RealGM

The Clippers have the No. 1 offense in the league (by a hair over the Warriors) and Chris Paul obviously deserves a ton of credit for it. The difference between L.A.’s efficiency on possessions he has touched the ball (116.0 points per 100 possessions) and on possessions he has not touched it or been off the floor (98.3) is the largest in the league among players who have been on the floor for at least 2,000 offensive possessions. It’s a crowded field, but Paul has a legit MVP case.
...

In fact, there are 36 power forwards and centers, led by Blake Griffin at 68.0 percent, with a higher touch percentage than Davis. Kris Humphries (56.1 percent) has been more likely to touch the ball on a Wizards possession he’s been on the floor for than Davis has been to touch it on a Pelicans possession.

QRich3 wrote:The article exaggerates some things slightly, makes some good points too. I don't think he should be the frontrunner for MVP, but he definitely has to be in the conversation, and should be voted in the top 3 or top 4 at most. I've been saying all season that this is his best year as a Clipper, glad I have some support lately

No matter how you slice it, Paul is having a phenomenal year. He’s getting assists like Magic, draining midrange jumpers like Dirk, getting steals like Gary Payton, and he’s not even mentioned in most MVP conversations.

Among the pantheon of contemporary NBA superstars, the one tie that binds much of the league’s brightest talents together is an uncommon blend of size, athleticism, and basketball talent. LeBron is built like a tight end but can pass and handle like a much smaller player. Russell Westbrook looks like a running back but can jump out of the gym. Anthony Davis, well, he’s just a monster with a wet jumper. And then there’s Chris Paul, who’s equally as good, despite being shaped and sized like a relatively normal person.

Nobody blends playmaking, scoring, and defense as effectively as he does, and nowhere on the court is that work more evident than around the elbows. Paul won’t win the MVP this season, but that’s fine. He’s still the MVPG.

CP3 spent the first half of this season getting into shape (it’s true) while remaining supernaturally efficient; he’d routinely take quarters off and halves off and seemed even grouchier than usual. When Blake went down, CP3 unleashed holy hell; he has vaulted to that Westbrook/Harden/LeBron/Davis/Curry level for a solid month (and counting) while carrying a limited team. As Doc loves to point out, CP3 actually plays both ends and loves disrupting other point guards; new advanced metrics even back up CP3’s defensive brilliance. (I went to a Grizzlies game a few weeks ago in which he absolutely destroyed Mike Conley, who’s only one of the league’s best 25 players.) And CP3’s pull-up elbow jumper remains the NBA’s best crunch-time weapon. It’s about as sure of a thing as you can get these days.

And yet … CP3 is also a basketball curmudgeon, someone who dominates the ball in close games to an almost harmful degree. He doesn’t trust anyone else late; he’s like one of those moms who won’t let anyone babysit her kids. His teammates know it, and even worse, his opponents know it. Can you win in the playoffs that way? Doesn’t it open the door for what happened in Game 5 of last spring’s OKC series? Can you point to another example of a ball-dominating little guy who also won four straight playoff rounds? He’s certainly the best pure point guard since Isiah Thomas — another fiery competitor who demanded perfection from everyone around him. But Isiah trusted his teammates way more than CP3 does. If CP3 is more dictatorial, then Isiah was more democratic. He allowed Dumars and Vinnie to freelance in big spots and never needed the ball late like CP3 often does. You would have loved playing with Isiah. You wouldn’t have loved playing with Oscar. And CP3 is floating somewhere in between those two extremes. It’s crazy that he hasn’t played in a conference finals game yet … but it’s also not that crazy.

According to Franks and Miller, Chris Paul is the best perimeter defender in the NBA. They have empirical evidence that the Clippers point guard suppresses and disrupts shot activity as much or more than any other guard in the league.

Below is Paul’s defensive shot chart for the 2013-14 season. Think of it as the inverse of a conventional shot chart: It reflects the shooting behavior of players when Paul was defending them. The sizes of the symbols on the chart correspond to shot frequency; the color of the symbols represents shot efficiency.



