Offensively - Curry '21 or Jokic '22

[falcolombardi]

Jokics offense is far more translatable to playoffs and I dont see him losing 2 straight playin games which were basically elimination games at least against a young Grizz team at home

Curry scored 37 & 39 points with a positive +/- in both games against teams whose stars have much stronger supporting casts than he did. You're obviously not remembering how those games actually went when looking to reference the whole "Curry doesn't translate to the playoffs" cliche.

I can acknowledge that Curry has had some inconsistency in the playoffs - as well as the regular season - but it's important not to apply that notion of inconsistency as a reason to assume others would have done better than him in any given playoff loss. Partially because it just plain makes you look silly in a case like this, and partially because Curry has done more playoff winning than anyone else in the league over the past 7 years.

As I say all of that: Jokic's game absolutely has more of a "he can reach for it any time he wants" component to it than Curry, and I don't think it's all crazy to rank Jokic's offense right now over anyone in basketball history. There is no debate that Jokic's name should be laughed out of.

why does overall team succes matter in a offensive discussion?

any all time great offensive player is goat level when they are hot. is not exactly unique to curry so i dont see why it matters

curry offensive results really dont fit a goat offensive player profile tbh, the way nash, lebron, magic, jordan do so i dont get why he is being talked about as being in the inside track for offensive goatness

when a comtemporary peer (lebron)achieved equal/better offensive ceiling raising results with kyrie than curry did with dursnt (imagine a World where curry arguably has better offenses playing with kyrie than lebron with kd, the debate would have got closed in curry favor by everyone) and his floor raising is clearly worse

or when nash achieved greater offensive heifhts with stoudamire instead of durant

he doesnt have the highest ceiling results and his floor raising is strong but not to all time levels as seen last 2 seasons either. other guys seem to have more impressive results both floor and ceiling raising a offense than him (jordan, lebron, magic, nash)

[Doctor MJ]

Jokics offense is far more translatable to playoffs and I dont see him losing 2 straight playin games which were basically elimination games at least against a young Grizz team at home

Curry scored 37 & 39 points with a positive +/- in both games against teams whose stars have much stronger supporting casts than he did. You're obviously not remembering how those games actually went when looking to reference the whole "Curry doesn't translate to the playoffs" cliche.

I can acknowledge that Curry has had some inconsistency in the playoffs - as well as the regular season - but it's important not to apply that notion of inconsistency as a reason to assume others would have done better than him in any given playoff loss. Partially because it just plain makes you look silly in a case like this, and partially because Curry has done more playoff winning than anyone else in the league over the past 7 years.

As I say all of that: Jokic's game absolutely has more of a "he can reach for it any time he wants" component to it than Curry, and I don't think it's all crazy to rank Jokic's offense right now over anyone in basketball history. There is no debate that Jokic's name should be laughed out of.

why does overall team succes matter in a offensive discussion?

any all time great offensive player is goat level when they are hot. is not exactly unique to curry so i dont see why it matters

curry offensive results really dont fit a goat offensive player profile tbh, the way nash, lebron, magic, jordan do so i dont get why he is being talked about as being in the inside track for offensive goatness

when a comtemporary peer (lebron)achieved equal/better offensive ceiling raising results with kyrie than curry did with dursnt (imagine a World where curry arguably has better offenses playing with kyrie than lebron with kd, the debate would have got closed in curry favor by everyone) and his floor raising is clearly worse

or when nash achieved greater offensive heifhts with stoudamire instead of durant

he doesnt have the highest ceiling results and his floor raising is strong but not to all time levels as seen last 2 seasons either. other guys seem to have more impressive results both floor and ceiling raising a offense than him (jordan, lebron, magic, nash)

Well let me first point out that I'm responding to someone who dismissed Curry on the basis of his team losing 2 basketball games, so I'm not exactly arguing from the perspective that team success is the only thing that matters.

But I bring up what I do, not just because I thought it served as a resonant rebuttal, but because I think it's really astonishing to me the way people perceive a guy as weak in the playoffs when they've seen so little failure from him there.

I'm a broken record on this so forgive me. As I see it, many, many people seem to have created their story of "Curry in the playoffs" primarily out of what was seen in the 2016 & 2017 finals, and in doing so they tend to act as if 2017 & 2018 represent literally failures for Curry. Then the lessons of the 2019 playoffs with Curry's play there get brushed aside, as well as any regular season success before or after and we fast forward to the present.

I find it to be one of the most astonishing things I've witness evolve in my time as a hard core basketball-type in no small part because - while it's a trend that's more general than RealGM - I've specifically watched the PC Board shift from being way higher on Curry than the mainstream to lower than the mainstream on him, all while I have stayed in a pretty similar place. Doesn't mean I'm write - could be argued that I'm the one not adapting properly - but the shift is an objectively real thing, and it's not what I expected.

Re: any all time great offensive player is goat level when they are hot. Um, so I guess I actually have to bring up 2015-16 here to remind people? For those who don't remember, while it may now just look like a reason to call Curry a playoff choker, at the time his play in the regular season was an incredibly big deal.

Re: ...hot. So I realize I was using the term "streakiness", and others may object or interpret my wording differently than I intended. What I see with Curry is that his reliance on extreme shooting ability leads toward a need to "groove". When he gets into his groove - which he can stay in for many months at a time - he's like nothing we've ever seen before. When he falls out, he's not.

So much of why people get down on Curry, I believe, is that they see this need to groove as a massive handicap. Jokic, for example, is seen as being "inevitable" in the sense that he can do his thing 365 days a year. For myself, it's not so much that I don't see it as a handicap, as that I think people tend to overrate the cost of it.

In the end, that cost in 2015-16 was that his team only won 3 playoff series instead of 4 while playing against LeBron at his best while also having Kyrie at his best. It's a negative compared to winning out certainly, but is it a negative that should leave people assuming that the Warriors losing 2 play-in games was due to Curry not being able to do his thing in the playoffs?

