Harden vs Curry (Offense)

[Throwawaytheone]

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[RCM88x]

I think this is pretty clearly Curry and don't have to think much about it.

[Lebronnygoat]

steph curry, who got to play in a completely unique motion offense completely and utterly designed to his strengths, with a secondary offensive star who also played in basically the same manner, with 2 super high-IQ forwards who could run the whole show and a coach who knew how to implement it, wasn't maximized? but harden, who basically ran the same offense half the league did/does, is maximized because what, he got pj tucker and trevor ariza on his team?

A lot of this is stuff I've already addressed. I've explained the differences between schemes and style of offense run, and the nuance of individual production, and I've explained the difference between odds of winning being amplified vs individual production being amplified. I know it wasn't a reply to you, but I encourage you to read the following:

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2388385#p113847301
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2388385#p113844556

the 2013 rockets were going to tank before the traded for harden. then harden took a team where parsons, jeremy lin, and omer asik each played 2500 minutes and turned that into a top 6 offense in his first year as a starter.

This isn't really relevant to the discussion.

the 2014 rockets got dwight howard, which seems great until you realize he was less interested in being a great roll guy and more interested in being a bad post up guy. that teams gave over 5000 minutes to terrence jones, omri casspi, francisco garcia, and omer asik. in fact, since they started 90 combined games, asik and howard had to have started at least 8 games together. and that team finished 4th.

Again, this attempt to analyse the 14 Rockets really doesn't prove anything. I could do the same but it's just meaningless. Here, I'll do it for you:
The 14 Warriors had literally 1 clear positive offensive player next to Steph, and that was Klay. After that, we have.... I'm not actually sure, Iggy? Who obviously wasn't providing much in terms of being a roll man or a spacer for Steph, which as I've explained is the most important part to padding stats. You're criticising Howard but at the end of the day, one team had Howard, the other didn't. I can even do the minutes thing, "that team gave over 4500 minutes to Harrison Barnes, Jermaine O'Neal, Jordan Crawford, Steve Blake, and Kent Bazemore..." Not even mentioning how guys like Draymond and Speights weren't positive offensive players in 2014.

that's already 2 more top 6 offenses than steph has led outside of 2015-2019.

This is such a hilarious statement that I don't even know what path I should take in replying to it.

1) How embarrassing must it be that you just exclude a players prime from a comparison and then go "Wow, this other dude never did this accomplishment" LIke at that point stop arguing, for your own dignity.

2) It's pretty ridiculous to harp on top x offenses when, as I previously stated, the teams aren't directly comparable because of their roster construction.

3) Let's make it a more fair comparison, I'll break it down year by year so you can really see how dumb of a point this is. All sourced from pbpstats.

2013:
Rockets: 109.85 ORTG w/ Harden, 108.93 ORTG w/o Harden, +0.92 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 108.41 ORTG w/ Steph, 99.52 ORTG w/o Steph, +8.89 ORTG Swing

2014:
Rockets: 113.25 ORTG w/ Harden, 104.98 ORTG w/o Harden, +8.27 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 112.07 ORTG w/ Curry, 95.6 ORTG w/o Curry, +16.47 ORTG Swing

2015:
Rockets: 110.77 ORTG w/ Harden, 96.51 ORTG w/o Harden, +14.26 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 116.58 ORTG w/ Curry, 101.68 ORTG w/o Curry, +14.9 ORTG Swing

2016:
Rockets: 110.33 ORTG w/ Harden, 102.34 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.99 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 119.07 ORTG w/ Curry, 104.53 ORTG w/o Curry, +14.54 ORTG Swing

2017:
Rockets: 117.05 ORTG w/ Harden, 109.48 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.57 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 118.7 ORTG w/ Curry on and Durant off, 98.67 ORTG w/ Curry off and Durant Off, +20.03 ORTG Swing

2018:
Rockets: 118.23 ORTG w/ Harden, 110.32 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.91 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 120.14 ORTG w/ Curry on and Durant off, 104.88 ORTG w/ Curry off and Durant off, +15.26 ORTG

2019:
Rockets: 118.08 ORTG w/ Harden, 110.25 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.84 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 112.79 ORTG w/ Curry on and Durant off, 102.25 ORTG w/ Curry off and Durant off, +10.54 ORTG Swing

I could also bring up the playoffs where the difference turns from comically large to it being unfathomable that this is even a discussion, but I won't. I excluded Durant so you wouldn't complain and let Harden keep his CP3 minutes, even tho that's unfair.

