Why has Steph Curry played on so few Top 10 offenses?

[AEnigma]

I think the playoff results up until last year was quite disappointing for an offensive GOAT candidate, not going to lie. I think people were trying to excuse away the fact that he simply wasn't anchoring ATG offenses in the playoffs without Kevin Durant the way Nash and LeBron were able to do to on a consistent basis, or even the way other great offensive players that aren't even in the offensive GOAT conversation were able to do (like Shaq, Kobe, and Dirk).

It's because he's not really that special as a passer and creator on the ball relative to some of these guys he gets compared to. He's just so much better off the ball, but for that to be functioning at its highest level, the rest of the team has to be hitting shots, making good passes, getting penetration as well, etc.

At the same time, I think the Warriors have done the right thing in building a defense first team and trusting Steph's gravity and shooting ability to make life easier, or easy enough to play offense at a level that can win series, and multiple titles if the defense stays high level. Most organizations would have went all in on getting shooters, stretch bigs, playmakers, and all these other offensive first players to make the life easier for Steph and make prettier offensive numbers, and it would have backfired. The Warriors thrive offensively when their defense is firing on all cylinders, and Steph's efficiency shines even more when they are getting stops. Some credit needs to be given to Steph for always being part of great defenses too, both through strong effort, communication, and helping keep efficiency high enough that teams aren't out and running all night vs the warriors.

Likewise though, for all the team building and stacking of offensive talents LeBron has done, his teams have fallen short offensively too IMO in an all time sense. That's because for his teams to function at their peak, everyone has to be able to shoot, and guys can't operate in the paint or too close to the rim without throwing the offense out of rhythm, and you have to concede to not having much of a role as a main playmaker. The ceiling ends up pretty capped on teams, even at times with two mega offensive talents, and a 3rd all star offensive talent.

There is some balance that has to be struck between the two IMO. If only there was a guy who could do both of those things well. 8-)

Do you have someone in mind?

He probably means the guy who consistently ate up well over 25% of his team’s total shot attempts and played in an era with few threes and a heavy prioritisation of one-on-one isolation scoring, all while using a system which has now been dead for a decade now. Because analysis is dead, and all that obviously was accomplished with “low talent” and should also obviously translate better to “higher talent” teammates using more possessions today.

[eminence]

Oscar/Magic/Nash are the kings by such a metric, no doubting that, all should be quite high on anyones offensive GOAT (and in general) list. LeBron has more because he's great and has played twice as long, duh. MJ looks pretty dang similar to Curry to my eye.

14/30
12/30
11/30
12/30
2/30
1/30
1/30
3/30
1/30
20/30
17/30
12/30

11/23
12/23
9/23
12/25
5/27
1/27
1/27
2/27
1/29
1/29
9/29

[Owly]

steph curry is one of the greatest offensive players ever. everybody agrees with the statement. and yet for most guys on that list, we have tons of high-ranking offenses to point to.

oscar: 6 #1 offenses and 2 #2 offenses in a 9 year span in cincinnati (9 out of 10 top 10 in cincy) plus 2 more #1's and a #2 and a top 5 in milwaukee (13 out of 14 top 10 in career, even scaling up to a 30 team league for some of the lower finishes)

magic: 7 #1 offenses and 2 #2 offenses in a 12 year span (12 out of 12 top 10)

jordan: 4 #1 offenses and a #2 and 1 more top 10 (6 for 11, would almost certainly be 9 for 14 if he played in '86, '94, and '95) despite having almost no offensive help except woolridge for first 5 years (several years with 0 or 1 teammates with a positive BPM, 0 or 1 teammates with a positive TS Add, jordan accounts for 80+% of the team's VORP)

nash: 6 #1 offenses and 3 #2 offenses and 5 more top 10's (14 out of 14 in big minute seasons)

lebron: no #1 or #2 offenses but 8 top 5 offenses and 3 more top 10's despite having very little offensive help for 5 years in cleveland (same general teammate stats as jordan with tons of negative BPM guys and lebron accounting for 80%+ of the VORP (even 100% one season), though gooden/big Z were way over 15 PER, and about 0.150 WS48, but not much in BPM)

jokic: 1 #2 offense and 6 more top 7 offenses (7 out of 7 after age 20 rookie season, even holding up in injury-plagued seasons).

steph: 3 #1 offenses and 1 #2 offense and 1 more top 10 offense (5 out of 12 if not including 2012 and 2020, but 5 out of 14 when including 2012 and 2020, which don't appear to have much chance of being top 10 even if steph plays, see below)

2010: 14th (rookie steph, team has positive TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for only about 1/3 of team VORP)
2011: 12th (team has slight negative TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for only about 1/3 of team VORP)
2012: 14th (steph only plays in 26 games, but team rank doesn't really move much, team has slightly positive TS Add outside of steph, doesn't seem like a top 10 finish was in the offing even if steph plays)
2013: 11th (david lee + carl landry + rookie klay doesn't seem like the worst offensive support for an already 24 year old steph, team has almost exactly 0 TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for slightly less than half of team VORP)
2014: 12th (david lee + improved 2nd year klay and 25 year old steph, team has slightly negative TS Add outside of steph, tons of +0.100 WS48 and positive BPM guys. lots of VORP is from defensive guys draymond/iggy/bogut but all are good passers, steph accounts for only 45% of team VORP).

these don't seem like nearly as dire of circumstances as some of lebron and jordan's non top-10 teams. no disastrous TS Add's from the rest of the team, steph's not accounting for all of the team's VORP like he's the only decent player on the team, a decent number of solid box score guys with upper teens PER's and ~0.150 WS48's.

then we obviously get the kerr upgrade to the system and things take off for #2, #1, #1, #3, and #1 finishes. with 3 of those seasons featuring some kevin durant guy. but since then?

2020: 30th (even if we only include steph's 5 games, they would still have a ranking of 30th, so it seems pretty certain this is a bottom 5 offense even if steph plays)
2021: 20th (team only has modestly negative TS Add outside of steph, draymond is around to run the offense, JTA and damion lee combined for about a 66 TS%, wiggins isn't the worst, steph only accounts for 59% of the team's VORP)
2022: 17th (fairly solid positive TS Add outside of steph, steph barely accounts for 25% of the team's VORP. obviously injuries keep the big 3 from playing together, but 17th for a team that eventually won the title? jordan poole breaking out and playing all season with a TS% as good as steph, GPII with a 68 TS%, klay coming back, otto porter and wiggins at 37% and 39% on 3's?, feels like a lot of offensive talent for 17th).
2023: 11th (team has slightly positive TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for 42% of team's VORP. down years for poole and klay so more understandable the offense isn't elite, but still that's a lot of shooting and gravity from those 2 combined with steph. not top 5 makes sense, but 11th? though i suspect they will sneak into the top 10 before the end of the season).

