OhayoKD wrote:
Magic vs Steph
I'll start this off with some excerpts from the skillset analysis me and blackmill did(and I presented chunks of for the Kareem thread). Some of you may have see this before, but for posterity...
In this framework, Magic grades a tier higher than Steph based on two alleged advantages;
-> The ability to leverage/organize his teammates as a floor-general
-> The efficiency of his creation
This is just a theoretical framework and nothing more. And I don’t think it really is borne out by data. The efficiency of Steph’s creation is actually an outlier. For example, I provided info in prior threads that showed that Steph is an outlier in terms of increasing the “shot quality” of teammates when he’s on the court. And that’s even as compared to top-tier playmakers that this framework puts ahead of Steph, such as Nash and LeBron. And this mostly seems to be caused by Steph being a very large outlier in increasing the percent of his teammates’ shot attempts that are at the rim—something that he is again a massive outlier in even as compared to guys like Nash and LeBron.
Which of course makes sense if you think about it, because Steph’s unique method of creation is uniquely well-suited to creating shots at the rim. Great playmakers generally create by drawing defenders towards them and getting the ball to the person who is now in open space. You draw defenders towards you by getting into dangerous positions, and for virtually everyone in history, those dangerous positions are those closer to the basket. So the defenders are drawn towards the basket, and the space created tends to be away from the basket. Steph is the opposite. With Steph, the dangerous positions that draw defenders towards him are really far away from the basket, and so the space created tends to be close to the basket. That helps his brand of creation to be particularly efficient—with his presence having an outlier effect on his teammates’ shot quality.
Granted, we don’t have data on this for Magic Johnson, who obviously was an incredible playmaker and probably an outlier in this regard himself. But Steph’s playmaking is definitely at outlier-level, not at some second tier.
Incidentally they don't seem to have the same level of offensive lift in the absence of a specific structure where those decisions are delegated to someone else:
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Curry wasn't close to leading all-time offenses(and had worse metrics than both westbrook and durant) with Draymond on the bench.
That’s just objectively inaccurate. The 2016-2017 Warriors literally had a better RS+playoffs offensive rating with Steph on and Draymond off (123.34) than they did with Steph and Draymond both on (122.25). And it was an all-time offense either way. Same with the 2017-2018 Warriors, who also had a better offensive rating with Steph on and Draymond off (123.62) than they did with Steph and Draymond both on (120.52). Again, these are historically great numbers. This is just an argument invented out of thin air.
Players similar to Magic tend to lead better offenses than players similar steph. Magic has proven himself without his best co-star, and players like Magic have shown proof of concept outside of optimal-situations while Steph and players like Steph seem to struggle generating great results until they find the right situation.
“Players like Steph”??? There is no historical analogue to Steph. That’s the point! His shooting ability is such a historical outlier that the effect he has on the game is something new.
Finally, I'd like to bring up a point about Steph...and the potential ceiling of his brand of offense:
What you’re quoting there is a self-proclaimed non-point (“I’ll be the first to admit that a fifteen-team sample size (ultimately dependent on a two-series playoff sample) is *not* a reasonable basis for a conclusion.”), from someone who is providing some color regarding ranking one of Steph’s teams the greatest team in the history of basketball.
Somehow, someway, even with Kevin Durant, the Warriors still were not the best offense ever, even in the playoffs.
Um, in the 2016-2017 playoffs, the Warriors with Steph and Durant on the floor had a 127.67 offensive rating, and it was 129.04 if you filter out low leverage situations. When you add Draymond to it, you get to a 130.73 offensive rating in non-garbage time. I think you’ll find that no one matches that. That’s like a +20 rORTG!
So yeah, I don’t think this is a correct statement at all. The 2016-2017 Warriors with Steph and Durant were absolutely an enormous historical outlier in offense. The team only didn’t have the best offense ever in the playoffs because they had an absolutely dismal 98.11 offensive rating in minutes Steph wasn’t on the floor. Which is probably in significant part because they were so dominant in Steph’s minutes that there was little urgency in the rest of the minutes.