I also want to remind you that the initial comment I left wasn't about offense vs offense, because that is so laughably dead as a debate by now, it was simply talking about the nature of the offensive styles they run and their supporting cast styles. It wasn't even ever about individual impact or offenses led, yet you're insistent on fighting a losing battle.

the 2015 rockets gave 2800 combined minutes to josh smith and corey brewer who, aside from one magical quarter against the clippers, are amongst the worst volume shooters ever. and 2016 almost doubled brewers minutes and found 1200 more for ty lawson and finished 7th. again, more top 7 finishes than any warriors team outside of the amazing 2015-2019 peak.

Yeah, Josh Smith and Corey Brewer weren't good offensive roleplayers, but again, this blatant cherrypicking is so meaningless. Your entire argument is completely devoid of any attempts to holistically analyse this discussion. Like, imagine I brought up how the 17 Warriors played Zaza, Clark and McCaw a combined 3000 minutes, it means literally nothing. Smith and Brewer were like 5th and 6th in 3PA on that team anyways, any team can bring up that.

even on teams like the 2018 and 2019 rockets, it was more about volume of 3's than quality. yes, it's nice having a lot of 35% 3 point shooters, but these are guys like ariza and tucker who are basically getting 5 wide open 3's a game because the defense knows 35% is the ceiling for those guys. they are great 3 & D guys who, kind of like the warriors, are more skewed to defense and you just hope they help on offense. like how many tuckers and arizas does it take to equal the gravity and spacing of a klay, who can take 10+ very tough 3's a game and hit them at 40%. yes draymond has essentially negative gravity, but he can run the whole offense while guys like ariza and tucker can't do much other than take their open 3's.

Good thing they can do that! Hence why they spaced the floor so well for Harden isolations and PnRs, and got so many assists for Harden, and why Curry never had that chance. Thanks for re-explaining it.

if you look at the 2018-2020 rockets, here is where their 3 pt %'s would rank if you take out harden's own 3's.

2018 - 14th
2019 - 20th
2020 - 26th

What? First of all, what's your source for these stats. I just calculated 2018 on my phone and got 36%, statmuse says 36.7%, both figures would rank 1st in 2018 regardless of Houston themselves. I could be making an error here, so I would appreciate your clarification, maybe I'm misunderstanding.

so almost last by the time we get to 2020, and that's a small ball team that can't rebound. and those teams went 1st, 2nd, 6th in offensive rating.

and then we can look at post hamstring-tear harden. he goes to philly in 2022. in the games he played for them, their offensive rating (i forget the exact number), would have finished 1st in the league. in 2023, philly has their first top 5 offense since barkley was there. and then the clippers this year, with a much diminished kawhi, finish 4th in offense.

They never learn.

2020 Rockets: 115.11 ORTG w/ Harden, 109.66 ORTG w/o Harden, +5.45 ORTG

The post-hamstring point is also strange, he ranged from 2nd to 3rd best offensive player during various times on the Sixers and Clippers, why are we crediting him for the offense?

In 22/23, Harden has anchored a 116.9 ORTG without Embiid, with a +5.66 ORTG swing. Impressive numbers considering these are post-prime numbers, but not touching any offensive great or even his prime self, so why bring it up? There's no point in analysing the post-prime versions of these players.

again, that gives harden more top 5 offenses since he tore his hamstring than steph has managed in the 10 combined years since klay got hurt or before kerr became the coach. basically everywhere harden shows up, no matter the system, no matter the teammates, a top 5 offense emerges. the warriors have only accomplished that during a 5 year period where a) steph was at his absolute peak and b) 3 years had kevin durant. in fact, harden has a top 5 offense under more different coaches (6) than steph has total (5). and no one is going to argue brooks, mchale, rivers, and nash are coaching geniuses.

Think I've properly debunked all of that, from the top 5 offenses, to the 2015-2019 only part, to the Durant part.

now if you want to argue the rockets/nets/clippers had more overall offensive talent over the course of harden's career than the warriors have, maybe. but it wasn't exactly the steve nash suns where the supporting cast without nash literally would have finished 1st in 3's and 1st in 3pt% and the team was beating the other team down the court for dunks with small ball 4's and 5's. harden was routinely taking average-ish offensive casts to great heights. in fact, didn't someone just post some playoff ORAPM stat that had harden 2nd only behind lebron over the last however many years?