5 top 3 offenses and not a single other top 10?

Notes
1) This is a super-crude measure of individuals. So much noise versus what the player inputs.

yes, but other players have faired very well. steph seems to be an outlier.

2) As alluded to league size matters. I am a huge Oscar fan, and would guess I have him higher than most, but league size really messes up this measure even more.

not really. almost all of oscar's are #1 or #2 offenses, which would all be better than 10th out of 30, even in a 9 team league. by the time he has a few slightly lower offenses, there are more teams.

3) Not sure how winning a title ends up being a ding.

just meant it wasn't some undertalented squad.

4) Teammates. Cf: for instance/especially '14. Well all his teammates have these win shares and shot okay ... Well they have win shares because it was a good team, driven by Steph. They shot okay ... when Curry was on the court (team .539 efg%, 111.9 Ortg with him on; .459, 95.8 with him off [On Ortg and efg% would be second; off each would be clearly last, Ortg dramatically so]).
Some sources: https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/GSW/2014/on-off/ ; https://www.cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/787/onoff#tab-team_efficiency)

many teams are better when their best player is on the court.

I don't see the logic of using obviously worse tools when better ones are clearly and widely available and clear what they mean - get not being at the bleeding edge where it gets complex and what the best tool is isn't clear to the layman but ... there are times where it's just clear that he's driving them to being really good with him on and they're awful with him off.

but overall team offense is the goal. the warriors offensive talent over the years doesn't really scream "should be awful without steph" so what are the warriors/steph doing overall that doesn't result in elite offenses as often as other offensive greats?

One last go round on this because it’s going to get repetitive:

steph curry is one of the greatest offensive players ever. everybody agrees with the statement. and yet for most guys on that list, we have tons of high-ranking offenses to point to.

oscar: 6 #1 offenses and 2 #2 offenses in a 9 year span in cincinnati (9 out of 10 top 10 in cincy) plus 2 more #1's and a #2 and a top 5 in milwaukee (13 out of 14 top 10 in career, even scaling up to a 30 team league for some of the lower finishes)

magic: 7 #1 offenses and 2 #2 offenses in a 12 year span (12 out of 12 top 10)

jordan: 4 #1 offenses and a #2 and 1 more top 10 (6 for 11, would almost certainly be 9 for 14 if he played in '86, '94, and '95) despite having almost no offensive help except woolridge for first 5 years (several years with 0 or 1 teammates with a positive BPM, 0 or 1 teammates with a positive TS Add, jordan accounts for 80+% of the team's VORP)

nash: 6 #1 offenses and 3 #2 offenses and 5 more top 10's (14 out of 14 in big minute seasons)

lebron: no #1 or #2 offenses but 8 top 5 offenses and 3 more top 10's despite having very little offensive help for 5 years in cleveland (same general teammate stats as jordan with tons of negative BPM guys and lebron accounting for 80%+ of the VORP (even 100% one season), though gooden/big Z were way over 15 PER, and about 0.150 WS48, but not much in BPM)

jokic: 1 #2 offense and 6 more top 7 offenses (7 out of 7 after age 20 rookie season, even holding up in injury-plagued seasons).

steph: 3 #1 offenses and 1 #2 offense and 1 more top 10 offense (5 out of 12 if not including 2012 and 2020, but 5 out of 14 when including 2012 and 2020, which don't appear to have much chance of being top 10 even if steph plays, see below)

2010: 14th (rookie steph, team has positive TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for only about 1/3 of team VORP)
2011: 12th (team has slight negative TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for only about 1/3 of team VORP)
2012: 14th (steph only plays in 26 games, but team rank doesn't really move much, team has slightly positive TS Add outside of steph, doesn't seem like a top 10 finish was in the offing even if steph plays)
2013: 11th (david lee + carl landry + rookie klay doesn't seem like the worst offensive support for an already 24 year old steph, team has almost exactly 0 TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for slightly less than half of team VORP)
2014: 12th (david lee + improved 2nd year klay and 25 year old steph, team has slightly negative TS Add outside of steph, tons of +0.100 WS48 and positive BPM guys. lots of VORP is from defensive guys draymond/iggy/bogut but all are good passers, steph accounts for only 45% of team VORP).

these don't seem like nearly as dire of circumstances as some of lebron and jordan's non top-10 teams. no disastrous TS Add's from the rest of the team, steph's not accounting for all of the team's VORP like he's the only decent player on the team, a decent number of solid box score guys with upper teens PER's and ~0.150 WS48's.

then we obviously get the kerr upgrade to the system and things take off for #2, #1, #1, #3, and #1 finishes. with 3 of those seasons featuring some kevin durant guy. but since then?

2020: 30th (even if we only include steph's 5 games, they would still have a ranking of 30th, so it seems pretty certain this is a bottom 5 offense even if steph plays)
2021: 20th (team only has modestly negative TS Add outside of steph, draymond is around to run the offense, JTA and damion lee combined for about a 66 TS%, wiggins isn't the worst, steph only accounts for 59% of the team's VORP)
2022: 17th (fairly solid positive TS Add outside of steph, steph barely accounts for 25% of the team's VORP. obviously injuries keep the big 3 from playing together, but 17th for a team that eventually won the title? jordan poole breaking out and playing all season with a TS% as good as steph, GPII with a 68 TS%, klay coming back, otto porter and wiggins at 37% and 39% on 3's?, feels like a lot of offensive talent for 17th).
2023: 11th (team has slightly positive TS Add outside of steph, steph accounts for 42% of team's VORP. down years for poole and klay so more understandable the offense isn't elite, but still that's a lot of shooting and gravity from those 2 combined with steph. not top 5 makes sense, but 11th? though i suspect they will sneak into the top 10 before the end of the season).

5 top 3 offenses and not a single other top 10?

Notes
1) This is a super-crude measure of individuals. So much noise versus what the player inputs.

yes, but other players have faired very well. steph seems to be an outlier.

You will note that I didn’t say there is zero correlation between a great offensive player it helps but there is much more that goes in that is beyond the players control.

