WarriorGM wrote:[This is what happens when people fixate on one abstruse stat that is not instantly comprehensible and try to make claims with it.
I mean, I just countered your argument. I never implied that Nash was better because of rORtg.
Tell us what does rOrtg measure? How do you compute it? Why does it matter?
It measures offensive performance relative to faced opponents. You can compute simply by calculating an avarage for (healthy) opponents RS ORtg and then look at the difference between that and playoff ORtg against that competition.
It's very important because teams don't play the same competition in postseason. Some teams play very weak defensive teams, other have it much tougher.
When you understand the context of the Suns in their era, one begins to understand why it is questionable to apply it to comparisons with Curry. The era Nash played in was a far more defensively oriented one, the Suns are credited with debuting an offensive style of play. Should it be surprising that relatively speaking that their offensive rating would be far ahead? Does it mean they were better though? No it doesn't. Fixating on this one thing ignores everything else that matters.
I get your reasoning, but I disagree. It's not true that 2005-10 era was that much defensively oriented. Teams already shot a lot of threes then (not as mucb as today of course) and Suns weren't an outlier in that they favored offense over defense. Besides, Suns faced brutal defensive competiton - Spurs were far better defensively than any team Warriors faced (maybe outside of 2019 Raptors).
Defensively the Suns were slightly worse than middle of the pack. That they lost isn't a big surprise. Being relatively better in a big way in one aspect needs to be shown to be superior to being absolutely better in multiple aspects and that isn't shown in this comparison. That's why looking at wins many times is superior. It captures nearly everything relevant better than other measures which shouldn't be surprising because it is what is ultimately sought.
But then we are talking about which team is better and nobody ever disputes that Warriors were much better team overall, but it's caused by their defense. Offensvely, they didn't reach higher level than Suns despite having much more talent. Amar'e was good, but he would be distant 3rd best offensive player in Warriors team.