I never said it was as good as the Nash suns cast, why strawman me? I'm simply pointing out that
a) The Rockets have put better offensive supporting casts around Harden to maximise his stats than the Warriors have Curry
b) Everything about the Rockets aimed to maximise Harden's stats, whereas the Warriors focused more on winning at the cost of his stats in many regards which I explained in the posts above

As for the RAPM point:
Curry has 4 of the top 5 ORAPM stretches in recent RS history
https://www.nbarapm.com/

In terms of playoff RAPM, while single season sample sizes are awful, using the following source (I genuinely don't know any other proper RAPM websites that list out seasons and ORAPM/DRAPM and in both RS/PS)

2019: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2018: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2017: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2016: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2015: Steph is above in RAPM, Harden is above in ORAPM
2014: Steph is above in RAPM, Harden is above in ORAPM
2013: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM


https://basketball-analytics.gitlab.io/rapm-data/

I don't have a DunksandThrees or Thinking Basketball subscription so I can't use those stats, but the next best is probably LEBRON by BBall Index. They have a playoff all in one metric that let's you directly compare Harden and Curry's 3 year stretches in the playoffs since 2013:

6 of the top 6 stretches in OLEBRON are Curry stretches. Harden has one at 7th.



https://www.bball-index.com/lebron-application/

On Off and advanced numbers in 2024, bru.

[Bad Gatorade]

So I'll preface this by saying that I have Curry ahead of Harden on offence, but not by much.

The main reason I believe this isn't because Curry is higher impact, but rather, I think that Curry has more flexibility by being a very high impact player both on and off ball. I think Harden has a case if we're looking at players in their best scenarios, but Harden is very much a heliocentric playmaker, whose passing is optimised by the additional offensive primacy in a way that it isn't for Curry. Take his playmaking away and force him to move around more off ball, and I still think he'd be very good, but I've got more confidence in Curry.

However, I think the focus on spacing is overblown, because I think that whatever spacing argument that Harden has (which, to be fair, gives him more freedom to operate in isolation) is offset by the playmaking advantage Curry's teammates have.

Some really rough notes from PBPstats from 2015 to 2020:

* Harden's TS% goes from 59.6 with Patrick Beverley to 61.2 without him
* Harden's TS% went from 62.3 with Chris Paul to 62.0 without him
* Harden's TS% went from 61.8 with Russell Westbrook to 64.1 without him

... and that's about it regarding notable playmakers Harden has played with/without.

A few others that may be considered reasonable playmakers (although Harden playing largely on ball negates this anyway):

* Eric Gordon, 62.1 to 62.4
* Jason Terry's corpse, 59.4 to 59.8
* Joe Johnson's corpse, 63.1 to 62.0
* 308 minutes of Lou Williams, 68.3 to 61.2 (if you choose to care about 308 minutes, and if you do, then that's a TS% exceeding what Curry was producing anyway, so it doesn't help the argument!)

... and so on. There was almost nothing in terms of improvement alongside other playmakers, because Harden was producing really efficient offence anyway.

If I pick some of the key playmakers for Curry, and I'll go 2015 to 2022 here:

* Iguodala, 65.2 to 63.1 (already a clearly bigger drop than any key rotation player for Harden)
* Durant, 65.4 to 62.2 if you choose to consider him a key playmaker (although I understand if you don't)
* Draymond Green, 65.6 to 60.7 (which puts him beneath what Harden was normally producing as a scorer and IIRC is a bigger dropoff than Stoudemire had with/without Steve Nash)

Curry was actually slightly under 60 TS% if you remove both Dray and Iguodala, even without considering Klay/Durant/etc.

Even from 2017-2019, if you remove Draymond and Iguodala from the equation:

Steph had 67.74 with both Durant and Klay
60.33 with just one of them
56.82 with neither, although this was only a 72 minute sample and shouldn't really have any bearing

The data is fairly consistent across different time frames and it shows that Curry's efficiency is still very good, even without overwhelming offensive help, and that's part of what makes him great. His efficiency with good playmakers/other great scorers is excellent, and that is arguably the key to what makes him great. Minor explanation - I know that Curry's efficiency sans elite support is also not too dissimilar from Harden, but I'm a bit higher on Harden's self creation/playmaking than I am Curry (ergo, Harden hitting a heliocentric 60 TS% with average support is a bit more impressive to me than Curry hitting 60 TS% with the same).

However, he has also played his prime alongside Dray (and to a lesser extent, Iguodala) and it's naive to think that he isn't getting a huge boost by doing so. Harden benefits by having 3 point shooters (albeit none that are on the level of Klay/Durant as shooters) galore in order to get him free, and I'd honestly love to look into more data on that, but it's a much tougher filter than the others to establish on PBPstats, ergo, I won't really go into it further. His playmaking definitely benefits with this, and his playmaking definitely benefits by having guys like Clint Capela to lob to (although Harden's personal efficiency was 59.9 with Capela and 62.4 without, so that didn't help a crazy amount).