I don’t know if it’s an outlier, it depends what you think is significant. He’s got clearly more 1s and 2s than LeBron and that includes an outlier great one (through 2019, haven’t checked since) that included the third greatest offense ever (’16) by relOrtg. Rankings are crude and lose much info. MJ has a marginal advantage in top 2 offenses, is credited as not playing “if he had played” (here making positive assumptions for Jordan) in ’95 whilst you’re merely ambivalent on slinging in injured years for Curry – in years in which he did play (and was only out by choice) and seems in general to be rewarded for poor longevity (and I think Wizards years discounted for convenience). Robertson whilst great, doesn’t work as a comp in these terms (top 10 offenses) with so much smaller a league. Even if we were measuring players by team level performance without context it could be done with so much more nuance. Instead it has the feeling of a case constructed for the purpose of trying to make them look bad rather than discover truth.

2) As alluded to league size matters. I am a huge Oscar fan, and would guess I have him higher than most, but league size really messes up this measure even more.

not really. almost all of oscar's are #1 or #2 offenses, which would all be better than 10th out of 30, even in a 9 team league. by the time he has a few slightly lower offenses, there are more teams.
“Not really.” What league size doesn’t matter? Or “not really” to league size messes up using top ten offenses to measure players? Or “not really” to an imaginary response in your head?
I’m not interested in diminishing Robertson. It’s hard to compare across eras, it’s a janky tool for reasons outlined but above including problems with rank losing data, but certainly Robertson through his own impact-y measures was a superb player.

3) Not sure how winning a title ends up being a ding.

just meant it wasn't some undertalented squad.

Ah and the RS squad and playoff minutes were near identical right? … Klay the playoff minutes leader was the minutes leader in the RS too right … (checks website … 12th … hmm). Guys who aren’t in the playoff rotation won’t be in RS rotation right (check’s proportion of Damion Lee minutes …).
Either you don’t know what you’re talking about or you are deliberately misrepresenting the situation.

4) Teammates. Cf: for instance/especially '14. Well all his teammates have these win shares and shot okay ... Well they have win shares because it was a good team, driven by Steph. They shot okay ... when Curry was on the court (team .539 efg%, 111.9 Ortg with him on; .459, 95.8 with him off [On Ortg and efg% would be second; off each would be clearly last, Ortg dramatically so]).
Some sources: https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/GSW/2014/on-off/ ; https://www.cleaningtheglass.com/stats/player/787/onoff#tab-team_efficiency)

many teams are better when their best player is on the court.

Indeed, though a broad tendency for strongest lineups to be on versus one another means by no means always. But this doesn’t really address the point. The ’14 team - despite your arguments, which I believe I explained the flaws in - were awful without him, yet you would ding him because of this, despite enormous lift. I think this doesn’t make any sense.

I don't see the logic of using obviously worse tools when better ones are clearly and widely available and clear what they mean - get not being at the bleeding edge where it gets complex and what the best tool is isn't clear to the layman but ... there are times where it's just clear that he's driving them to being really good with him on and they're awful with him off.

but overall team offense is the goal. the warriors offensive talent over the years doesn't really scream "should be awful without steph" so what are the warriors/steph doing overall that doesn't result in elite offenses as often as other offensive greats?

Team offense being the goal for the team doesn’t make it the best, or even a good, measurement of individual offensive contribution. His relOrtg (or crude oRtg rank) would be better too it he Tonya Harding-ed all the league’s other offensive stars but, like improving the team significantly when not on the court, it’s not a realistic expectation.
If you actually sincerely want to know to know why they were in given years, actually look closely at them (e.g. could ’14 GSW made top 10 if lineups with deep bench players hadn’t stunk). Given the responses to explanations already given (which included genuine dings based on health) here though …

[DraymondGold]

I'll get into this just a little bit.

When I use statistical team results to evaluate players, what I tend to do is use a perspective where it takes a lot of stuff in the same direction before I draw any discrepant conclusions.

So, I'll point to Nash leading top offenses to hammer home the fact that what he was doing was driving a system that worked really well, but I won't point to a guy not leading top offenses to say definitively that he was failing to do something. Rather, I'm more likely to say that there's more doubt in my assessment of that player's scalability to greater team ceiling in that role.

I can point to similar things with raw forms of +/- as well as stuff like RAPM.

In the end, I like doing rankings because they force me to make a choice, but even if I end up arguing with passion on the subject, there's always doubt still present.

To your specific question, it makes me want to look at his On-Court ORtg numbers because I don't have that in my head. (On the other hand, I know his On/Off's will look great.)

If we begin from '12-13 (where Curry enters his prime over the course of the year), here's Curry's On-Court ORtg compared to the #10 team offense:

'12-13: 108.5, Top 10 was 106.4
'13-14: 111.9, Top 10 was 108.8
'14-15: 116.6, Top 10 was 107.8
'15-16: 119.0, Top 10 was 106.8
'16-17: 121.1, Top 10 was 110.8
'17-18: 122.7, Top 10 was 109.6
'18-19: 120.8, Top 10 was 112.2

'20-21: 115.2, Top 10 was 114.0
'21-22: 115.8, Top 10 was 113.7
'22-23: 119.1, Top 10 is 116.1

So, every season Curry played serious minutes in his prime, his team has played like a Top 10 offense when he's been out there, and so whenever they don't finish Top 10 overall, it's because of the minutes he doesn't play.

Now, I haven't done this sort of analysis before so I'm not going to make any comparative statement about how impressive Curry has been based on having a higher ORtg than the Nth best offense each year. I'd encourage those interested to do more analyses along these lines, but I have a feeling that actually doing Top 5 or Top 1 type comparisons might be more insightful. I may do it myself too.

None of that would be more valuable, imho, than the sort of stats we already have with +/- and RAPM, as we know full well that the Warriors have looked to stack the team defensively to balance out Curry, but it would at least be interesting.

You would have to compare steph currys on court off rtg to on court off rtg of the offensively impactifl players of other top ten teams

Since I already have these numbers, I figured I might post them.

Here are the On-court Relative Offensive Ratings for Curry (2013-2023), LeBron (2009-2020), Nash (2001-2011), and Jokic. These are just the Offensive Ratings from PBPstats minus the league average offensive rating from Statmuse. PBPstats doesn't go far enough back for Jordan/Magic/Oscar. It's possible you may get slight differences if you use different sources or if I copy pasted some of them wrong.