Obviously not given that's literally not what happened. Yet here we are, with smart, knowledgeable people propagating superficial tropes that have their roots in very little.

Re: curry offensive results really dont fit a goat offensive player profile tbh, the way nash, lebron, magic, jordan do so i dont get why he is being talked about as being in the inside track for offensive goatness. You assert this so definitively, but it's not at all so clear cut.

If you do a search for players with the best career playoff ORtg above a certain threshold of minutes, who do I get? Curry.

That's not "proof" that Curry is the offensive GOAT of course, but it's certainly evidence in that direction. You're clearly thinking of other evidence in the other direction, and I think it's good for you to expound on it. Speaking for myself, having spent a lot of time with this data, I'm higher on him than most folks here.

As for the other guys you mention, I'm certainly not going to claim that those guys aren't in the Offensive GOAT conversation, but not that Curry plays fundamentally different from them due to his extreme shooting, which is where the variability in his game comes from.

As such, while again I get the idea that that variability might may people lower on Curry, it's weird to me that when that variability is brought up to remind of the high peaks, it doesn't even seem like people remember those peaks.

Re: not highest ceiling raiser. Huh? In the 2017 playoffs, Curry had an on-court ORtg of 126.0.

Re: Curry's floor raising worse. I mean, how about taking a team many talked about as a .500 team from the beginning of this season to the point where they might win 60 despite having injury issues from his most valuable teammates? If you don't see that as floor raising, why not?

Re: last 2 seasons. Hmm, okay:

First, let's address the amazingly out-sided impact that the 2019-20 season had on Curry's reputation.

He played 5 games that year, less than 30 MPG, and I will state unequivocably:

I think those 5 games severely damaged his Top 100 showing at the end of that season.
And I think that's comical.

If you go look at Curry's OnCourt & On/Off columns in the bkref table, what you'll see is one of the most extreme green tables you'll ever see, with that '19-20 season as the massive outlier. Again based on just 5 games while most all the other seasons are normal season-length data, clearly the least significant year if you're looking to understand Curry's career...and yet it looms large in the mind of those skeptical of Curry.

I think it was clearly a case of people looking to see what Curry could do without Durant - as if they hadn't already seen years of that - and then ending the analysis with the injury.

I remember discussions afterward where people thought I was delusional for saying Curry's prime isn't necessarily over. People had decided, and then they stayed decided.

As for '20-21, it blows my mind the way this is somehow getting held against Curry when the reality is that Curry got massive praise for his performance that year, and that year was literally LAST year. He finished 3rd in the MVP, and did so despite the Warrior year fitting clearly into two categories that resulted in completely different abilities to impact:

The first was the Oubre-Wiseman period where the goal was not to be the best team possible, but to give these guys experience playing the Warrior way. The second was the period after those guys went down and Curry caught fire and won back-to-back Player of the Months to end the season.

To me this is where the results of the play-in really are twisting people's perspective. I honestly think it would be much different if they'd just gotten to a playoff series and performed decently, but instead, despite Curry performing unimpeachably well in those games, now we have the whole "couldn't even get his team into the playoffs".

Curry had a positive +/- in 43 out of 65 games (this includes play-ins) that season, while Giannis did it in 41 out of 61 playing less MPG, yet what people are now thinking is "Giannis led his team to a title while Curry couldn't even get his team to the playoffs." Sigh.

[falcolombardi]

i am not holding 2021 against curry nor saying he is a bad playoffs performer (in my comment i said his floor raising was great but not all time great compared to the likes of 2009 lebron or current jokic)

what i mean is that curry results dont seem better to me (whether is the "ceiling raising" kind or the "floor raising kind) than other players that dont seem to gain as much reaction as offensove goat candidates

that lebron/kyrie/love created comparable (arguably better since they were incredible twice-16/17- on the playoffs and not only once -17-) offense to curry/durant/klay seems like such a big deal to me that i am surprised is not brought up more in offensive comparisions between lebron and curry as "ceiling raiser"

to say nothingh of the succes of jordan magic and nash teams offensively even when compared to curry/dursnt teams

curry seems to be auto picked as a higher ceiling offensove player than other guys based on theory even when results say the opposite

and that the warriors didnt inprove as much as people thought with dursnt is not held against him as much as you would expect with other players

warriors offense underperformed in 3 of five years playoffs15/16/18 and only was truly great in 17

i still have curry on the border of offensive goatness top 5 so i am not saying he is a scrub, just how odd i find everyone takes it for granted he is a better offensive player at his best than guys with arguably better evidence of their offensive results

what makes nash a worse candidate for offensive goat than curry? he rarely receives zero discussion when if anythingh results say it should be the other way around

hell, for full controversy i dont see how curry is that much better than chris Paul results wise (team offense, boxscore, impact métrics) other than health

[Statlanta]

I'd take Curry, Jokic's real advantage is defensively. It's just hard to compete with guards with their insane mobility on offense.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Curry scored 37 & 39 points with a positive +/- in both games against teams whose stars have much stronger supporting casts than he did. You're obviously not remembering how those games actually went when looking to reference the whole "Curry doesn't translate to the playoffs" cliche.

I can acknowledge that Curry has had some inconsistency in the playoffs - as well as the regular season - but it's important not to apply that notion of inconsistency as a reason to assume others would have done better than him in any given playoff loss. Partially because it just plain makes you look silly in a case like this, and partially because Curry has done more playoff winning than anyone else in the league over the past 7 years.