As a Rockets fan, I'd also be hesitant to look at raw on/off when it comes to Harden, as we had scenarios where Harden was "replaced" by consistently decent guys off the bench - Beverley/Gordon tried to fill his function against bench units in 2017 (and did so quite effectively, almost shockingly so), Paul in 2018/19, Westbrook in 2020. Most people know about the latter two, but Beverley/Gordon is something that really goes under the radar - something similar to how Luka has been so impressive offensively for the Mavs, but had the bench units to mitigate the on/off portion.

On the other hand, it feels like Harden's scoring feels relatively inelastic depending on his teammates, because a lot of the On/Off teammate data I shared doesn't seem to have a positive effect on Harden's shooting, and it's something that seems to apply irrespective of which other playmakers are with him, and it loosely seems to apply with other semi-key (let's just say "prevalent") offensive pieces such as Beverley, Gordon, Anderson. Yes, Harden has had a bevvy of decent, willing 3 point scorers around him, but even the better ones didn't impact Harden's own shooting that much. Harden has had decent enough support and coaching to facilitate good team results, but I really don't think that most of these guys are some kind of scarcity that most teams would kill to have. Yes, guys like Capela, Gordon, Anderson etc are useful, but is that really some kind of unfairly good scenario for Harden? I don't think so. The only player that played offence at an all star level was Paul, and one could argue Westbrook, although I'm also a bit lower on his Houston tenure than most. And what happened when they had Paul? They had the best offence in the league in spite of him missing 24 games

If one chooses to talk about spacing, effective scoring teammates and what have you, we should also note that the team structure of having Curry play off ball is much more effective when he has synergistic passers to help him (Dray's effect on Curry's TS% is actually incredible). Harden may have had a lot of adequate floor spacers, but Curry has also had a lot of adequate-to-good passers. Aside from Dray and Iggy, there's also the fact that Bogut, Looney and David Lee were solid passers for bigs (yes, if you can gas guys shooting okay from 3, I'll gas guys that are above average at passing at their positions), Durant is a solid passing SF (and even though I question his vision at times, he is a willing solid passer) and so forth. Harden had a team construction of role players + solid players that fit him, and Curry had a team of role players + solid players that fit him.

This is getting into TL;DR territory, but the crux of my monologue is that both Harden and Curry have been outstanding offensive players, and that whatever boon Harden gets from being on a 3 point heavy team (not even a great one, but simply a willing one) with coaching that facilitated this mindset is probably not all that different from Curry being on a passing heavy team as an off ball guy, with coaching that was also facilitating his off ball play + encouraging him + Klay to bomb 3s at an unprecedented clip before the rest of the league caught up. Both players have shown incredible offensive results with the right lineups. They're both really, really good, and the idea that they should be compared offensively is no insult to either.

[CKRT]

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Could you expand on Curry not needing/benefitting from spacing because he himself is a good spacer? Not sure I follow

I'm not OhayoKD but I took it as Curry is warping defenses in a somewhat unique way because of how anomalous his shooting can be combined with his off ball ability (as long as he has a competent ball handler next to him). Meaning give Curry a guy who can make decent passes, and the defense is going to sell out trying to stop him from getting shots because he's so deadly with open space.

Harden's best attribute is breaking down a defense with the ball in his hands which functions better if you can place shooters around him that make a defense choose between Harden taking shots at the rim / an iso 3 on a switch, the roll man taking shots at the rim, or an open catch and shoot 3. Harden is a deadly efficient ISO player, one of the best to ever do it, but I think most people would prefer Harden taking a difficult ISO shot even if he's ATG at them vs Curry getting an open 3 via off ball movement.

Hopefully this makes sense, I view both of these guys as very close to each other in terms of offensive engines and I am not quite sure how I would rank them in a vacuum but I think I lean more towards Curry but I have a little trouble separating some of the team context with Curry. It's hard for me to fault anyone for choosing one over the other.

[f4p]

steph curry, who got to play in a completely unique motion offense completely and utterly designed to his strengths, with a secondary offensive star who also played in basically the same manner, with 2 super high-IQ forwards who could run the whole show and a coach who knew how to implement it, wasn't maximized? but harden, who basically ran the same offense half the league did/does, is maximized because what, he got pj tucker and trevor ariza on his team?

A lot of this is stuff I've already addressed. I've explained the differences between schemes and style of offense run, and the nuance of individual production, and I've explained the difference between odds of winning being amplified vs individual production being amplified. I know it wasn't a reply to you, but I encourage you to read the following:

viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2388385#p113847301
viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2388385#p113844556

the 2013 rockets were going to tank before the traded for harden. then harden took a team where parsons, jeremy lin, and omer asik each played 2500 minutes and turned that into a top 6 offense in his first year as a starter.