Relative Offensive Ratings when star players are ON:
Curry 2018: 14.33
Nash 2005: 13.86
Curry 2017: 12.74
Curry 2016: 12.67
Jokic 2023: 12.11 [so far]
Nash 2007: 11.95
Curry 2015: 10.98
Curry 2019: 10.55
Nash 2004: 10.55
Nash 2008: 10.5
LeBron 2013: 10.35
Nash 2010: 10.22
LeBron 2015: 10.15
LeBron 2017: 9.91
LeBron 2016: 9.53
Jokic 2021: 9.45
Nash 2003: 9.3
Nash 2009: 8.66
LeBron 2010: 8.03
Jokic 2018: 7.98
Nash 2006: 7.8
Nash 2002: 7.77
LeBron 2009: 7.18
LeBron 2014: 7.01
Jokic 2022: 6.89
Nash 2011: 6.89
LeBron 2018: 6.86
Nash 2001: 6.68
LeBron 2011: 5.92
LeBron 2012: 5.39
Curry 2014: 5.37
Jokic 2019: 4.79
Jokic 2020: 4.65
LeBron 2020: 4.35
Curry 2023: 4.19 [so far]
Curry 2022: 4.03
Curry 2021: 3.22
Curry 2013: 2.51
LeBron 2019: 1.19 [injured]

So if we're using on-court Relative Offensive Rating as a proxy for offensive value (while ignoring many of the qualifiers Owly mentioned that still apply here, e.g. team rating being a very imprecise estimator, ignoring teammates' overall value, ignoring teams' focus on defense vs offense, etc. etc.)... then:
-Curry has the clear best regular season offensive peak. He has the best single-year stretch ever through the best 5-year stretch ever, with his top 5 years being better than LeBron's best single season. 2 of these years came pre-Durant. In the years with Durant, Curry had the better on-court Offensive Rating than Durant (though no doubt sharing the court with each other helped both)
-If you throw out the Durant Warriors years, 05 Nash looks like the best peak.
-But! Curry has worse longevity, doing worse in the early 13/14 years and the post-2020 years than prime LeBron, prime Nash, current Jokic
-This does not consider playoffs, so it would be interesting to give the same treatment for playoffs

Thoughts? Personally, I'd want to emphasize all the qualifier's Owly has mentioned... this is a pretty imprecise way to measure offensive GOAT players, but it is still interesting! And it may have some meaningful information if we do dive deeper into the context of each player/team.

[McBubbles]

lebron: no #1 or #2 offenses but 8 top 5 offenses and 3 more top 10's despite having very little offensive help for 5 years in cleveland (same general teammate stats as jordan with tons of negative BPM guys and lebron accounting for 80%+ of the VORP (even 100% one season), though gooden/big Z were way over 15 PER, and about 0.150 WS48, but not much in BPM)

The 2013 Heat had the #1 offense.

How come NBAstats.com has the Heat first and OKC second, and basketball reference has it the opposite? I've always wondered this.

[165bows]

Because Curry is one of the offensive GOAT so you can surround him with some offensive liabilities. Or people needs to use Warriors defense to give Curry's due credit.

Basically what happened in the finals last year. Steph was a one man offense that led an average overall offense to be enough to enable a top defensive performance to win.

[tone wone]

I'll get into this just a little bit.

When I use statistical team results to evaluate players, what I tend to do is use a perspective where it takes a lot of stuff in the same direction before I draw any discrepant conclusions.

So, I'll point to Nash leading top offenses to hammer home the fact that what he was doing was driving a system that worked really well, but I won't point to a guy not leading top offenses to say definitively that he was failing to do something. Rather, I'm more likely to say that there's more doubt in my assessment of that player's scalability to greater team ceiling in that role.

I can point to similar things with raw forms of +/- as well as stuff like RAPM.

In the end, I like doing rankings because they force me to make a choice, but even if I end up arguing with passion on the subject, there's always doubt still present.

To your specific question, it makes me want to look at his On-Court ORtg numbers because I don't have that in my head. (On the other hand, I know his On/Off's will look great.)

If we begin from '12-13 (where Curry enters his prime over the course of the year), here's Curry's On-Court ORtg compared to the #10 team offense:

'12-13: 108.5, Top 10 was 106.4
'13-14: 111.9, Top 10 was 108.8
'14-15: 116.6, Top 10 was 107.8
'15-16: 119.0, Top 10 was 106.8
'16-17: 121.1, Top 10 was 110.8
'17-18: 122.7, Top 10 was 109.6
'18-19: 120.8, Top 10 was 112.2

'20-21: 115.2, Top 10 was 114.0
'21-22: 115.8, Top 10 was 113.7
'22-23: 119.1, Top 10 is 116.1

So, every season Curry played serious minutes in his prime, his team has played like a Top 10 offense when he's been out there, and so whenever they don't finish Top 10 overall, it's because of the minutes he doesn't play.

Now, I haven't done this sort of analysis before so I'm not going to make any comparative statement about how impressive Curry has been based on having a higher ORtg than the Nth best offense each year. I'd encourage those interested to do more analyses along these lines, but I have a feeling that actually doing Top 5 or Top 1 type comparisons might be more insightful. I may do it myself too.

None of that would be more valuable, imho, than the sort of stats we already have with +/- and RAPM, as we know full well that the Warriors have looked to stack the team defensively to balance out Curry, but it would at least be interesting.

You would have to compare steph currys on court off rtg to on court off rtg of the offensively impactifl players of other top ten teams

Since I already have these numbers, I figured I might post them.

Here are the On-court Relative Offensive Ratings for Curry (2013-2023), LeBron (2009-2020), Nash (2001-2011), and Jokic. These are just the Offensive Ratings from PBPstats minus the league average offensive rating from Statmuse. PBPstats doesn't go far enough back for Jordan/Magic/Oscar. It's possible you may get slight differences if you use different sources or if I copy pasted some of them wrong.

Relative Offensive Ratings when star players are ON:
Curry 2018: 14.33
Nash 2005: 13.86
Curry 2017: 12.74
Curry 2016: 12.67
Jokic 2023: 12.11 [so far]
Nash 2007: 11.95
Curry 2015: 10.98
Curry 2019: 10.55
Nash 2004: 10.55
Nash 2008: 10.5
LeBron 2013: 10.35
Nash 2010: 10.22
LeBron 2015: 10.15
LeBron 2017: 9.91
LeBron 2016: 9.53
Jokic 2021: 9.45
Nash 2003: 9.3
Nash 2009: 8.66
LeBron 2010: 8.03
Jokic 2018: 7.98
Nash 2006: 7.8
Nash 2002: 7.77
LeBron 2009: 7.18
LeBron 2014: 7.01
Jokic 2022: 6.89
Nash 2011: 6.89
LeBron 2018: 6.86
Nash 2001: 6.68
LeBron 2011: 5.92
LeBron 2012: 5.39
Curry 2014: 5.37
Jokic 2019: 4.79
Jokic 2020: 4.65
LeBron 2020: 4.35
Curry 2023: 4.19 [so far]
Curry 2022: 4.03
Curry 2021: 3.22
Curry 2013: 2.51
LeBron 2019: 1.19 [injured]

