Post#1108 » by lessthanjake » Sat Mar 15, 2025 2:16 am
I think you can squint and make a GOAT case for Steph. It has to lean very hard into impact and team success, and take a relatively dim view of his teammates, and then combine that with a view that the current era of basketball is by far the best era.
The Warriors were a 10+ SRS team with a 68-win pace over a half-decade span (2015-2019) in games Steph played in, while they were an average team in games he didn’t play in (either slightly negative SRS or slightly positive SRS depending on if we include missed playoff games in the equation). That’s the crux of his case, I think. People can say he had a lot of talent with him, but the Warriors in that era did better with Steph on the court and Durant, Draymond, and Klay all off the court than they did with Steph off the court and Durant, Draymond, and Klay all on the court. He was absolutely the thing that made that team possibly the best team ever. I think it’s reasonable to weigh that very highly when it comes to these sorts of discussions.
And then you add that outside of that timeframe, he also won that 2022 title with a team that was pretty low on talent as championship teams go. Draymond was still great defensively, but was a clear negative offensively at that point, which made his overall impact really not elite at all. Klay was coming back from injury and a shadow of himself. Their second-best player may actually have been Andrew Wiggins. This was up there amongst the most impressive titles in history, in terms of a star player winning with a relatively weak roster—alongside years like Dirk in 2011, Duncan in 2003, and Hakeem in 1994. But, unlike those guys, Steph obviously combines that with having ceiling-raised a GOAT-level team too.
I think this case for Steph runs into a few issues though, when we step back a bit:
1. Steph didn’t have a long prime. I’d say his prime started in 2014, and it’s probably already over (though maybe being rejuvenated with Butler?). If that’s the case, then it’s a little short. That doesn’t concern me a whole lot when we are talking about putting him high up in all-time rankings, but for the #1 spot it makes it tougher.
2. Looking at 2015-2019 + 2022 ignores that Steph didn’t really look like a world-beater in terms of impact in some of the other years of his prime. In 2021, 2023, and 2024 (if considered prime still), the Warriors were not as good as you’d think they should be if they had a prime GOAT on their team. The 2014 Warriors were good, but not enough to really bolster a GOAT case. It feels like Steph is able to have GOAT-level impact, but maybe needs certain conditions to be right for it? Or perhaps he’s just not entirely consistent with it. And that may be enough to have him very high up in all-time lists, but it makes it hard to put him #1. I suppose a counterargument is that even Jordan and LeBron had prime years where their team wasn’t super good. And that’s true. It’s all a matter of degree on this one, but I think it encompassed less of Jordan’s/LeBron’s prime and was a bit more expected in the context of their situations.
3. As much success as Steph’s teams have had, he has not quite risen in the playoffs the way the top-tier GOAT candidates often have. I think he gets too much flak for this—after all, he’s been tremendously successful in the playoffs, so is obviously having great playoff impact. But when we get into a question of who is #1 all time, this sort of thing is something that can tip the scales away from someone.
4. I think there’s a pretty good argument that Steph benefited from being ahead of the curve tactically—i.e. in shooting tons of threes. I struggle with how to weigh this. On one hand, it feels true to me that his dynasty Warriors teams wouldn’t have been quite so dominant if they hadn’t been ahead of the curve on the three-point revolution. On the other hand, it’s not clear to me that this is something we should discount Steph for—after all, figuring out the best way to play is part of being great. But I do think there’s an argument that if every team in the mid-late 2010s knew what we know now about threes, then the Warriors would not have been quite as good, which potentially undermines the biggest factor in Steph’s favor here.
Where I ultimately come down on this is that I think Steph probably needs another title to have a GOAT case that doesn’t require a lot of squinting. That’s unlikely, but it *possible* it could happen this year though—they certainly have been playing great since Butler joined!
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
LeBron is 0-7 in game winning/tying FGs in the finals. And is 20/116 or 17% in game winning/tying FGs in the 4th/OT for his career. That's historically bad 