This isn't really relevant to the discussion.

it's relevant that harden with suboptimal teammates produced a better offense than curry with suboptimal teammates.

the 2014 rockets got dwight howard, which seems great until you realize he was less interested in being a great roll guy and more interested in being a bad post up guy. that teams gave over 5000 minutes to terrence jones, omri casspi, francisco garcia, and omer asik. in fact, since they started 90 combined games, asik and howard had to have started at least 8 games together. and that team finished 4th.

Again, this attempt to analyse the 14 Rockets really doesn't prove anything. I could do the same but it's just meaningless. Here, I'll do it for you:
The 14 Warriors had literally 1 clear positive offensive player next to Steph, and that was Klay. After that, we have.... I'm not actually sure, Iggy? Who obviously wasn't providing much in terms of being a roll man or a spacer for Steph, which as I've explained is the most important part to padding stats. You're criticising Howard but at the end of the day, one team had Howard, the other didn't. I can even do the minutes thing, "that team gave over 4500 minutes to Harrison Barnes, Jermaine O'Neal, Jordan Crawford, Steve Blake, and Kent Bazemore..." Not even mentioning how guys like Draymond and Speights weren't positive offensive players in 2014.

okay? and the 2014 warriors weren't even top 10 and the rockets were #4. if the argument is harden has better teammates, then it has to be acknowledged when harden's teams are ranking higher with those theoretically better teammates. it's not like steph had the same team offensive results.

that's already 2 more top 6 offenses than steph has led outside of 2015-2019.

This is such a hilarious statement that I don't even know what path I should take in replying to it.

1) How embarrassing must it be that you just exclude a players prime from a comparison and then go "Wow, this other dude never did this accomplishment" LIke at that point stop arguing, for your own dignity.

i assumed the intent was clear. steph has produced 5 top level team offenses. that is very good. but they all came in one 5 year stretch of innovative, ahead of its time coaching and his best teammates and 3 years of kevin durant. since the "harden maximized" argument would seemingly have to focus on the d'antoni years with more 3 point shooting and cp3 (it certainly can't be focusing on the mchale years), the point seemed clear that i was showing that even in the less maximized years, harden was churning out top 5 (okay, sometimes 6th) ranked offenses when steph has never done that outside of one brilliant 5 year stretch.

2) It's pretty ridiculous to harp on top x offenses when, as I previously stated, the teams aren't directly comparable because of their roster construction.

and again, the results aren't comparable either. "steph had worse teammates and produced an offense ranked 8 or 10 spots lower" would seemingly line up with them being very similar levels of offensive players.

[3) Let's make it a more fair comparison, I'll break it down year by year so you can really see how dumb of a point this is. All sourced from pbpstats.

2013:
Rockets: 109.85 ORTG w/ Harden, 108.93 ORTG w/o Harden, +0.92 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 108.41 ORTG w/ Steph, 99.52 ORTG w/o Steph, +8.89 ORTG Swing

2014:
Rockets: 113.25 ORTG w/ Harden, 104.98 ORTG w/o Harden, +8.27 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 112.07 ORTG w/ Curry, 95.6 ORTG w/o Curry, +16.47 ORTG Swing

2015:
Rockets: 110.77 ORTG w/ Harden, 96.51 ORTG w/o Harden, +14.26 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 116.58 ORTG w/ Curry, 101.68 ORTG w/o Curry, +14.9 ORTG Swing

2016:
Rockets: 110.33 ORTG w/ Harden, 102.34 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.99 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 119.07 ORTG w/ Curry, 104.53 ORTG w/o Curry, +14.54 ORTG Swing

2017:
Rockets: 117.05 ORTG w/ Harden, 109.48 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.57 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 118.7 ORTG w/ Curry on and Durant off, 98.67 ORTG w/ Curry off and Durant Off, +20.03 ORTG Swing

2018:
Rockets: 118.23 ORTG w/ Harden, 110.32 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.91 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 120.14 ORTG w/ Curry on and Durant off, 104.88 ORTG w/ Curry off and Durant off, +15.26 ORTG

2019:
Rockets: 118.08 ORTG w/ Harden, 110.25 ORTG w/o Harden, +7.84 ORTG Swing
Warriors: 112.79 ORTG w/ Curry on and Durant off, 102.25 ORTG w/ Curry off and Durant off, +10.54 ORTG Swing

wow, i'm sure the warriors don't tend to take steph out with other teammates like say draymond that maximizes both of their on/offs and renders the other lineups much weaker. and again, the offense being completely designed for steph probably makes it more difficult for the bench than harden's league-standard offenses. based on these numbers, it's amazing the warriors could cruise to a 9-3 playoff record without steph during those years (14-4 including partially missed games), since the offense was apparently completely helpless without him.