So if we're using on-court Relative Offensive Rating as a proxy for offensive value (while ignoring many of the qualifiers Owly mentioned that still apply here, e.g. team rating being a very imprecise estimator, ignoring teammates' overall value, ignoring teams' focus on defense vs offense, etc. etc.)... then:
-Curry has the clear best regular season offensive peak. He has the best single-year stretch ever through the best 5-year stretch ever, with his top 5 years being better than LeBron's best single season. 2 of these years came pre-Durant. In the years with Durant, Curry had the better on-court Offensive Rating than Durant (though no doubt sharing the court with each other helped both)
-If you throw out the Durant Warriors years, 05 Nash looks like the best peak.
-But! Curry has worse longevity, doing worse in the early 13/14 years and the post-2020 years than prime LeBron, prime Nash, current Jokic
-This does not consider playoffs, so it would be interesting to give the same treatment for playoffs

Thoughts? Personally, I'd want to emphasize all the qualifier's Owly has mentioned... this is a pretty imprecise way to measure offensive GOAT players, but it is still interesting! And it may have some meaningful information if we do dive deeper into the context of each player/team.

*clears throat*

Yeah, a good discussion could be had about Golden States offense post Durant. What's missing and why they're no where near elite. But that would lead to some major contradictions from Team Gravity.

[f4p]

I don’t know if it’s an outlier, it depends what you think is significant. He’s got clearly more 1s and 2s than LeBron and that includes an outlier great one (through 2019, haven’t checked since) that included the third greatest offense ever (’16) by relOrtg. Rankings are crude and lose much info.

yes, curry clearly has high-level team seasons. the question is why are those the only season that barely even reach the level of above-average, much less elite.

MJ has a marginal advantage in top 2 offenses, is credited as not playing “if he had played” (here making positive assumptions for Jordan) in ’95 whilst you’re merely ambivalent on slinging in injured years for Curry – in years in which he did play (and was only out by choice) and seems in general to be rewarded for poor longevity (and I think Wizards years discounted for convenience).

the wizards years were left out the same way nash's early and old years were left out. they certainly aren't prime years (and they were 13th in his first year anyway, right in line with these other curry seasons). curry came into the league at the same age as jordan playing 36 mpg so i don't see it as some unfair comparison to count curry's seasons. and are they really positive assumptions for jordan? he retired in the middle of his prime in the midst of a stretch where he had 3 top 2 offenses before and 2 #1 offenses after. it's not a stretch to say some high level offenses were probably going to happen in 1994 and 1995. and i broke it out into played and didn't play so it's not like you can't see the "unadjusted" numbers. whereas we can be reasonably certain 2020 wasn't going to be a good offensive year for the warriors. there could be some debate about 1986 for jordan but they were 8th out of 23 and did better in jordan's limited minutes coming back from injury. the 2012 warriors didn't do much better or worse than the surrounding years so it's not like i cheated curry out of a top 10.

Robertson whilst great, doesn’t work as a comp in these terms (top 10 offenses) with so much smaller a league. Even if we were measuring players by team level performance without context it could be done with so much more nuance. Instead it has the feeling of a case constructed for the purpose of trying to make them look bad rather than discover truth.

2) As alluded to league size matters. I am a huge Oscar fan, and would guess I have him higher than most, but league size really messes up this measure even more.

not really. almost all of oscar's are #1 or #2 offenses, which would all be better than 10th out of 30, even in a 9 team league. by the time he has a few slightly lower offenses, there are more teams.

“Not really.” What league size doesn’t matter? Or “not really” to league size messes up using top ten offenses to measure players? Or “not really” to an imaginary response in your head?
I’m not interested in diminishing Robertson. It’s hard to compare across eras, it’s a janky tool for reasons outlined but above including problems with rank losing data, but certainly Robertson through his own impact-y measures was a superb player.

i don't understand your point. oscar was literally finishing 1st for most of his prime. how is league size changing anything about that not being at least a top 10 offense? and finishing 2nd in a 9 team league is still better than finishing 10th out of 30. you act like i counted a #8 season and didn't mention there were only 9 teams. by the milwaukee years, there were up to 17 teams so even a 5th place finish would be equivalent to a top 10 today.

Ah and the RS squad and playoff minutes were near identical right? … Klay the playoff minutes leader was the minutes leader in the RS too right … (checks website … 12th … hmm). Guys who aren’t in the playoff rotation won’t be in RS rotation right (check’s proportion of Damion Lee minutes …).
Either you don’t know what you’re talking about or you are deliberately misrepresenting the situation.

the situation i initially described by mentioning the big 3 didn't play together in the regular season? did you read it? but again, it's not like there was no talent with draymond running the offense and poole having a very nice season. and it wasn't a photo finish, they were 17th. if steph's shooting and gravity are automatic high-level offense, then finishing 17th doesn't seem to jibe with that.

Indeed, though a broad tendency for strongest lineups to be on versus one another means by no means always. But this doesn’t really address the point. The ’14 team - despite your arguments, which I believe I explained the flaws in - were awful without him, yet you would ding him because of this, despite enormous lift. I think this doesn’t make any sense.

i'm not dinging him. i'm asking why virtually everyone else consistently produced top 2 and top 5 offenses and he didn't. i mean it's not like the warriors have been the KG wolves and we can just say "well, his team sucked". maybe it truly is all the time he isn't on the court, but then other great players were not on the court for all 48 minutes. surely, they provided lift to their teams as well and their "on" time had to overcome not so great "off" minutes. the roster was literally one year from a +10 SRS, #2 offense season, so it seems weird that scraping out a top 10 offense would be difficult, right? if it wasn't just kerr's system providing the change for the next year.

Team offense being the goal for the team doesn’t make it the best, or even a good, measurement of individual offensive contribution. His relOrtg (or crude oRtg rank) would be better too it he Tonya Harding-ed all the league’s other offensive stars but, like improving the team significantly when not on the court, it’s not a realistic expectation.
If you actually sincerely want to know to know why they were in given years, actually look closely at them (e.g. could ’14 GSW made top 10 if lineups with deep bench players hadn’t stunk). Given the responses to explanations already given (which included genuine dings based on health) here though …

it feels like you're glossing over the point. the point is that top 10 isn't tough. i'm not asking for #1 offenses. just not 12th when you have another shooter/gravity guy in klay on the court with you or 20th and 17th just because the talent wasn't 2015-2019 level.

