Lin despite being coddled and protected by the refs and other defenders like Bogut, Green, Iggy.

[GSP]

They arent stylistically close on defense at all. There is data showing how good Bird was in and out of lineups, when Mchale missed alot of games their defense didnt see a dip despite Bird moving to Pf where he is a very good defender at that position. He was a menace on the glass did his thing against bigs like Moses, positionally way more fundamentally sound than Curry, much smarter, his strength and leverage were key strengths unlike Steph, much better team/help defender, great post defender. Steph cant even guard Delladova in the post without help and was getting torched by him, Kyrie outplayed him on both ends in game 1. He faced no healthy/legit point guard all postseason. And Steph doesnt have a high Iq on defense either he makes alot of mistakes, just is usually covered up by top 5 all world defenders.

Bird was prolly a top 20 defender in the league in his prime. Steph isnt even top 10 at his position, hes an average defender at best at the least impactful position. Rubio, Bledsoe, Cp3, Wall, Conley, Holiday, Beverly, Bradley, Smart, George Hill. Replace Steph with any of them and Warriors defense gets better, considerably so with most. I dont get why ppl always say Steph makes the offense so much easier for his limited offensive teammates (which is true) but completely ignore that the opposite is true regarding defense. Defenders like Draymond, Iggy, Klay, Bogut etc. make Steph look way better defensively than he actually is. Bird and Curry had much different tasks for their team's defense, Curry a much smaller role (usually the smallest role of any player on his team that gets minutes) and Bird does a much better job.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVmnUoihoF8[/youtube]

[thizznation]

Steph cant even guard Delladova in the post without help and was getting torched by him, Kyrie outplayed him on both ends in game 1. He faced no healthy/legit point guard all postseason. And Steph doesnt have a high Iq on defense either he makes alot of mistakes, just is usually covered up by top 5 all world defenders.

How does his post season point guard competition explain for his excellent regular season defensive metrics?

Delladova torched Curry? You realize Delly scored like 7 points per game?I wouldn't exactly call that torching. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you have posted about how Curry has been "shut down" in the finals by delladova as he scored 26 points per game.

Let's just try to keep it objective.

[murphadam420]

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.

Bravo my man, excellent write up and interesting emphasis on how made baskets cut out fast break opportunities. I would love to see a granular breakdown of offensive efficiency after a made basket and when a player's offensive contributions are great enough to cover up any defensive short comings.

[GSP]

Steph cant even guard Delladova in the post without help and was getting torched by him, Kyrie outplayed him on both ends in game 1. He faced no healthy/legit point guard all postseason. And Steph doesnt have a high Iq on defense either he makes alot of mistakes, just is usually covered up by top 5 all world defenders.

How does his post season point guard competition explain for his excellent regular season defensive metrics?

Delladova torched Curry? You realize Delly scored like 7 points per game?I wouldn't exactly call that torching. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you have posted about how Curry has been "shut down" in the finals by delladova as he scored 26 points per game.

Let's just try to keep it objective.

Did u watch the series? He was posting Curry up and scoring on him or getting easy lobs on pickandrolls. It wasnt until Golden State switched Klay on Delly that he got taken out of the series offensively. Same thing happened with Conley after he torched Curry and Klay was put on him the rest of the series shutting him down.

Lets stop pretending Steph is an above average or good defender, hes average at best.

[Onus]

Steph cant even guard Delladova in the post without help and was getting torched by him, Kyrie outplayed him on both ends in game 1. He faced no healthy/legit point guard all postseason. And Steph doesnt have a high Iq on defense either he makes alot of mistakes, just is usually covered up by top 5 all world defenders.

How does his post season point guard competition explain for his excellent regular season defensive metrics?

Delladova torched Curry? You realize Delly scored like 7 points per game?I wouldn't exactly call that torching. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that you have posted about how Curry has been "shut down" in the finals by delladova as he scored 26 points per game.

Let's just try to keep it objective.

Did u watch the series? He was posting Curry up and scoring on him or getting easy lobs on pickandrolls. It wasnt until Golden State switched Klay on Delly that he got taken out of the series offensively. Same thing happened with Conley after he torched Curry and Klay was put on him the rest of the series shutting him down.

Lets stop pretending Steph is an above average or good defender, hes average at best.

I'm pretty sure the warriors put Klay on Delledova to stop the Lebron/Delle pick and roll and so we could switch it. Not because of anything Delle was doing to Steph. But ok ...

[The-Power]

Did u watch the series? He was posting Curry up and scoring on him or getting easy lobs on pickandrolls. It wasnt until Golden State switched Klay on Delly that he got taken out of the series offensively.

Glad we have player tracking for this year's playoffs to prove statements like yours with no proof wrong.

http://stats.nba.com/player/#!/203521/tracking/shotslogs/?Season=2014-15&SeasonType=Playoffs

Curry as the closest defender: 5 FGM / 19 FGA
That's an astounding 0.26 FG%! Not to mention there is no evidence that Curry was his primary defender first and Klay was then switched onto him while Curry didn't guard him anymore.