As I say all of that: Jokic's game absolutely has more of a "he can reach for it any time he wants" component to it than Curry, and I don't think it's all crazy to rank Jokic's offense right now over anyone in basketball history. There is no debate that Jokic's name should be laughed out of.

why does overall team succes matter in a offensive discussion?

any all time great offensive player is goat level when they are hot. is not exactly unique to curry so i dont see why it matters

curry offensive results really dont fit a goat offensive player profile tbh, the way nash, lebron, magic, jordan do so i dont get why he is being talked about as being in the inside track for offensive goatness

when a comtemporary peer (lebron)achieved equal/better offensive ceiling raising results with kyrie than curry did with dursnt (imagine a World where curry arguably has better offenses playing with kyrie than lebron with kd, the debate would have got closed in curry favor by everyone) and his floor raising is clearly worse

or when nash achieved greater offensive heifhts with stoudamire instead of durant

he doesnt have the highest ceiling results and his floor raising is strong but not to all time levels as seen last 2 seasons either. other guys seem to have more impressive results both floor and ceiling raising a offense than him (jordan, lebron, magic, nash)

Well let me first point out that I'm responding to someone who dismissed Curry on the basis of his team losing 2 basketball games, so I'm not exactly arguing from the perspective that team success is the only thing that matters.

But I bring up what I do, not just because I thought it served as a resonant rebuttal, but because I think it's really astonishing to me the way people perceive a guy as weak in the playoffs when they've seen so little failure from him there.

I'm a broken record on this so forgive me. As I see it, many, many people seem to have created their story of "Curry in the playoffs" primarily out of what was seen in the 2016 & 2017 finals, and in doing so they tend to act as if 2017 & 2018 represent literally failures for Curry. Then the lessons of the 2019 playoffs with Curry's play there get brushed aside, as well as any regular season success before or after and we fast forward to the present.

I find it to be one of the most astonishing things I've witness evolve in my time as a hard core basketball-type in no small part because - while it's a trend that's more general than RealGM - I've specifically watched the PC Board shift from being way higher on Curry than the mainstream to lower than the mainstream on him, all while I have stayed in a pretty similar place. Doesn't mean I'm write - could be argued that I'm the one not adapting properly - but the shift is an objectively real thing, and it's not what I expected.

Re: any all time great offensive player is goat level when they are hot. Um, so I guess I actually have to bring up 2015-16 here to remind people? For those who don't remember, while it may now just look like a reason to call Curry a playoff choker, at the time his play in the regular season was an incredibly big deal.

Re: ...hot. So I realize I was using the term "streakiness", and others may object or interpret my wording differently than I intended. What I see with Curry is that his reliance on extreme shooting ability leads toward a need to "groove". When he gets into his groove - which he can stay in for many months at a time - he's like nothing we've ever seen before. When he falls out, he's not.

So much of why people get down on Curry, I believe, is that they see this need to groove as a massive handicap. Jokic, for example, is seen as being "inevitable" in the sense that he can do his thing 365 days a year. For myself, it's not so much that I don't see it as a handicap, as that I think people tend to overrate the cost of it.

In the end, that cost in 2015-16 was that his team only won 3 playoff series instead of 4 while playing against LeBron at his best while also having Kyrie at his best. It's a negative compared to winning out certainly, but is it a negative that should leave people assuming that the Warriors losing 2 play-in games was due to Curry not being able to do his thing in the playoffs?

Obviously not given that's literally not what happened. Yet here we are, with smart, knowledgeable people propagating superficial tropes that have their roots in very little.

Re: curry offensive results really dont fit a goat offensive player profile tbh, the way nash, lebron, magic, jordan do so i dont get why he is being talked about as being in the inside track for offensive goatness. You assert this so definitively, but it's not at all so clear cut.

If you do a search for players with the best career playoff ORtg above a certain threshold of minutes, who do I get? Curry.

That's not "proof" that Curry is the offensive GOAT of course, but it's certainly evidence in that direction. You're clearly thinking of other evidence in the other direction, and I think it's good for you to expound on it. Speaking for myself, having spent a lot of time with this data, I'm higher on him than most folks here.

As for the other guys you mention, I'm certainly not going to claim that those guys aren't in the Offensive GOAT conversation, but not that Curry plays fundamentally different from them due to his extreme shooting, which is where the variability in his game comes from.

As such, while again I get the idea that that variability might may people lower on Curry, it's weird to me that when that variability is brought up to remind of the high peaks, it doesn't even seem like people remember those peaks.

Re: not highest ceiling raiser. Huh? In the 2017 playoffs, Curry had an on-court ORtg of 126.0.

Re: Curry's floor raising worse. I mean, how about taking a team many talked about as a .500 team from the beginning of this season to the point where they might win 60 despite having injury issues from his most valuable teammates? If you don't see that as floor raising, why not?

Re: last 2 seasons. Hmm, okay:

First, let's address the amazingly out-sided impact that the 2019-20 season had on Curry's reputation.

He played 5 games that year, less than 30 MPG, and I will state unequivocably:

I think those 5 games severely damaged his Top 100 showing at the end of that season.
And I think that's comical.

If you go look at Curry's OnCourt & On/Off columns in the bkref table, what you'll see is one of the most extreme green tables you'll ever see, with that '19-20 season as the massive outlier. Again based on just 5 games while most all the other seasons are normal season-length data, clearly the least significant year if you're looking to understand Curry's career...and yet it looms large in the mind of those skeptical of Curry.

I think it was clearly a case of people looking to see what Curry could do without Durant - as if they hadn't already seen years of that - and then ending the analysis with the injury.

I remember discussions afterward where people thought I was delusional for saying Curry's prime isn't necessarily over. People had decided, and then they stayed decided.

As for '20-21, it blows my mind the way this is somehow getting held against Curry when the reality is that Curry got massive praise for his performance that year, and that year was literally LAST year. He finished 3rd in the MVP, and did so despite the Warrior year fitting clearly into two categories that resulted in completely different abilities to impact:

The first was the Oubre-Wiseman period where the goal was not to be the best team possible, but to give these guys experience playing the Warrior way. The second was the period after those guys went down and Curry caught fire and won back-to-back Player of the Months to end the season.