Meanwhile, as for the regular season, I’ve previously charted out the regular season on-court ORTG+ of the best players of the play-by-play era:
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2302989. In general, Nash and Steph are clear outliers, with multiple 110+ seasons. And the 2017-2018 Warriors with Steph on the floor had the 2nd highest ORTG+ I found, only very slightly behind the 2004-2005 Suns with Nash on the floor (113.4 vs. 113.0). No one else had a season even remotely close to that. So yeah, this idea that Steph didn’t lead GOAT-tier offense is incorrect.
So let's break this down a bit:
(1) lift a team to best ever status? No Magic did not do that. And neither did Steph. That was Durant. And of course they didn't really play "best ever" basketball the next two years despite having not one, not two, but three superstars complimented by strong role players like Klay and Iggy. Fit was excellent, talent was wild, yet somehow, derived of just iggy, that Warriors team was played to a dead-heat by the Rockets when we account for garbage time(thanks fp4!) per m.o.v and was losing 3-2 before Houston lost their 2nd best player.
The fact that Durant was the last piece added to the team does not make him the most important piece. It’s very very clear from the data who was the main driver of those teams’ greatness. And it was definitely Steph. The data on this is obvious and I really don’t even think you disagree. Just as one example I’ve mentioned before: Those Warriors had a better net rating with Steph on and Durant, Draymond, and Klay off than it did with Durant, Draymond, and Klay on and Steph off. Those Warriors were 24-23 with Steph not playing, 28-10 with Durant not playing, and 24-10 without Draymond playing. The fact is that those Warriors absolutely were best-ever level teams, and Steph absolutely was easily the most important player on the team. Neither of those two things are really debatable at all.
The idea that those Warriors were not the best team ever because not even in their best season they struggled with a road series against a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team is pretty wild. Only 14 teams in the history of the NBA have matched both the wins and SRS of that Rockets team. And the 2018 Rockets had also easily destroyed their first two playoff opponents. That is the type of team that would usually win the title, and that even the best team ever still would be expected to struggle with, especially in a road series. Luckily for Golden State, they had impact king Steph Curry, who had the highest +/- of anyone in the series (+56, which in 268 minutes comes out to +10.02 per 48 minutes).
In 2019 they had iggy and found themselves in a dead-heat with a significantly weaker version of that same team from Houston through 4-games and most of game 5. They go off without Durant to win game 5 and 6 but even with KD they looked very mortal. And it does raise some questions about this great "ceiling-raising" as it was Steph's poor play as KD went off that was sinking them through the first 4 games. Just like it was Steph's poor play that helped put them down to a less talented side in 2018.
It is somehow bad for Steph that his team was tied 2-2 in a series (where one loss was in OT) and then the second best player on the team went down and Steph stepped up and won them the series in 6? If that’s the criticism of Steph, then let’s definitely vote him in immediately!
And I’m curious how “it was Steph’s poor play . . . that was sinking them through the first 4 games” when Steph actually had an overall positive +/- over the two games they lost (which Durant did not, by the way). As to your reference again to the 2018 series, I’d reiterate that Steph had the highest +/- of anyone in the entire series.
And I’d repeat again that the critiques here are literally that the Warriors couldn’t have been that great because they (1) struggled to win a road series against a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team, and (2) beat a team in 6 games when their second best player went down during the series. These are just facially unpersuasive points.
(2) If the 2022 Warriors were subpar, the 1988 Lakers were arguably more so. Both had injury-ridden off samples(this was a bigger factor with the Warriors), but the 88 Lakers in 10 games without Magic were roughly -4 while the Warriors over 18 games were roughly -2. Moreover in the playoffs while Draymond elevated and as defense led the Warriors to another championship. Perhaps more notably, when Kareem departed, Magic would reach 2 of the next 3 finals with injury nixing both his campaigns at the final hurdle. Meanwhile Steph, a year removed and a few depth pieces short, barely made the postseason and then lost decisively to a Lakers side whose 2nd best player(probably best in the regular season), now on as much milage as cp3 and steph combined, was playing on a torn tendon. And it's not really clear Steph was better.