Same thing happened with Conley after he torched Curry and Klay was put on him the rest of the series shutting him down.

Conley was indeed hot in his first game, making four straight shots with Curry as the closest defender (by the way, he already hit one shot against Green and one against Thompson at the beginning before he even made his first against Curry). The rest of the way he was 1 of 7 against Curry, making it 5 of 11 for the whole series. It's true that Curry didn't guard him as much but he wasn't torched unless whenever a player makes four shots in a row regardless of what happens after that his defender is being torched.

[Quotatious]

Curry was certainly above average defensively for almost the entire season. I think a lot of that is because Golden State was a great defensive team (I think Curry would be only about average on a worse defensive team), but still, it's a fact that almost every defensive metric I've seen implies that Steph was above average on D (plus my eye-test - Curry was making good rotations, knew when to provide a double team on a big guy, when to jump into a passing lane, and I remember him getting some steals even in 1 on 1 situations, when he took advantage of his very quick hands, and a lack of concentration of his opponent).

It's a good comparison. I think they're very close on D. Bird at his absolute best, defensively (so probably the '81 season) was probably slightly better (his post D was really solid in the early 80s), but they're really similar. Based on what actually happened, both were above average. Both pretty good team defenders, but only average (or in Bird's case, below average against athletic SFs) man defenders.

Did u watch the series? He was posting Curry up and scoring on him or getting easy lobs on pickandrolls. It wasnt until Golden State switched Klay on Delly that he got taken out of the series offensively. Same thing happened with Conley after he torched Curry and Klay was put on him the rest of the series shutting him down.

Lets stop pretending Steph is an above average or good defender, hes average at best.

Come on man, Dellavedova averaged 7.5 ppg on 28% shooting from the field...He was absolutely abysmal as a scorer, and a few situations where he beat Curry on D, don't really prove anything.

Other than game 3, when he scored 20 on 7/17 shooting, Delly was a total non-factor as a scorer. Absolutely horrendous.

[GSP]

thebottomline:

From 1/22 to 2/26 McHale missed 14 games and played only 12, 7, and 17 minutes in three others. So in that 17 game stretch:

SRS: +9.6
ORTG: 110.2 (4th)
DRTG: 100.8 (1st)


ElGee:

From 1987-1988 Bird missed 13 relevant games, and the Celtics defense dropped to +3.2. The 1980 Celtics saw a similar change defensively. The 86 Celtics were an excellent defensive team, and were just fine defensively without McHale (ITO of results, better in 15g w/out him). Bird looks like he has an impact on defense (in a good way)...with Magic, it's hard to see.

Look, these players are so close together. (I'm kind of amazed we all agree with that, btw.) None of this can "prove" anything. I just want people to know all the evidence that exists, and the evidence -- including 3 straight years of all-D play, the team stats, AND the eye test suggest Bird was a strong positive on defense. In 1986 I think that's to a lesser degree, but Larry Bird was a physically, bruising, strong player. This helped him with positioning and it helped him as a tremendous rebounder.

Finally, many have expressed a "security" in putting the ball in someone's hands as a QB versus Bird who played in so many different ways, but never as a QB. Well, in 1982 Boston lost their PG (Tiny) and the Celtics SRS improved for 14g to +7.9 SRS (no pace information). Then in 1991, the team plays without a traditional PG and the offense w/McHale in and with/without Bird goes from +1.6 (22g) to +7.3 ORtg (46g) for a 9.0 SRS. And FTR, the OREB% goes way down with Bird in...AND the defense gets way better.

There seems to be nothing about Bird's different "style" that prohibits massive offensive impact with massive offensive ceilings, with or without a traditional PG...AND he does it in really good defensive environments.

Im sorry but im not sure i can take anyone seriously if they think Bird and Curry are comparable on defense. Its more than just boxscore numbers. How would current do without two of the best perimeter/pickandroll defenders of the past decade in Draymond and Iggy? With them missing games his defense would get exposed. Mchale was a great defender and the guy that would help out when more athletic Sfs would get by Bird. He missed games, Bird moves to Pf (his natural position especially defensively) and the Celtics defense doesnt miss a beat. Bird wasnt just a solid post defender he was a GREAT one. His positioning, his leverage and strength was even effective against big Cs like Moses and even Hakeem in 86 finals. Curry is on Magics level on defense prolly slightly worse, both overrated by boxscore numbers, im just not at all seeing this hyperbolic good defender here when i watch the games. Hes average at best, u have to be able to separate what his teammates do for him on defense, like how you guys do for how Curry helps his teammates on offense

[thizznation]

I'm not saying Curry is a better defender than Bird but being a good post defender in the 80's and being a good perimeter defender in the no hand check era are two different things.

[JordansBulls]

I think this is clearly in Bird's favor, he had more defensive impact.

[Manuel Calavera]

I think this is clearly in Bird's favor, he had more defensive impact.

thanks for the insight