To me this is where the results of the play-in really are twisting people's perspective. I honestly think it would be much different if they'd just gotten to a playoff series and performed decently, but instead, despite Curry performing unimpeachably well in those games, now we have the whole "couldn't even get his team into the playoffs".

Curry had a positive +/- in 43 out of 65 games (this includes play-ins) that season, while Giannis did it in 41 out of 61 playing less MPG, yet what people are now thinking is "Giannis led his team to a title while Curry couldn't even get his team to the playoffs." Sigh.

On the offensive rating portion, I thought I should mention that

in terms of Top 3-year team playoff offenses by rORTG (final column), some notable names:

Kevin Love 2015-17 11.6
Steve Nash 2003-05 11.0
Amare Stoudemire 2005-08 10.9
Kyrie Irving 2015-17 10.2
Charles Barkley 1995-97 9.5
LeBron James 2015-17 9.4
...
Kevin Durant 2017-19 8.5
...
Stephen Curry 2017-19 7.5

I do agree that on a plus-minus basis 2017 PS Steph offensively looks pretty incredible and has a basis for GOAT on that. Opinions of course will vary, but yeah I think 2017 when Steph was health is the probably the gold standard you point to when you speak of the upside capabilities of Steph.

[feyki]

Dead man Curry is at historic level offensive impact, Doncic is the only names I would take him above Curry, offensively. Jokic also close, though.

[Doctor MJ]

why does overall team succes matter in a offensive discussion?

any all time great offensive player is goat level when they are hot. is not exactly unique to curry so i dont see why it matters

curry offensive results really dont fit a goat offensive player profile tbh, the way nash, lebron, magic, jordan do so i dont get why he is being talked about as being in the inside track for offensive goatness

when a comtemporary peer (lebron)achieved equal/better offensive ceiling raising results with kyrie than curry did with dursnt (imagine a World where curry arguably has better offenses playing with kyrie than lebron with kd, the debate would have got closed in curry favor by everyone) and his floor raising is clearly worse

or when nash achieved greater offensive heifhts with stoudamire instead of durant

he doesnt have the highest ceiling results and his floor raising is strong but not to all time levels as seen last 2 seasons either. other guys seem to have more impressive results both floor and ceiling raising a offense than him (jordan, lebron, magic, nash)

Well let me first point out that I'm responding to someone who dismissed Curry on the basis of his team losing 2 basketball games, so I'm not exactly arguing from the perspective that team success is the only thing that matters.

But I bring up what I do, not just because I thought it served as a resonant rebuttal, but because I think it's really astonishing to me the way people perceive a guy as weak in the playoffs when they've seen so little failure from him there.

I'm a broken record on this so forgive me. As I see it, many, many people seem to have created their story of "Curry in the playoffs" primarily out of what was seen in the 2016 & 2017 finals, and in doing so they tend to act as if 2017 & 2018 represent literally failures for Curry. Then the lessons of the 2019 playoffs with Curry's play there get brushed aside, as well as any regular season success before or after and we fast forward to the present.

I find it to be one of the most astonishing things I've witness evolve in my time as a hard core basketball-type in no small part because - while it's a trend that's more general than RealGM - I've specifically watched the PC Board shift from being way higher on Curry than the mainstream to lower than the mainstream on him, all while I have stayed in a pretty similar place. Doesn't mean I'm write - could be argued that I'm the one not adapting properly - but the shift is an objectively real thing, and it's not what I expected.

Re: any all time great offensive player is goat level when they are hot. Um, so I guess I actually have to bring up 2015-16 here to remind people? For those who don't remember, while it may now just look like a reason to call Curry a playoff choker, at the time his play in the regular season was an incredibly big deal.

Re: ...hot. So I realize I was using the term "streakiness", and others may object or interpret my wording differently than I intended. What I see with Curry is that his reliance on extreme shooting ability leads toward a need to "groove". When he gets into his groove - which he can stay in for many months at a time - he's like nothing we've ever seen before. When he falls out, he's not.

So much of why people get down on Curry, I believe, is that they see this need to groove as a massive handicap. Jokic, for example, is seen as being "inevitable" in the sense that he can do his thing 365 days a year. For myself, it's not so much that I don't see it as a handicap, as that I think people tend to overrate the cost of it.

In the end, that cost in 2015-16 was that his team only won 3 playoff series instead of 4 while playing against LeBron at his best while also having Kyrie at his best. It's a negative compared to winning out certainly, but is it a negative that should leave people assuming that the Warriors losing 2 play-in games was due to Curry not being able to do his thing in the playoffs?

Obviously not given that's literally not what happened. Yet here we are, with smart, knowledgeable people propagating superficial tropes that have their roots in very little.

Re: curry offensive results really dont fit a goat offensive player profile tbh, the way nash, lebron, magic, jordan do so i dont get why he is being talked about as being in the inside track for offensive goatness. You assert this so definitively, but it's not at all so clear cut.

If you do a search for players with the best career playoff ORtg above a certain threshold of minutes, who do I get? Curry.

That's not "proof" that Curry is the offensive GOAT of course, but it's certainly evidence in that direction. You're clearly thinking of other evidence in the other direction, and I think it's good for you to expound on it. Speaking for myself, having spent a lot of time with this data, I'm higher on him than most folks here.

As for the other guys you mention, I'm certainly not going to claim that those guys aren't in the Offensive GOAT conversation, but not that Curry plays fundamentally different from them due to his extreme shooting, which is where the variability in his game comes from.

As such, while again I get the idea that that variability might may people lower on Curry, it's weird to me that when that variability is brought up to remind of the high peaks, it doesn't even seem like people remember those peaks.

Re: not highest ceiling raiser. Huh? In the 2017 playoffs, Curry had an on-court ORtg of 126.0.

Re: Curry's floor raising worse. I mean, how about taking a team many talked about as a .500 team from the beginning of this season to the point where they might win 60 despite having injury issues from his most valuable teammates? If you don't see that as floor raising, why not?

