Peaks Project #18

[Texas Chuck]

I'm not sure teams ever feared any Chris Paul offense the way they feared essentially every Steve Nash offense. Now Nash obviously played nearly exclusively for offensive-minded coaches and got to play with some elite offensive casts so we have to account for that. But I definitely think Nash was the superior offensive player over their careers and I would need some convincing to believe that 08(or any Paul year) was a better offensive season than Nash had from 05-07.

And its fine for those who think its close enough to use Paul's defensive edge to pick him, but I don't see Paul as a huge impact defender. He has massive steal totals and is a good solid defender, but this isn't prime Payton or Kidd or even Stockton here defensively imo. He's getting too much traction over a handful of minutes against Durant in one series and certainly that doesn't apply to 08. The vast majority of his value is on the offensive end.

Obviously I'm not voting and I wouldn't take either guy here yet if I was, but I definitely put Nash's peak ahead of Paul's. Offensively he's just so so good.

[MO12msu]

Sometimes we want to look at things with our electron microscope when a simple pair of glasses would suffice.

I'm going to submit to you that Steve Nash was actually a far and away superior scorer to what Paul has shown at any point in his career. Start with the obvious: every single Phoenix season saw him sustain a .600+ TS%, and he twice led the entire league, peaking at 65.1%, which is legitimately among the highest efficiencies ever produced by a big-minute player. Paul has never touched the .600 threshold once in his career.

As has been pointed out, Nash was a better shooter by FG% than Paul from every individual spot on the floor, but it doesn't even end here. Nash had a lightning release, very comparable to Curry in that he can get his shot off with essentially 0 breathing room. Paul has developed a nice off the dribble 3, but it comes at the cost of a huge windup and him needing to be relatively open. Nash was actually a brutally effective isolation player, more so than I think Paul has come close to, and from 82 games we can see that his clutch scoring numbers blow basically anyone not named LeBron out of the water. Nash could get his.

What real effect does this have? Consider that the more dangerous a scorer is, the more defenses have to commit to stopping him. Makes sense, right? One of the biggest reasons Nash was so effective as a playmaker was that defenses were so petrified of him shooting that they had to sell out to stop the dude. Not just in the lane, EVERYWHERE. I mean, even if we accept that Paul is a little better at driving in the lane (which I don't, not in the slightest) we have to consider that Nash is so much more dangerous from everywhere else that it more than offsets and advantage in drive and kick. I mean, Nash was dangerous, and had the propensity to explode if teams didn't treat him like an elite scorer.

Yes, defenses treated Nash as if he were an elite scorer. Don't believe me? Go back and read/watch the 2005 series against the Maverickks. Dallas was talking big about focusing on containing Nash's teammates and letting him get his because he's not that dangerous a scorer. What happened? Nash put up 30.3 points on 64% TS. That's a stat line that would make LeBron weep. Nash absolutely ethered the Mavs, and no similar strategies were ever tried again.

When we talk about Nash, the thing we need to keep in mind is the pressure he put on defenses. He pushed the pace, threw his body into the lane, shot at will, and just kept defenders constantly on their heels. Paul is a half-court player. His Hornets were in the bottom 10 in pace every season except the one he played 45 games, and he Clippers were bottom 10 until Doc came on board and by some accounts went through quite a process trying to convince him to play faster. Nash had an intuitive understanding of how to get the best looks by playing fast, and while it meant his game wasn't as mistake-free as Paul, it also gave them a higher ceiling. Paul led the #1 offense, that's true, but this was he only season where this was the case and it still doesn't come close to Nash from 05-07 in relative terms (Paul's offense in the +6.8 range, Nash around +8.5 in 05) and it ignores the fact that Nash-led offenses do not have a peer when it comes to playoff efficacy. I'm cool with Nash's high turnovers because all the evidence is pointing to it being a function of him hinting the best shots at significant risk.

Just a disclaimer that I'm not participating in this project(been following all along though) because I'm uncomfortable ranking and comparing pre-80s players but I gotta come to CP3's defense here(I am freely admitting my strong CP3 bias as he's my favorite player).

I disagree with the notion that Nash is a "far and away superior scorer." For one, no Paul has never hit the .600 TS threshold, but he's hit the .590 threshold three times(including 2 of the last three years and .599 in '09). He's also always been a higher volume scorer than Nash so those percentages aren't exactly comparable. Just getting that out of the way because saying he's never hit .600 makes it seem like he's never been close.

Now conceding that Nash is without a doubt the superior shooter, this does not mean that him shooting higher percentages means that he saw this insane amount of defensive attention that Paul never saw. First, I don't think anyone would argue with the fact that for the majority of his career, CP3 has dealt with a worse offensive cast. I mention this now only to point out that if there's less offensive weapons, then defenses usually can key more attention in on the offensive focal point more. Also, you are citing these percentages and a quick release to point out that Nash deserved more defensive attention, and maybe he did, but in reality is this true? I think the general thought process around the league is that Nash and Paul are similar in that they are playmaking maestros who can pull up and knock down jumpers at elite rates as well. I think NBA defenses in general have similar strategies to trying to stop these guys. Nash probably pulled his defender an extra step off the ball because of his catch and shoot threat but that's about the only tangible difference I could think of.