I could also bring up the playoffs where the difference turns from comically large to it being unfathomable that this is even a discussion, but I won't.

then why do they end up with basically the same playoff on/off and overall RAPM? is harden just that much better at defense than steph? he'd seemingly need to be the DPOY to make up the difference you are proposing.

I excluded Durant so you wouldn't complain and let Harden keep his CP3 minutes, even tho that's unfair.

I also want to remind you that the initial comment I left wasn't about offense vs offense, because that is so laughably dead as a debate by now, it was simply talking about the nature of the offensive styles they run and their supporting cast styles. It wasn't even ever about individual impact or offenses led, yet you're insistent on fighting a losing battle.

and that ignored that steph had nearly perfectly fitting teammates for that style, because even if some weren't great for spacing, they were very good at other things in that style.

Yeah, Josh Smith and Corey Brewer weren't good offensive roleplayers, but again, this blatant cherrypicking is so meaningless. Your entire argument is completely devoid of any attempts to holistically analyse this discussion. Like, imagine I brought up how the 17 Warriors played Zaza, Clark and McCaw a combined 3000 minutes, it means literally nothing. Smith and Brewer were like 5th and 6th in 3PA on that team anyways, any team can bring up that.



Good thing they can do that! Hence why they spaced the floor so well for Harden isolations and PnRs, and got so many assists for Harden, and why Curry never had that chance. Thanks for re-explaining it.



What? First of all, what's your source for these stats. I just calculated 2018 on my phone and got 36%, statmuse says 36.7%, both figures would rank 1st in 2018 regardless of Houston themselves. I could be making an error here, so I would appreciate your clarification, maybe I'm misunderstanding.

you might have looked at something wrong. i got 36.1% for the 3's minus harden so we have the same number. 14th in the league was 36.2%, but that includes the rockets at 13th. so removing them and putting in the rockets without harden puts them in 14th place in the league. in makes, they would be 2nd at 12.1.

They never learn.

2020 Rockets: 115.11 ORTG w/ Harden, 109.66 ORTG w/o Harden, +5.45 ORTG

The post-hamstring point is also strange, he ranged from 2nd to 3rd best offensive player during various times on the Sixers and Clippers, why are we crediting him for the offense?

why wouldn't we credit him? he was the point guard, even getting an assist title (or was it 2nd?) one year. it's not like he was a role player. he goes to philly and they immediately start producing like a #1 offense in 2022 and are top 5 with him running the show in 2023. sure, embiid was the mvp, but he also hadn't had a top 5 offense before either. and the clippers were 16th (though with fewer george/leonard games) in 2023, so this was a significant jump. and the nets were #1 in 2021 with the big 3 only playing 8 games together and were 29-7 in harden's games. in other words, there doesn't seem to be a necessary fit for harden. he seems to fit wherever.

In 22/23, Harden has anchored a 116.9 ORTG without Embiid, with a +5.66 ORTG swing. Impressive numbers considering these are post-prime numbers, but not touching any offensive great or even his prime self, so why bring it up? There's no point in analysing the post-prime versions of these players.

to point out that even as a shadow of himself, he can facilitate high level offenses whatever the situation. that would theoretically boost the perception of his prime level of offense.

Think I've properly debunked all of that, from the top 5 offenses, to the 2015-2019 only part, to the Durant part.

you've said you think steph had worse offensive teammates. i'm simply pointing out it also resulted in many fewer top 5/6 offenses. it's not a "more with less" thing.

I never said it was as good as the Nash suns cast, why strawman me? I'm simply pointing out that
a) The Rockets have put better offensive supporting casts around Harden to maximise his stats than the Warriors have Curry
b) Everything about the Rockets aimed to maximise Harden's stats, whereas the Warriors focused more on winning at the cost of his stats in many regards which I explained in the posts above

As for the RAPM point:
Curry has 4 of the top 5 ORAPM stretches in recent RS history
https://www.nbarapm.com/

In terms of playoff RAPM, while single season sample sizes are awful, using the following source (I genuinely don't know any other proper RAPM websites that list out seasons and ORAPM/DRAPM and in both RS/PS)

2019: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2018: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2017: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2016: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM
2015: Steph is above in RAPM, Harden is above in ORAPM
2014: Steph is above in RAPM, Harden is above in ORAPM
2013: Steph is above in RAPM and ORAPM


https://basketball-analytics.gitlab.io/rapm-data/

I don't have a DunksandThrees or Thinking Basketball subscription so I can't use those stats, but the next best is probably LEBRON by BBall Index. They have a playoff all in one metric that let's you directly compare Harden and Curry's 3 year stretches in the playoffs since 2013:

6 of the top 6 stretches in OLEBRON are Curry stretches. Harden has one at 7th.



https://www.bball-index.com/lebron-application/

i'm not super familiar with all of the available impact metrics as well. i just know someone posted a postseason metric that had harden only behind lebron.