Re: last 2 seasons. Hmm, okay:

First, let's address the amazingly out-sided impact that the 2019-20 season had on Curry's reputation.

He played 5 games that year, less than 30 MPG, and I will state unequivocably:

I think those 5 games severely damaged his Top 100 showing at the end of that season.
And I think that's comical.

If you go look at Curry's OnCourt & On/Off columns in the bkref table, what you'll see is one of the most extreme green tables you'll ever see, with that '19-20 season as the massive outlier. Again based on just 5 games while most all the other seasons are normal season-length data, clearly the least significant year if you're looking to understand Curry's career...and yet it looms large in the mind of those skeptical of Curry.

I think it was clearly a case of people looking to see what Curry could do without Durant - as if they hadn't already seen years of that - and then ending the analysis with the injury.

I remember discussions afterward where people thought I was delusional for saying Curry's prime isn't necessarily over. People had decided, and then they stayed decided.

As for '20-21, it blows my mind the way this is somehow getting held against Curry when the reality is that Curry got massive praise for his performance that year, and that year was literally LAST year. He finished 3rd in the MVP, and did so despite the Warrior year fitting clearly into two categories that resulted in completely different abilities to impact:

The first was the Oubre-Wiseman period where the goal was not to be the best team possible, but to give these guys experience playing the Warrior way. The second was the period after those guys went down and Curry caught fire and won back-to-back Player of the Months to end the season.

To me this is where the results of the play-in really are twisting people's perspective. I honestly think it would be much different if they'd just gotten to a playoff series and performed decently, but instead, despite Curry performing unimpeachably well in those games, now we have the whole "couldn't even get his team into the playoffs".

Curry had a positive +/- in 43 out of 65 games (this includes play-ins) that season, while Giannis did it in 41 out of 61 playing less MPG, yet what people are now thinking is "Giannis led his team to a title while Curry couldn't even get his team to the playoffs." Sigh.

On the offensive rating portion, I thought I should mention that

in terms of Top 3-year team playoff offenses by rORTG (final column), some notable names:

Kevin Love 2015-17 11.6
Steve Nash 2003-05 11.0
Amare Stoudemire 2005-08 10.9
Kyrie Irving 2015-17 10.2
Charles Barkley 1995-97 9.5
LeBron James 2015-17 9.4
...
Kevin Durant 2017-19 8.5
...
Stephen Curry 2017-19 7.5

I do agree that on a plus-minus basis 2017 PS Steph offensively looks pretty incredible and has a basis for GOAT on that. Opinions of course will vary, but yeah I think 2017 when Steph was health is the probably the gold standard you point to when you speak of the upside capabilities of Steph.

Love that you're coming in with some data, and that you're agreeing with me (at least on something lol). I want to speak to the relationship between 3 concepts here: a) Absolute ORtg, b) Relative ORtg, c) Ceiling

Let me first make beyond clear that I consider Relative ORtg - and other such Relative stats - to be absolutely vital when doing any cross-season comparison. I certainly use them a great deal.

But I believe there's a developed a tendency for people to over-orient themselves around the Relative, when in the end what we're talking about is specific basketball actions toward a goal of being as effective as possible that have now been arms-raced to the state-of-the-art that has surprised us by entering into a new S-curve "hockey stick" in the 21st century when there really hadn't been a new such hockey stick in the prior half-century.

And as such I think the concept of "ceiling" needs to kept viewed from an Absolute lens. While we can talk about whether a particular guy with a higher Relative ORtg advantage was more impressive than another dude with a higher Absolute (oftentimes the answer is indeed "Yes"), in terms of a ceiling of what's possible to reach, a 126 ORtg playoff is without question "on the top floor" of what we've seen as possible to achieve in basketball against top NBA defenses focused on doing anything possible to stop this from being possible.

Hence, I chafe when the "ceiling" term gets used to knock Curry, because it's clearly speaking in terms of a considerably abstract notion of "offensive impact" as if it warrants the concrete physical metaphor of "ceiling" when a much better grounded way to discuss the term doesn't just exist, but is the meaning I'd expect those with less statistically-specialized basketball ontologies to intuitively think in terms of.

Your ceiling as a free throw shooter is the FT% we can expect you to hit in a live game, not your rFT% which will change even if nothing about your ability to shoot free throws changes.

I think it's important to keep that same grounded focus with a term like "ceiling", and I'm not saying this because I think it's "unfair" to Curry:

I'm saying this because I'm literally seeing people who have a strong salient thought in their mind about Curry's limitations as an offensive basketball force despite the fact that I can basically guarantee that the same basketball watching that led you to focus on Curry's weaknesses, was also the most effective team offensive basketball you have ever witnessed - because it's the most effective team offensive basketball in the history of basketball.

I think our hyper-analytical approach is making people miss the forest for the tree, and it's fundamentally shaping what pops out to them to the point they can watch the most effective team offensive basketball in history, and when they watch the player who by all impact measures is the most important part of this effectiveness, what they focus on are flaws.

Given that who we're talking about here is one of the most paradigm-shifting players in basketball history, and that we know he's doing it through levers that are not captured by the traditional box score's granules, this focus on the relative negatives in the face of absolute positives feels very telling to me.

This definitely relates to phenomena like confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. One more recent term used is concept blindness. Personally I'd tend to call it ontological myopia, which to me better captures how highly-skilled ontological refinement can lead to the issue.

When we work with a spotlight instead of a lantern, we see more clearly, but we're more likely to miss what we aren't aiming to see.

[sp6r=underrated]

I agree with you on everything you said with Curry. People dramatically underappreciate the run the Warriors have been on. The 3 year run of 15-17 is the greatest 3 year stretch of basketball played by any team in NBA history. The down years of 18-19 & 22 are quite similar to the median Showtime Lakers, Pop's Spurs clubs. This is dominance at a high level and has been going on for many years.