[f4p]

lebron: no #1 or #2 offenses but 8 top 5 offenses and 3 more top 10's despite having very little offensive help for 5 years in cleveland (same general teammate stats as jordan with tons of negative BPM guys and lebron accounting for 80%+ of the VORP (even 100% one season), though gooden/big Z were way over 15 PER, and about 0.150 WS48, but not much in BPM)

The 2013 Heat had the #1 offense.

How come NBAstats.com has the Heat first and OKC second, and basketball reference has it the opposite? I've always wondered this.

as far as i know, the nba stat is based on a true possession count and BBRef is an estimate of the possession count. a good estimate, and covers all of history before the play-by-play era, but an estimate nonetheless.

[f4p]

can you do a list like this for harden

hmm, don't have time for the TS ADD/VORP thing right now, but starting with his age 22 season when he surpassed 30 mpg (last season in OKC), his ranks have gone:

2012 - #2 (unbelievable 66 TS%, last season in OKC)
2013 - #6 (first year starting and best help is jeremy lin, chandler parsons, and 2500 minutes of omer asik with non-brilliant offensive coach kevin mchale)
2014 - #4
2015 - #12 (josh smith and corey brewer playing a lot of minutes)
2016 - #7
2017 - #2 (MDA shows up to help)
2018 - #1 (cp3 shows up to help)
2019 - #2 (i do know that TS Add is negative outside of harden and capela (whose TS Add is basically an extension of harden), and he had about 60% of the VORP, so fairly big carry to get a #2 offense)
2020 - #6 (westbrook shows up to "help")
2021 - #1
2022 - #10 (i had to calculate using brooklyn's first 55 games and philly's last 27 games based on the day of the trade and i got 113.746 compared to #10 at 113.7 so 96% chance the rounding would go to harden as 10th, but basically a tie, tiebreaker is that just the philly part would have been the #1 offense in the league, even in a down year for harden)
2022 - #4

so 2 #1's and 3 #2's plus 5 more top 7's (10 out of 11 top 10's, all top 7, nothing worse than 12th).

[SpreeS]

can you do a list like this for harden

hmm, don't have time for the TS ADD/VORP thing right now, but starting with his age 22 season when he surpassed 30 mpg (last season in OKC), his ranks have gone:

2012 - #2 (unbelievable 66 TS%, last season in OKC)
2013 - #6 (first year starting and best help is jeremy lin, chandler parsons, and 2500 minutes of omer asik with non-brilliant offensive coach kevin mchale)
2014 - #4
2015 - #12 (josh smith and corey brewer playing a lot of minutes)
2016 - #7
2017 - #2 (MDA shows up to help)
2018 - #1 (cp3 shows up to help)
2019 - #2 (i do know that TS Add is negative outside of harden and capela (whose TS Add is basically an extension of harden), and he had about 60% of the VORP, so fairly big carry to get a #2 offense)
2020 - #6 (westbrook shows up to "help")
2021 - #1
2022 - #10 (i had to calculate using brooklyn's first 55 games and philly's last 27 games based on the day of the trade and i got 113.746 compared to #10 at 113.7 so 96% chance the rounding would go to harden as 10th, but basically a tie, tiebreaker is that just the philly part would have been the #1 offense in the league, even in a down year for harden)
2022 - #4

so 2 #1's and 3 #2's plus 5 more top 7's (10 out of 11 top 10's, all top 7, nothing worse than 12th).

Curry/Harden/Luka on/off ortg net

10 SC +3.1 JH +0.2
11 SC +5.1 JH +1.9
12 SC +5.4 JH +14.0
13 SC +8.1 JH +0.6
14 SC +16.1 JH +7.7
15 SC +14.4 JH +13.7
16 SC +13.6 JH +7.9
17 SC +16.3 JH +6.6
18 SC +14.7 JH +7.4
19 SC +10.8 JH +7.4 Luka +0.0
20 SC +5.6 JH +5.1 Luka +3.7
21 SC +10.3 JH +4.3/+3.4 Luka +7.8
22 SC +5.8 JH +0.1/+10.0 Luka +4.4
23 SC +6.3 JH +6.0 Luka +6.3

Curry/Nash/Harden on/off ortg net

+16.3 +17.4 +14.0
+16.1 +15.4 +13.7
+14.7 +13.0 +10.0 (PHI 2022)
+14.4 +12.0 +7.9
+13.6 +8.1 +7.7
+10.8 +8.0 +7.4
+10.3 +7.7 +7.4
+8.1 +7.4 +6.6
+6.3 +7.1 +6.0
+5.8 +6.5 +5.1
+5.6 +6.4 +4.3 (HOU 2021)
+5.4 +3.7 +3.4 (BKN 2021)
+5.1 +2.6 +1.9
+3.1 +0.5 +0.6

[Doctor MJ]

yes, curry clearly has high-level team seasons. the question is why are those the only season that barely even reach the level of above-average, much less elite.

So, I want to do a more detailed statistical analysis inspired by this thread largely for my own benefit, but I feel a need to speak to something more big picture here.

As I see it when evaluating a player's individual play through team performance, there are basically 3 components:

1. His ability to provide lift relative to his specific team (On/Off, RAPM, etc).
2. His proven ability to scale that lift to high ceiling.
3. His ability to be available for large minutes.

While we can talk about (3), I think (1) and (2) are the big things for most players and I think most relevant to this thread.

Let me emphasize that (1) is something that a guy has to demonstrate on the regular while (2) is about the specific concern over whether the player's approach doesn't actually allow you to build something great and thus it's something that ceases to be much of a worry once we've seen it.

And so when I look at Curry, who has ample track record of (1) and frankly has plenty of evidence to indicate (2), I really don't have any concern.

Now, that doesn't explicitly answer your question, but it does so implicitly:

This is a team game, so there should be no expectation that a player can create an elite offense all by himself.

I'm a big Nash guy and will certainly emphasize how amazing his decade-long run of being on elite offenses was, but while Nash certainly has a case for being the more impressive offensive player compared to Curry, he couldn't do it all by himself either.

[DonaldSanders]

So if we're using on-court Relative Offensive Rating as a proxy for offensive value (while ignoring many of the qualifiers Owly mentioned that still apply here, e.g. team rating being a very imprecise estimator, ignoring teammates' overall value, ignoring teams' focus on defense vs offense, etc. etc.)... then:
-Curry has the clear best regular season offensive peak. He has the best single-year stretch ever through the best 5-year stretch ever, with his top 5 years being better than LeBron's best single season. 2 of these years came pre-Durant. In the years with Durant, Curry had the better on-court Offensive Rating than Durant (though no doubt sharing the court with each other helped both)
-If you throw out the Durant Warriors years, 05 Nash looks like the best peak.
-But! Curry has worse longevity, doing worse in the early 13/14 years and the post-2020 years than prime LeBron, prime Nash, current Jokic
-This does not consider playoffs, so it would be interesting to give the same treatment for playoffs

Thoughts? Personally, I'd want to emphasize all the qualifier's Owly has mentioned... this is a pretty imprecise way to measure offensive GOAT players, but it is still interesting! And it may have some meaningful information if we do dive deeper into the context of each player/team.