[parsnips33]

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Could you expand on Curry not needing/benefitting from spacing because he himself is a good spacer? Not sure I follow

I'm not OhayoKD but I took it as Curry is warping defenses in a somewhat unique way because of how anomalous his shooting can be combined with his off ball ability (as long as he has a competent ball handler next to him). Meaning give Curry a guy who can make decent passes, and the defense is going to sell out trying to stop him from getting shots because he's so deadly with open space.

Harden's best attribute is breaking down a defense with the ball in his hands which functions better if you can place shooters around him that make a defense choose between Harden taking shots at the rim / an iso 3 on a switch, the roll man taking shots at the rim, or an open catch and shoot 3. Harden is a deadly efficient ISO player, one of the best to ever do it, but I think most people would prefer Harden taking a difficult ISO shot even if he's ATG at them vs Curry getting an open 3 via off ball movement.

Hopefully this makes sense, I view both of these guys as very close to each other in terms of offensive engines and I am not quite sure how I would rank them in a vacuum but I think I lean more towards Curry but I have a little trouble separating some of the team context with Curry. It's hard for me to fault anyone for choosing one over the other.

Thanks for the response, and I think this makes a kind of sense. Of course, I think it also falls into one of the traps with Steph which is reducing his role to what makes him unique, namely the ridiculous off-ball game. In Kerr's system, Steph still spends a lot of time with the ball in his hand and a lot of late game offense tends to start with the Steph/Draymond PNR. If this PNR game were optimized with more catch&shoot oriented roleplayers, I think it's very possible that the team level offensive numbers might look more impressive, if only in the regular season. I've long held that Kerr's offense/GSW personnel have capped the overall offensive ceiling below a comparable (I hate this word but I'm using it ) heliocentric offense, while potentially increasing the resilience/raising the floor of the offense in a playoff setting. I'm sure somebody will now post some statistics that make my above assertion look completely moronic, but I've never been good at math

Just read BadGatorade post above and he made the flexibility point which I think is so key and can get lost in the fray

[OhayoKD]

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Could you expand on Curry not needing/benefitting from spacing because he himself is a good spacer? Not sure I follow

Impact is maximised by scarcity. A player who spaces is a bunch is more valuable to a team bereft of spacing.

[Throwawaytheone]

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[SpreeS]

Its help a lot that they both draft in same year

Curry RS career ortg 115.75 -> PS career ortg 115.53
Harden RS career ortg 115.10 -> PS career ortg 112.65

10 Monta/Maggette vs Durant/Westbrook
11 Monta/Lee vs Durant/Westbrook
12 Monta/Lee vs Durant/Westbrook
13 Lee/Klay vs Parson/Lin
14 Lee/Klay vs Howard/Parson
15 Klay/Green vs Howard/Ariza
16 Klay/Green vs Howard/Ariza
17 Durant/Klay vs Gordon/Lou
18 Durant/Klay vs Paul/Gordon
19 Durant/Klay vs Paul/Gordon
20 Green/Dlo vs Westbrook/Gordon
21 Green/Wiggs vs Durant/Irving
22 Green/Wiggs vs Embiid Maxey
23 Green/Klay vs Embiid/Maxey
24 Green/Klay vs Kawhi/George

Looking at last RealGM TOP100 how people elavuet these players

Harden

4 season with Durant TOP30
2 season with Durant TOP30
1 season with Kawhi TOP40
4 season with Westbrook TOP50
3 season with Howard TOP50
2 season with Embiid TOP60
1 seson with George TOP80
+ Irving/Maxey/Gordon

Curry

3 season with Durant TOP30
10 season with Green TOP60
+ Klay/Lee/Wiggs/Monta

Only Green and Howard are more about defence, all other players are alltime great at offence. Quite interesting to look at the last 4 yeras

Curry 2021-2024 RS ortg 117.72 -> PS ortg 117.22 (12570min)
Harden 2021-2024 ortg 120.29 -> PS ortg 114.89 (1470min)

Difference is +2.57 to Harden side in RS and +2.33 to Curry in PS. And here is the list who they played