Curry is at the absolute center of all it. His extreme shooting ability totally warps all defensive strategies when it is on. He deserves to be in the Offensive GOAT conversation and depending on longevity, top 5 player all time conversation.

It is also why I want the 3 point line moved back and the corner 3 eliminated.

Modern baseball has become unwatchable for so many in large part due to how the game has been totally taken over by 3 true outcomes: Walk, HR, Strikeout. As a result games are very long, tons of substitutions and very few balls in play. It is the most efficient style of play given the current rules but it isn't the most entertaining style of baseball.

Basketball is rapidly approaching a similar problem. Simply put the 3 point shot is
1. Results in a higher missed shot percentage relative to twos.
2. Very efficient despite the greater misses due to the extra point.
3. Very learnable.

As a result team offenses are canibalized by the 3 point shot. In 2012, the 3pr was .22. In 2017, it was .31. In 2022 it was .39. In 2032 it will be over 50% if the line isn't moved back. We will have record setting offenses by efficiency. We also have tons of bricks and a very monotonous style of basketball played by every team.

Colangelo and others correctly looked at the NBA rulebook of 2004 and said if a rulebook leads to a team like the 04 Pistons dominating, the rulebook is flawed. They made adjustments that changed the aesthetics of the game.

This is of course an aesthetic argument and you are free to disagree on aesthetic grounds. It can't be refuted by pointing to efficiency.

[Doctor MJ]

I agree with you on everything you said with Curry. People dramatically underappreciate the run the Warriors have been on. The 3 year run of 15-17 is the greatest 3 year stretch of basketball played by any team in NBA history. The down years of 18-19 & 22 are quite similar to the median Showtime Lakers, Pop's Spurs clubs. This is dominance at a high level and has been going on for many years.

Curry is at the absolute center of all it. His extreme shooting ability totally warps all defensive strategies when it is on. He deserves to be in the Offensive GOAT conversation and depending on longevity, top 5 player all time conversation.

It is also why I want the 3 point line moved back and the corner 3 eliminated.

Modern baseball has become unwatchable for so many in large part due to how the game has been totally taken over by 3 true outcomes: Walk, HR, Strikeout. As a result games are very long, tons of substitutions and very few balls in play. It is the most efficient style of play given the current rules but it isn't the most entertaining style of baseball.

Basketball is rapidly approaching a similar problem. Simply put the 3 point shot is
1. Results in a higher missed shot percentage relative to twos.
2. Very efficient despite the greater misses due to the extra point.
3. Very learnable.

As a result team offenses are canibalized by the 3 point shot. In 2012, the 3pr was .22. In 2017, it was .31. In 2022 it was .39. In 2032 it will be over 50% if the line isn't moved back. We will have record setting offenses by efficiency. We also have tons of bricks and a very monotonous style of basketball played by every team.

Colangelo and others correctly looked at the NBA rulebook of 2004 and said if a rulebook leads to a team like the 04 Pistons dominating, the rulebook is flawed. They made adjustments that changed the aesthetics of the game.

This is of course an aesthetic argument and you are free to disagree on aesthetic grounds. It can't be refuted by pointing to efficiency.

Good thoughts but I'll push back.

1. In theory, the fact that we're seeing a greater fraction of missed shots would lead to people being dissatisfied at the failure rate. In practice, people don't seem to even perceive this. See the loud complaints about how "there's no way to stop the offense now" which is based on PPG, which is based primarily on increased pace, which people also don't really seem like they notice that much. People are proving to be scoreboard watchers, and so as long as that doesn't fall of a cliff, I think we're fine here.

2. I understand the fear that everyone will play the same way, but I think we're seeing right now that's not what's happening. I mean, I think you could argue that the entire NBA essentially looked to steal as much as possible from the Warriors, and yet still the Warriors play completely differently from anyone else. The best offense player in the world right now is Jokic, and his team plays completely differently from anyone else. Giannis has won 2 titles and a chip in the past 3 years, and meanwhile American basketball fans are convinced he's nowhere near as good as Durant because he plays differently, and causes his team to play differently. Embiid is Shaq with fine-motor skills and an absence of shooting yips, and that's totally different from anyone else. These are not all the same.

3. I always appreciate the analogy to baseball, but I'll say this: I think the NBA has become much less like baseball as a result of the 3. Prior to that, the iso supremacy meant taking a bunch of incredible athletes and making them stand around out of the way, so that 8 of the players on the court could be as passive as spectators - or to put another way, to make them look as bored out there as people who play baseball are 99% of the time (think about it, they're either standing around on the field unless the ball comes to them, standing around waiting until the ball goes back to the pitcher, or they're in the dugout doing nothing at all). In general I think anything that makes your sport less like baseball is probably a step in the right direction in the 21st century.

[itsxtray]

I agree with you on everything you said with Curry. People dramatically underappreciate the run the Warriors have been on. The 3 year run of 15-17 is the greatest 3 year stretch of basketball played by any team in NBA history. The down years of 18-19 & 22 are quite similar to the median Showtime Lakers, Pop's Spurs clubs. This is dominance at a high level and has been going on for many years.

Curry is at the absolute center of all it. His extreme shooting ability totally warps all defensive strategies when it is on. He deserves to be in the Offensive GOAT conversation and depending on longevity, top 5 player all time conversation.

It is also why I want the 3 point line moved back and the corner 3 eliminated.

Modern baseball has become unwatchable for so many in large part due to how the game has been totally taken over by 3 true outcomes: Walk, HR, Strikeout. As a result games are very long, tons of substitutions and very few balls in play. It is the most efficient style of play given the current rules but it isn't the most entertaining style of baseball.

Basketball is rapidly approaching a similar problem. Simply put the 3 point shot is
1. Results in a higher missed shot percentage relative to twos.
2. Very efficient despite the greater misses due to the extra point.
3. Very learnable.