Some good analysis, but I'll offer up again that I don't think the system/coach & Steph changing the game is being discussed enough here. If you watch 2012/13 and 2013/14 you'll see a more iso-ball oriented approach that Mark Jackson was in favor of. Steph Curry didn't become Steph Curry truly until Steve Kerr showed up and allowed Steph to truly do his thing. Steph's TS% rose under Kerr and the team flourished off of the attention he was garnering. Now I'm not saying Steph didn't often freestyle and do his own thing & shoot deep 3s before Kerr, but a lot of the set plays were lower percentage isolation plays and Steph/Klay weren't maximized as much as they could have been. Jarret Jack isos, post plays for David Lee, etc.

A limited offensive player like Draymond went from:
2012-13: 40.4 TS%
2013-14: 49.8 TS%
to
2014-15: 54 TS%
2015-16: 59.8 TS%

So while I feel the implication that Steph under-performed for his team a bit silly, if you are wondering why the Warrior offense wasn't better w/ Steph earlier, one of the biggest reasons is coaching. 2012-13 they were #11 and 2013-14 they were #12, and with better coaching I think it's fair to say the Warriors would have been a top 10 offense. If you didn't watch the Warriors during the Mark Jackson years, you probably didn't see much of his offense later. Anyone looking up old games is probably looking up highlights which don't show the low-lights of Mark Jackson coaching; You'd need to watch a full game to see the differences. Steve Nash played with more "modern" offensive coaches like Don Nelson and D'Antoni for most of his career.

Now let's take an offensive great like James Harden, he didn't ascend & raise a team to a #1 Offense as "The guy" until he was also able to maximize his talents with the "new NBA" that the Warriors helped usher in (though obviously there were many pre-cursors with D'Antoni/Nash, Reggie Miller, etc.) in 2016-17 and Mike D'Antoni coaching instead of Kevin McHale. Harden's team went on a streak of #2, #1, #2 much like the change in coaching benefitted the Warriors. Of course the Rockets did achieve a #4 and #6 ranking under McHale, but I think there is a difference in being able to elevate to #1/#2 in a 3 year span.

So in my opinion both Harden and Curry benefitted from a coaching/style change, and that is a big factor in their team's offensive ratings. It's certainly not the only factor (both players took some time to ramp up their first few years) but it is certainly a significant factor here. If we just focus on stats for each of these years and not the systems, I think we are limiting our view.

Post Durant:
2020, Steph barely played and the team was terrible, not going to be a good offensive team.
2021, rookie Wiseman tanked the offense. 108.5 Offensive rating with Wiseman on, 115.4 Wiseman off. Would have been tied for 9th. There's a reason why a lot of Warrior fans tired of Wiseman.
2022, the Warriors were 4th in the playoffs in Offensive Rating with the top 2 teams being first round exits. The team's identity shifted to being more defensive oriented, but with everyone playing and the rotations tightening up, the offense was definitely at least top 10 quality.

Age/Injuries is definitely a factor for 2022 as Curry missed 18 games, Green missed 36, Klay played 32 so the team didn't do as well offensive in the regular season as they did in the playoffs.

[G35]

I would say a good measure of a complete player would be how many teams have they been on with a top 10 offense/defense.....

[Lost92Bricks]

I would say a good measure of a complete player would be how many teams have they been on with a top 10 offense/defense.....

Interesting. CP3 was on eleven top 10 offenses (3 of them being #1) and ten top 10 defenses.

[f4p]

So if we're using on-court Relative Offensive Rating as a proxy for offensive value (while ignoring many of the qualifiers Owly mentioned that still apply here, e.g. team rating being a very imprecise estimator, ignoring teammates' overall value, ignoring teams' focus on defense vs offense, etc. etc.)... then:
-Curry has the clear best regular season offensive peak. He has the best single-year stretch ever through the best 5-year stretch ever, with his top 5 years being better than LeBron's best single season. 2 of these years came pre-Durant. In the years with Durant, Curry had the better on-court Offensive Rating than Durant (though no doubt sharing the court with each other helped both)
-If you throw out the Durant Warriors years, 05 Nash looks like the best peak.
-But! Curry has worse longevity, doing worse in the early 13/14 years and the post-2020 years than prime LeBron, prime Nash, current Jokic
-This does not consider playoffs, so it would be interesting to give the same treatment for playoffs

Thoughts? Personally, I'd want to emphasize all the qualifier's Owly has mentioned... this is a pretty imprecise way to measure offensive GOAT players, but it is still interesting! And it may have some meaningful information if we do dive deeper into the context of each player/team.

Some good analysis, but I'll offer up again that I don't think the system/coach & Steph changing the game is being discussed enough here. If you watch 2012/13 and 2013/14 you'll see a more iso-ball oriented approach that Mark Jackson was in favor of. Steph Curry didn't become Steph Curry truly until Steve Kerr showed up and allowed Steph to truly do his thing. Steph's TS% rose under Kerr and the team flourished off of the attention he was garnering.

well that was sort of part of where i was going. why does it seem steph needs an ideal system/coach and his best teammates to even be above average, the kind of bar usually cleared pretty easily by most others (i didn't even think to look at cp3 since he just got mentioned).

Now I'm not saying Steph didn't often freestyle and do his own thing & shoot deep 3s before Kerr, but a lot of the set plays were lower percentage isolation plays and Steph/Klay weren't maximized as much as they could have been. Jarret Jack isos, post plays for David Lee, etc.

A limited offensive player like Draymond went from:
2012-13: 40.4 TS%
2013-14: 49.8 TS%
to
2014-15: 54 TS%
2015-16: 59.8 TS%

So while I feel the implication that Steph under-performed for his team a bit silly, if you are wondering why the Warrior offense wasn't better w/ Steph earlier, one of the biggest reasons is coaching. 2012-13 they were #11 and 2013-14 they were #12, and with better coaching I think it's fair to say the Warriors would have been a top 10 offense. If you didn't watch the Warriors during the Mark Jackson years, you probably didn't see much of his offense later. Anyone looking up old games is probably looking up highlights which don't show the low-lights of Mark Jackson coaching; You'd need to watch a full game to see the differences. Steve Nash played with more "modern" offensive coaches like Don Nelson and D'Antoni for most of his career.