Paul’s chart is peppered with tiny blue dots. This indicates two things: He suppressed the expected shot activity of his nightly assignments and reduced their shot efficiency.

It’s also important to note that the model accounts for baseline activity and effectiveness of the players he was defending. As a result, these defensive shot charts are an aggregate depiction of whether a defender’s assignments shot more or less frequently, and whether they shot more or less accurately than we would expect. If a defender drew a perfectly average response, in both frequency and effectiveness, his chart would be full of medium-size yellow hexagons. But as you can see, Paul’s chart is full of tiny, mostly blue symbols — dots, really. This means that, whether he was guarding Stephen Curry or Rajon Rondo, on average, Paul reduced his opponents’ field goal attempts and field goal percentage.

Those tiny hexagons all over the court mean that players rarely shot when Paul was the on-ball defender. The fact that they’re tiny blue hexagons means that when they did shoot, they were really ineffective. Results from the Franks-Miller study reveal that among all perimeter defenders, Paul’s matchups exhibited some of the biggest decreases in both shot frequency and shot efficiency.
...

No player in Franks-Miller is as stingy as CP3, who allowed 11 points per 100 possessions while dealing with ferocious NBA matchups — Damian Lillard, Steph Curry, Tony Parker, et al. — on a nightly basis. Paul’s matchups ended up shooting about 80 percent as much as expected, while Harden’s matchups ended up shooting about 114 percent as much as expected.

Points Against (Backcourt Defenders), 2013-14

Chris Paul: 10.8
Norris Cole: 11.1
Nick Calathes: 12.0
C.J. Watson: 12.0
Greivis Vasquez: 12.3

Woodsanity wrote:Actually CP3 played great to start the season while Blake was terrible(by his standards). Then CP started to fall off a bit but he was never in the MVP convo to begin with even though he should have been sicne the start.

QRich3 wrote:

Woodsanity wrote:Actually CP3 played great to start the season while Blake was terrible(by his standards). Then CP started to fall off a bit but he was never in the MVP convo to begin with even though he should have been sicne the start.

I've heard stuff similar to this a few times, but I think that's only true if you look at shooting numbers, which only tell a small part of the story. I don't think Blake was bad to start the season (offensively at least), he was just adjusting to a different new role, and I don't think Paul went into any sort of slump. Yes, his shooting numbers went down a bit (minuscule though) in the middle of the season, but that's the nature of shooting, numbers fluctuate until they stabilize with enough of a sample size. I thought Paul has been his usual consistent self all season, and people are just starting to take notice because he kept us afloat when Blake was injured, and our schedule has been a bit softer so we've won more games. But in reality his performance has been very consistent all year.

Woodsanity wrote:

QRich3 wrote:

Woodsanity wrote:Actually CP3 played great to start the season while Blake was terrible(by his standards). Then CP started to fall off a bit but he was never in the MVP convo to begin with even though he should have been sicne the start.

I've heard stuff similar to this a few times, but I think that's only true if you look at shooting numbers, which only tell a small part of the story. I don't think Blake was bad to start the season (offensively at least), he was just adjusting to a different new role, and I don't think Paul went into any sort of slump. Yes, his shooting numbers went down a bit (minuscule though) in the middle of the season, but that's the nature of shooting, numbers fluctuate until they stabilize with enough of a sample size. I thought Paul has been his usual consistent self all season, and people are just starting to take notice because he kept us afloat when Blake was injured, and our schedule has been a bit softer so we've won more games. But in reality his performance has been very consistent all year.

Actually its not so much a slump as it is Blake shooting waaaaaaaay more jumpers. He barely went inside and shot midrange jumpers like he was an elite jump shooter like Dirk/CP3. The problem is he should be playing inside/out like last season not playing like Dirk. If you shoot mid range jumpers at a rate of about 40% you should not be shooting that many.

Not to mention his rebounding regressed really badly and his defense was awful.

Not an exaggeration to say that last years Blake was far far better.