Are you really judging the 1987-1988 Lakers—a team that had almost even preseason title odds because they were running it back after having one of the greatest teams in NBA history—as being not very good based on a small 10-game off sample where the team still went 5-5 without Magic? You’re obviously not old enough to have watched basketball at the time and must be drawing conclusions based on random numbers you searched up on statsmuse. Magic’s missed games were all after 60+ games into the season, in a year where the Lakers had gone out to a way better record than anyone in the NBA. Indeed, when Magic first went out, the Lakers were 1st in the NBA, with an 8.5 game lead in the West and a 7.5 game lead overall in the NBA, with just 22 games left. They had such a secure hold on the NBA’s best record that the games the rest of the season didn’t matter much (they went 7-4 with Magic and 5-5 without Magic the rest of the season, after starting the year 49-11, and still had a 5-game lead for 1st place in the NBA by the end). And yet you’re wanting to say they were not very good because of results in some of those really-low-stakes games? The idea that the 1988 Lakers were only as good or even less good a team than the 2022 Warriors is honestly farcical. Magic Johnson was great, but he never led a team to a title that was remotely like the 2022 Warriors.
(3) Incredible Impact? Sure. But many of his contemporaries have strong cases in the period that was supposed to be his. Harden, Giannis, and Jokic have cases depending on your lense(Jokic in paticular). And of course there is the matter of 30+ Lebron, where there is plenty to suggest he was more valuable over than Steph during that 68-win, +10 srs 5-year period where he was paired with one or two complimentary(at least in theory) superstars. He has no real claim to the crown for data-ball, and even his alleged prime was arguably outshined by multiple contemporaries.
Steph’s “claim to the crown for data-ball” is that he has gotten the better of everyone in essentially every impact metric more times than they’ve gotten the better of him in the last decade. It’s pretty straightforward and manifestly obvious. This is someone who is in 1st place on NBAshotcharts in six straight 5-year RAPM intervals. Overall, I’ve provided an overwhelming mountain of evidence on this, and it’s just baffling that you’re still just arguing this with essentially no basis. Your only argument is basically that he’s not always 1st in every measure all the time—which is just measuring him against an unrealistic bar that is essentially impossible to meet when talking about data that is often quite noisy. Steph Curry is the impact-metric king of the last decade. It’s really just not a debatable premise.
Hakeem jumps ahead on the basis of circumstance and nigh-unmatched playoff elevation(a factor that also helps Micheal to a degree). But can Steph say the same? Given what transpired during that 5-year "68-win +10srs stretch", I would have to say no.
“Given what transpired during that 5-year ‘68-win +10srs stretch’”? During that stretch, Steph finished 2nd, 9th, 2nd, 2nd, and 2nd in playoff AuPM/g. There was not a single person who finished above him in 3 of those 5 years. And, along the way, he won 3 titles while going to the finals every year. Playoff impact is very obviously not a concern with Steph.
I am not going to argue that his marks him as some sort of equal to Bill(though that seems to have become a popular tactic), but those Celtics aside, his Lakers have a case against anyone. Outside of a single year, Steph's Warriors really do not. And I do not think that is because Curry was at some contextual disadvantage.
Steph’s Warriors don’t “have a case against anyone . . . Outside of a single year”??? This just…completely strains credulity. The Warriors won more games in a 3-season span than any team in history. They are the only team to have 10+ SRS three years in a row. They won 3 titles in 5 years, and went to the finals the other two years. Even outside of 2016-2017, they won titles with playoff net ratings of +10.3 and +8.2. For reference, the only other teams to have matched that +10.3 playoff net rating are: the 2001 Lakers, the 1996 Bulls, the 1991 Bulls, the 1987 Lakers, the 1986 Celtics, and the 1971 Bucks. Steph’s Warriors had 3 of Sansterre’s top 9 teams of all time (as well as #26 and #91). For reference, there’s only 2 Magic Lakers teams in the top 60, and the highest one was #10. Jordan’s Bulls are the only team with multiple top 10 entries, and Steph’s Warriors are the only team with three top 10 entries. I could go on and on. This is just an absurd statement.
Well, setting aside you didn't seem to think it was note-worthy then Pippen's Bulls "did so well" with their own "interpersonal-strife"...
No. I don't think being 3-2 down in what, excepting for garbage time, was a dead-heat to the Houston Rockets, a significantly less talented team led by two "floor-raisers" counts as "doing so well". Nor when you find yourself in an another dead-heat with an even weaker version of that side with Kevin Durant on the floor.