As a result team offenses are canibalized by the 3 point shot. In 2012, the 3pr was .22. In 2017, it was .31. In 2022 it was .39. In 2032 it will be over 50% if the line isn't moved back. We will have record setting offenses by efficiency. We also have tons of bricks and a very monotonous style of basketball played by every team.

Colangelo and others correctly looked at the NBA rulebook of 2004 and said if a rulebook leads to a team like the 04 Pistons dominating, the rulebook is flawed. They made adjustments that changed the aesthetics of the game.

This is of course an aesthetic argument and you are free to disagree on aesthetic grounds. It can't be refuted by pointing to efficiency.

The main arguments i hear against moving the 3 point line back is that it creates even more space for offenses and how far back does it need to be moved to achieve the desired effect? And what is that effect? 33% from 3 is the same as 50% from 2 and league average from 3 is around 35-36% what do you want that number to look like?

Also, id love to see some numbers on the average of field goals missed from like the late 90's to now just to see if it's really as big a problem as you say or it's just a perception thing. Not saying your wrong but it'd still be interesting.

[falcolombardi]

I agree with you on everything you said with Curry. People dramatically underappreciate the run the Warriors have been on. The 3 year run of 15-17 is the greatest 3 year stretch of basketball played by any team in NBA history. The down years of 18-19 & 22 are quite similar to the median Showtime Lakers, Pop's Spurs clubs. This is dominance at a high level and has been going on for many years.

Curry is at the absolute center of all it. His extreme shooting ability totally warps all defensive strategies when it is on. He deserves to be in the Offensive GOAT conversation and depending on longevity, top 5 player all time conversation.

It is also why I want the 3 point line moved back and the corner 3 eliminated.

Modern baseball has become unwatchable for so many in large part due to how the game has been totally taken over by 3 true outcomes: Walk, HR, Strikeout. As a result games are very long, tons of substitutions and very few balls in play. It is the most efficient style of play given the current rules but it isn't the most entertaining style of baseball.

Basketball is rapidly approaching a similar problem. Simply put the 3 point shot is
1. Results in a higher missed shot percentage relative to twos.
2. Very efficient despite the greater misses due to the extra point.
3. Very learnable.

As a result team offenses are canibalized by the 3 point shot. In 2012, the 3pr was .22. In 2017, it was .31. In 2022 it was .39. In 2032 it will be over 50% if the line isn't moved back. We will have record setting offenses by efficiency. We also have tons of bricks and a very monotonous style of basketball played by every team.

Colangelo and others correctly looked at the NBA rulebook of 2004 and said if a rulebook leads to a team like the 04 Pistons dominating, the rulebook is flawed. They made adjustments that changed the aesthetics of the game.

This is of course an aesthetic argument and you are free to disagree on aesthetic grounds. It can't be refuted by pointing to efficiency.

The main arguments i hear against moving the 3 point line back is that it creates even more space for offenses and how far back does it need to be moved to achieve the desired effect? And what is that effect? 33% from 3 is the same as 50% from 2 and league average from 3 is around 35-36% what do you want that number to look like?

Also, id love to see some numbers on the average of field goals missed from like the late 90's to now just to see if it's really as big a problem as you say or it's just a perception thing. Not saying your wrong but it'd still be interesting.

average 3 point shot is like 36%, average midrange is like 42%, that is a difference but only of around 6 shots per 100~

add to that, 3 point shots have gone from like 20% to 40% field goals so the difference in field goals made switching those 20~ midrange shots a gane into 3's should be somethingh like 1.2 field goals less per game

and that is before we consider that efficiency at the rim is up and free throws are down compared to the 90's or 00's

i honestly doubt the 3 point shot has caused a significant change in field goals made

[itsxtray]

I agree with you on everything you said with Curry. People dramatically underappreciate the run the Warriors have been on. The 3 year run of 15-17 is the greatest 3 year stretch of basketball played by any team in NBA history. The down years of 18-19 & 22 are quite similar to the median Showtime Lakers, Pop's Spurs clubs. This is dominance at a high level and has been going on for many years.

Curry is at the absolute center of all it. His extreme shooting ability totally warps all defensive strategies when it is on. He deserves to be in the Offensive GOAT conversation and depending on longevity, top 5 player all time conversation.

It is also why I want the 3 point line moved back and the corner 3 eliminated.

Modern baseball has become unwatchable for so many in large part due to how the game has been totally taken over by 3 true outcomes: Walk, HR, Strikeout. As a result games are very long, tons of substitutions and very few balls in play. It is the most efficient style of play given the current rules but it isn't the most entertaining style of baseball.

Basketball is rapidly approaching a similar problem. Simply put the 3 point shot is
1. Results in a higher missed shot percentage relative to twos.
2. Very efficient despite the greater misses due to the extra point.
3. Very learnable.

As a result team offenses are canibalized by the 3 point shot. In 2012, the 3pr was .22. In 2017, it was .31. In 2022 it was .39. In 2032 it will be over 50% if the line isn't moved back. We will have record setting offenses by efficiency. We also have tons of bricks and a very monotonous style of basketball played by every team.

Colangelo and others correctly looked at the NBA rulebook of 2004 and said if a rulebook leads to a team like the 04 Pistons dominating, the rulebook is flawed. They made adjustments that changed the aesthetics of the game.

This is of course an aesthetic argument and you are free to disagree on aesthetic grounds. It can't be refuted by pointing to efficiency.

The main arguments i hear against moving the 3 point line back is that it creates even more space for offenses and how far back does it need to be moved to achieve the desired effect? And what is that effect? 33% from 3 is the same as 50% from 2 and league average from 3 is around 35-36% what do you want that number to look like?