Wiggs TS+ 99 Oubre TS+ 93 Poole TS+ 102
Wiggs TS+ 99 Poole TS+ 106 Klay TS+ 97
Wiggs TS+ 97 Poole TS+ 99 Klay TS+ 99
Wiggs TS+ 94 Klay TS+ 99 Kuminga TS+ 103

Durant TS+ 117 Irving TS+ 107 Harris TS+ 116
Embiid TS+ 109 Maxey TS+ 105 T.Harris TS+ 100
Embiid TS+ 113 Maxey TS+ 104 T.Harris TS+ 103
Kawhi TS+ 108 George TS+ 106 Powell TS+ 108

Also Green/Looney could be the worst scoring big duo in whole NBA. Curry with all these circumstances doesnt give a s.... and hold team offence on respectable level even in PO. Looking at Harden allstar teams and his 120.29 ortg - yea its great, but Curry with 117.72 ortg is more like ALLTIME achievement compared with Harden. And I dont want to start about PO.

[Lebronnygoat]

Yk just make points about OKC Harden and Harden’s last few years where he’s not close to who he used to be. Makes sense.

[OhayoKD]

As for the fit, Harden is one of the most malleable players in history, I think everyone recognizes that. However, the "fit" criticism is with regards to his typical heliocentric style we saw in 2020-2022, that 36 PPG volume monster. People argue that playing like that isn't conducive to winning rings, not Harden himself. That's pretty accurate considering he toned his offense down massively in 2021 and had incredible results.

People argue that...badly.

I would say being on pace to beat a 3-superstar team (with two helios) is quite the incredible result.

[Throwawaytheone]

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[f4p]

As for the fit, Harden is one of the most malleable players in history, I think everyone recognizes that. However, the "fit" criticism is with regards to his typical heliocentric style we saw in 2020-2022, that 36 PPG volume monster. People argue that playing like that isn't conducive to winning rings, not Harden himself. That's pretty accurate considering he toned his offense down massively in 2021 and had incredible results.

People argue that...badly.

I would say being on pace to beat a 3-superstar team (with two helios) is quite the incredible result.

yeah, there is no way to argue 36 ppg harden wasn't good for his team. the idea he needed to tone it down like the nets, ignoring KD and kyrie, is just not right. the 2019 rockets started the season 11-14, after having jettisoned their 5th, 7th, and 8th best players from the previous season (ariza, mbah-a-moute, and anderson) for luxury tax savings ( a bold strategy, cotton), and chris paul coming back from his hamstring injury having the worst season of his career. harden then went on his tear, and the rockets finished 42-15, a 60 win pace. they then beat a +5.3 SRS jazz team by +9.3 in the 1st round (a better PSRS than either of their 2 series the year before) and then played a KD warriors team that was coming off of 9 straight series of averaging about +13 PSRS, and they played them within 2 nRTG in a 6 game series where every game was decided by 6 points or less.

and again, this is with chris paul still being terrible and a bench that was basically replacement level. and if you think that's hyperbole, the rockets 8th and 9th men (nene and green) never played in the nba again, their 7th man (shumpert), played 81 more minutes in his career, and their 6th man (rivers) played a few more years and had negative combined win shares after that. in other words, me, you and Ohayo had more career win shares after 2019 than the rockets bench. that's an unbelievably good result and not at all indicative of harden needing to tone it down.

[f4p]

People argue that...badly.

I would say being on pace to beat a 3-superstar team (with two helios) is quite the incredible result.

I just realized I had a typo there, was meant to be 2018-2020, not 2020-2022. Doesn't really change anything regardless since I think everyone understood the point.

If you mean the 2018 WCF, weren't the Rockets offense was like around -3 rORTG or something? -2.8 if my memory serves me well.

-2.7 from bbref. but i guess that depends on what you want to consider. in the first 5 games, it was something more like 0. but of course, we're comparing to the warriors regular season defense, where a team averaging +13 PSRS put up a regular season +5.8 SRS because they didn't try. in their 3 series not against the rockets, the warriors had a -5.3 rDrtg, 1st in the playoffs (and would have been 1st in the regular season). compared to that much much better number, the rockets were probably more like +4.7 in the 1st 5 games, so barely off their regular season +6.1, including the fact that guys like anderson and green, all offense/no defense guys were barely getting minutes because you have to do everything you can to stop the warriors. this also include about 10 minutes of garbage time at the ends of games 2 and 3 where the rockets scored a combined 15 points after the warriors starters came out (9 minutes if you start from when the rockets starters came out). note that this is a series where steph, KD, harden, and cp3 all saw their TS%'s drop big time from the regular season so it wasn't some offensive juggernaut series.

[Throwawaytheone]

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