I’m not holding up “interpersonal strife” as a huge deal. It’s you that are trying to hold it up as a negative against Steph, and I simply pointed out the obvious fact the team still doing really well while there’s interpersonal strife is not a bad thing. I’ve never made some affirmative argument about this—in part because we have no idea what interpersonal strife teams do or don’t have behind closed doors, so it’s just an impossible thing to control for.
As for the 2018 Rockets, if your argument is that Steph is not a ceiling raiser because his team struggled to win a road series against a 65-win, 8.21 SRS team, then I think it’s safe to say you really don’t have much of an argument at all.
And, yes. Steph has indeed, by your first standard, "vultured" very good teammates:
If we go by your second (incorrect)process with APM, draymond has found themselves "cannabalized"
How curious...
Lol, this is obviously reaching. Jordan Poole is not the type of player we’re talking about when we are talking about great players being maximized in order to ceiling raise. He is not a “very good” player. He’s only had one decent season (in which he did have a +4 effect on net rating with Steph on), and even in that season he became unplayable deep in the playoffs. Even Wiggins is really just a solid starter-level player. Overall, those just aren’t players that have high impact that could be cannibalized. They’re basically just pretty neutral starter-level players (which we can see in their career on-off ratings, for instance), for whom this sort of analysis will therefore mostly be dominated by statistical randomness tilted towards a negative effect with Steph because of it being harder to increase a high net rating. Players like Wiggins and Poole just aren’t the type of players that would move the needle on a high net rating. Which is why that 2022 title was a floor raising title not a ceiling raising one.
And, of course, I should also note that it is widely understood that Wiggins has easily shown his best play of his career with Steph, particularly in the playoffs. So that was a really odd example for you to use.
Westbrook, Harden, CP3, Kawhi, 18 and 19 Durant. Not great players. Low IQ. got it. JR Smith is throwing soup.
What is this random list of players supposed to be? Is it supposed to be a list of players that supposedly wouldn’t fit in the Warriors system? Only one of these players has played on the Warriors (Durant), and Durant literally won two titles in the Warriors system and played very well doing it. Meanwhile, Kawhi literally won Finals MVP playing in a motion system. I’m genuinely confused what you’re trying to say. And JR Smith is not a great player, so I don’t see your point. No one is sitting around talking about how much a good fit with JR Smith would raise a team’s ceiling.
But he does need the ball. He needs opportunities to handle and to playmaker but also not too many of them. And he needs extra-passes and well-set screens, and teamamtes who know where to move and when to run to use his gravity properly. He also needs strong versatile defenders who Steph can funnel attackers to when he's hunted on matchups. He also needs scorers who utilize his "gravity" without also spending alot of possessions per touch with the ball. It's not as simple as Steph walks on -> ts goes up. And most teams do not have the personell Steph would need to run that, even assuming the coach he was paired with knew how to do it. And then you need willingness. Otherwise even theoretical fits like Durant are suddenly "holding Steph back".
It is controversial to everyone who gets how that system works. It is logically obvious to those who don't. Don't explain things you don't understand.
These are pretty much just all things that get easily coached to an NBA player with a remotely competent basketball IQ. It’s not something that has been hard for players to pick up on the Warriors, which isn’t a surprise since they’re professional basketball players. Needing guys to mentally understand basic basketball concepts is really not the high bar you think it is.
And every defense in the entire NBA wants good defenders that people can funnel attackers to, because the rules make one-on-one perimeter defense almost impossible. This is not an issue of fit with Steph.
Speaking of, no. When low-minute role-players score super-high in an artificial approximation while actually not having a big effect on the team. High 1-year APM is not an indication of excellent support, it is an indication that an outlier is being curved down and seeing value misattributed to their teammates. And that outlier, in 2003, was Tim Duncan.
This is just you denying data that disproves your argument. And Manu didn’t just have “high 1-year APM.” It was high 1-year APM, followed by high APM like every single year after that—many times higher than Duncan’s (his league ranking in JE’s RAPM after 2002-2003 in chronological order was: 17th, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 3rd, 12th, 12th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 6th, 9th, and 26th). Which obviously helps validate that the 2003 impact numbers were real. Manu Ginobili is obviously not Anderson Varejao.