Also, id love to see some numbers on the average of field goals missed from like the late 90's to now just to see if it's really as big a problem as you say or it's just a perception thing. Not saying your wrong but it'd still be interesting.

average 3 point shot is like 36%, average midrange is like 42%, that is a difference but only of around 6 shots per 100~

add to that, 3 point shots have gone from like 20% to 40% field goals so the difference in field goals made switching those 20~ midrange shots a gane into 3's should be somethingh like 1.2 field goals less per game

and that is before we consider that efficiency at the rim is up and free throws are down compared to the 90's or 00's

i honestly doubt the 3 point shot has caused a significant change in field goals made

This is what my instincts tell me as well, it's not an actual problem just a talking point for people who don't like how the game has evolved. Because the 3 pointer is such a specific shot it can be singled out if a team misses a bunch of em in a way it wouldn't be if in the early 2000's for example a team missed 20+ mid-range jumpers.

[sp6r=underrated]

The main arguments i hear against moving the 3 point line back is that it creates even more space for offenses and how far back does it need to be moved to achieve the desired effect? And what is that effect? 33% from 3 is the same as 50% from 2 and league average from 3 is around 35-36% what do you want that number to look like?

Also, id love to see some numbers on the average of field goals missed from like the late 90's to now just to see if it's really as big a problem as you say or it's just a perception thing. Not saying your wrong but it'd still be interesting.

average 3 point shot is like 36%, average midrange is like 42%, that is a difference but only of around 6 shots per 100~

add to that, 3 point shots have gone from like 20% to 40% field goals so the difference in field goals made switching those 20~ midrange shots a gane into 3's should be somethingh like 1.2 field goals less per game

and that is before we consider that efficiency at the rim is up and free throws are down compared to the 90's or 00's

i honestly doubt the 3 point shot has caused a significant change in field goals made

This is what my instincts tell me as well, it's not an actual problem just a talking point for people who don't like how the game has evolved. Because the 3 pointer is such a specific shot it can be singled out if a team misses a bunch of em in a way it wouldn't be if in the early 2000's for example a team missed 20+ mid-range jumpers.

As I said in my post, I was making an aesthetic argument. You can certainly disagree. The missed shot rate was only a portion of my argument. The main focus really was the monotony of every team running their offense around getting as many 3 point attempts as possible, which I do see when I watch NBA games (even if the technique is different) I'll just be blunt. The NBA will hit 50% three point rate by the end of the decade if the line stays where it is.

But for my own personal preference basketball games were more than half the games are 3 Point Shot attempts aren't appealing to me in the same way baseball games with very high walk/strikeout rates aren't appealing.

I'm not pushing to go back to 1986 and I'm certainly not pushing to go back to 2004. But I do want some semblance of balance.

[itsxtray]

average 3 point shot is like 36%, average midrange is like 42%, that is a difference but only of around 6 shots per 100~

add to that, 3 point shots have gone from like 20% to 40% field goals so the difference in field goals made switching those 20~ midrange shots a gane into 3's should be somethingh like 1.2 field goals less per game

and that is before we consider that efficiency at the rim is up and free throws are down compared to the 90's or 00's

i honestly doubt the 3 point shot has caused a significant change in field goals made

This is what my instincts tell me as well, it's not an actual problem just a talking point for people who don't like how the game has evolved. Because the 3 pointer is such a specific shot it can be singled out if a team misses a bunch of em in a way it wouldn't be if in the early 2000's for example a team missed 20+ mid-range jumpers.

As I said in my post, I was making an aesthetic argument. You can certainly disagree. The missed shot rate was only a portion of my argument. The main focus really was the monotony of every team running their offense around getting as many 3 point attempts as possible, which I do see when I watch NBA games (even if the technique is different) I'll just be blunt. The NBA will hit 50% three point rate by the end of the decade if the line stays where it is.

But for my own personal preference basketball games were more than half the games are 3 Point Shot attempts aren't appealing to me in the same way baseball games with very high walk/strikeout rates aren't appealing.

I'm not pushing to go back to 1986 and I'm certainly not pushing to go back to 2004. But I do want some semblance of balance.

What we have right now IS balance, what we had before was so incredibly lopsided toward 2's that in hindsight the fact that 3>2 wasn't taken advantage of sooner makes everyone look dumb.

Your aesthetic preferences are your own and i won't argue them, but to me the space has allowed the game to become much more beautiful with more ball/player movement and the counters upon counters that have been developed on defense are fascinating to me as well, but to each their own.

[sp6r=underrated]

This is what my instincts tell me as well, it's not an actual problem just a talking point for people who don't like how the game has evolved. Because the 3 pointer is such a specific shot it can be singled out if a team misses a bunch of em in a way it wouldn't be if in the early 2000's for example a team missed 20+ mid-range jumpers.

As I said in my post, I was making an aesthetic argument. You can certainly disagree. The missed shot rate was only a portion of my argument. The main focus really was the monotony of every team running their offense around getting as many 3 point attempts as possible, which I do see when I watch NBA games (even if the technique is different) I'll just be blunt. The NBA will hit 50% three point rate by the end of the decade if the line stays where it is.

But for my own personal preference basketball games were more than half the games are 3 Point Shot attempts aren't appealing to me in the same way baseball games with very high walk/strikeout rates aren't appealing.

I'm not pushing to go back to 1986 and I'm certainly not pushing to go back to 2004. But I do want some semblance of balance.

What we have right now IS balance, what we had before was so incredibly lopsided toward 2's that in hindsight the fact that 3>2 wasn't taken advantage of sooner makes everyone look dumb.

Your aesthetic preferences are your own and i won't argue them, but to me the space has allowed the game to become much more beautiful with more ball/player movement and the counters upon counters that have been developed on defense are fascinating to me as well, but to each their own.

To be clear when I use the term balance I'm also talking about aesthetics. I don't dispute at all that the 3 point shot is efficient. When I say there was more balance in 2012 with 2 point shot attempts I'm not talking about efficiency. I'm talking aesthetics.

I'm not sure when NBA players were ready to start shooting 3s at a high rate but it took way too long for it to be adopted from an efficiency standpoint.

Fully understand your point of view about the aesthetic merits of current style