Now let's take an offensive great like James Harden, he didn't ascend & raise a team to a #1 Offense as "The guy" until he was also able to maximize his talents with the "new NBA" that the Warriors helped usher in (though obviously there were many pre-cursors with D'Antoni/Nash, Reggie Miller, etc.) in 2016-17 and Mike D'Antoni coaching instead of Kevin McHale. Harden's team went on a streak of #2, #1, #2 much like the change in coaching benefitted the Warriors. Of course the Rockets did achieve a #4 and #6 ranking under McHale, but I think there is a difference in being able to elevate to #1/#2 in a 3 year span.

so i feel like you're kind of making my argument for me with the mention of the #4/#6 thing. harden, as a first year starter, with chandler parsons and jeremy lin, all of them 24 and younger, with kevin mchale's blah system, could get to #6. with dwight howard, terrence jones, and omer asik taking up 5500 minutes the next season and still with mchale, they were #4. is klay thompson/david lee with mark jackson at coach really worse than lin/parsons with mchale?

and yes, harden had great year's with d'antoni, but now we've also seen him post d'antoni (well d'antoni was on the nets staff, but not the same). #1, #10 in a bad year but #1 offense in 27 games with philly, and now #4 with doc rivers. we also saw pre-d'antoni with brook and mchale. if the 76ers don't really fall off here, harden will have a top 5 offense with 4 different franchises over 5 different coaches, with great offensive teammates and "meh" offensive teammates.

that was the point, if #4 and #6 are so easy to get, why has it only happened in a very limited set of circumstances, 3 of which were basically gimme's with KD on the team.

[G35]

I would say a good measure of a complete player would be how many teams have they been on with a top 10 offense/defense.....

Interesting. CP3 was on eleven top 10 offenses (3 of them being #1) and ten top 10 defenses.

I count CP3 having been on seven teams that meet that requirement.

Let's list some others that have done top 10 offense/defense in the same season:

Kobe - 7x
Duncan - 12x
Lebron - 6x
Hakeem - 2x
Dirk - 5x
Bird - 9x
Magic - 11x
Jordan - 8x
Garnett - 3x
Barkley - 3x
Malone/Stockton - 7x
Jokic - 1x
Giannis - 3x
Curry -3x

[SpreeS]

Durant/Irving/Embiid/Paul are elite offensive players. Even Maxey has TS+ 105 and 103 in last two years.

GSW main scores TS+ (>10fga) in last 3 years:

Poole 2022 13.9fga 106ts+
Wiggs 2021 14.9fga 99ts+
Wiggs 2022 14.0fga 99ts+
Klay 2023 18.1fga 98ts+
Poole 2023 15.7fga 98ts+
Wiggs 2023 14.3fga 97ts+
Klay 2022 17.9fga 97ts+
Oubre 2021 17.1fga 93ts+

Curry had only one player in one season (2021-2023) with volume shooting on above avg efficiency. Also Green/Looney/Wiseman are/were the worst scoring FC in the whole league. With no spacing, with no game above the rim (Green/Looney) and with no post-up game.

TS+ (>10fga)

Durant 2021 117
Durant 2022 112
Irving 2021 107
Irving 2022 105
J.Harris 2021 116
Embiid 2022 109
Embiid 2023 112
Maxey 2022 105
Maxey 2023 103
T.Harris 2022 100
T.Harris 2023 104

Harden teammates (2021-2023) career TS+

Irving 105
T.Harris 102
Maxey 102
Embiid 108
Durant 113
J.Harris 111

Curry teammates (2021-2023) career TS+

Klay 104
Poole 98
Wiggs 96
Oubre 96

Wide open/open shots per game

GSW 2023 50.4
GSW 2022 48.3
GSW 2021 47.0
PHI 2023 45.6
PHI 2022 45.4
BKN 2021 44.2
BKN 2022 42.5

Wide open shot eFG

BKN 2021 .641efg
BKN 2022 .619efg
PHI 2023 .619efg
GSW 2023 .619efg
PHI 2022 .595efg
GSW 2022 .588efg
GSW 2021 .577efg

[cpower]

I would say a good measure of a complete player would be how many teams have they been on with a top 10 offense/defense.....

Interesting. CP3 was on eleven top 10 offenses (3 of them being #1) and ten top 10 defenses.

I count CP3 having been on seven teams that meet that requirement.

Let's list some others that have done top 10 offense/defense in the same season:

Kobe - 7x
Duncan - 12x
Lebron - 6x
Hakeem - 2x
Dirk - 5x
Bird - 9x
Magic - 11x
Jordan - 8x
Garnett - 3x
Barkley - 3x
Malone/Stockton - 7x
Jokic - 1x
Giannis - 3x
Curry -3x

this is a good measurement for how stacked the team is.

[DonaldSanders]

well that was sort of part of where i was going. why does it seem steph needs an ideal system/coach and his best teammates to even be above average, the kind of bar usually cleared pretty easily by most others (i didn't even think to look at cp3 since he just got mentioned).

so i feel like you're kind of making my argument for me with the mention of the #4/#6 thing. harden, as a first year starter, with chandler parsons and jeremy lin, all of them 24 and younger, with kevin mchale's blah system, could get to #6. with dwight howard, terrence jones, and omer asik taking up 5500 minutes the next season and still with mchale, they were #4. is klay thompson/david lee with mark jackson at coach really worse than lin/parsons with mchale?

and yes, harden had great year's with d'antoni, but now we've also seen him post d'antoni (well d'antoni was on the nets staff, but not the same). #1, #10 in a bad year but #1 offense in 27 games with philly, and now #4 with doc rivers. we also saw pre-d'antoni with brook and mchale. if the 76ers don't really fall off here, harden will have a top 5 offense with 4 different franchises over 5 different coaches, with great offensive teammates and "meh" offensive teammates.

that was the point, if #4 and #6 are so easy to get, why has it only happened in a very limited set of circumstances, 3 of which were basically gimme's with KD on the team.

I don't think #4 and #6 are easy to get, I think you're discounting those Rockets teams. The point was that coaching can raise the level of a team, and I pointed out 2 seasons that coaching would have brought the Warriors easily into the top 10 offenses which was the bar you were measuring. I also pointed out James Wiseman's tanking of the Warriors offense, and I pointed out the Warriors were a top offense in the playoffs last year.

What is the point you are trying to make, are you saying Steph Curry is overrated? I think a better point is that James Harden is underrated.