To sum up that last paragraph: I don't think the difference in shooting efficiency is leading to as much of a difference in defensive attention as the numbers might suggest, and that's even conceding that Nash put the ball in the basket more efficiently than Paul.

I also think Paul was a clearly better penetrator who has never really worked with the luxury of spacing that Nash has. More specifically, he's never had the luxury of really playing small ball with a true stretch 4 and all the spacing that comes with that.

Now when it comes to actually running offenses, I think first we need to acknowledge that when given a strong offensive supporting cast, Paul has run elite offenses. And I think I've pointed out before that in the games where Griffin played last year, the Clippers had an offensive rating that would've been one of the best all-time(114.1 ortg and a +8.5 relative). And I've always found the argument that "Chris Paul plays a slow, low turnover game" to be a curious one. Do we have any actual evidence that playing at a slower pace leads to worse offensive performance? Because if we don't then I don't really think it matters. Not to mention the fact that Paul has shown the ability to operate run great offenses at both quick and slow paces(I've never really cared about portability for star players but isn't this a point for him Paul there?). And it's not like CP3 is a low volume assist player. Paul is one of the highest volume assist players of all time while have a much lower turnover rate than the other great PGs, yet somehow this is ruled against him? I'm gonna need to see some hard evidence that playing the way he does has actually hurt an offense in any way. Otherwise Paul's high assist to turnover ratio should always be a point FOR, not against, him.

[eminence]

Sometimes we want to look at things with our electron microscope when a simple pair of glasses would suffice.

I'm going to submit to you that Steve Nash was actually a far and away superior scorer to what Paul has shown at any point in his career. Start with the obvious: every single Phoenix season saw him sustain a .600+ TS%, and he twice led the entire league, peaking at 65.1%, which is legitimately among the highest efficiencies ever produced by a big-minute player. Paul has never touched the .600 threshold once in his career.

The section I replied to originally, love the extremely arbitrary cutoff to leave out that Paul has seasons of 59.6 and 59.9 TS%. No doubt Nash is the more efficient scorer of the two 60.5% career, peaking at 65.4% compared to Paul at 57.8% and 59.9% in the regular season. In the playoffs though this changes a significant amount, with Nash being at 58.3% and 63.4% while Paul is at 58.4% and 67.0%. For the two seasons I look at as their peaks it's 65.4/57.7(RS/PS) for Nash and 57.6/56.5 for Paul. Seems to me a fairly reasonable conclusion is that Nash's efficiency edge drops off completely in the playoffs. Regular season efficiency obviously in favor of Nash. I would attribute this to his superior 3pt/ft shooting and having a quicker trigger.

As has been pointed out, Nash was a better shooter by FG% than Paul from every individual spot on the floor, but it doesn't even end here. Nash had a lightning release, very comparable to Curry in that he can get his shot off with essentially 0 breathing room. Paul has developed a nice off the dribble 3, but it comes at the cost of a huge windup and him needing to be relatively open. Nash was actually a brutally effective isolation player, more so than I think Paul has come close to, and from 82 games we can see that his clutch scoring numbers blow basically anyone not named LeBron out of the water. Nash could get his.

No. Nash doesn't really compare to Curry in getting a covered off the dribble shot off. Better than Paul no doubt though. Both were effective but not alltime iso scorers, not really what they are being asked to do. For the clutch stuff from 82games comparing each of their Clutch numbers(last 5 minutes if within 5 pts):

Nash- 38 game sample(24-14) 36.4 pp48 @ 56.3 eFG%, 26% assisted, 11.5 ft made/48, 2.8 ast/tov, net +12.8
Paul- 27 game sample(16-11) 38.8 pp48 @ 52.2 eFG%, 16% assisted, 13.2 ft made/48, 4.1 ast/tov, net +11.0

They were both superb in the clutch, certainly not blowing either one out of the water. I can't decide between the two for clutch play.


What real effect does this have? Consider that the more dangerous a scorer is, the more defenses have to commit to stopping him. Makes sense, right? One of the biggest reasons Nash was so effective as a playmaker was that defenses were so petrified of him shooting that they had to sell out to stop the dude. Not just in the lane, EVERYWHERE. I mean, even if we accept that Paul is a little better at driving in the lane (which I don't, not in the slightest) we have to consider that Nash is so much more dangerous from everywhere else that it more than offsets and advantage in drive and kick. I mean, Nash was dangerous, and had the propensity to explode if teams didn't treat him like an elite scorer.

The only thing you've proven(or even supported) to this point is that Nash is a better shooter. You suddenly make the jump to that making Nash a better scorer. To the contrary we still have the fact that Paul is scoring at a higher rate of 29.9/32.9 pp100 compared to Nash at 26.4/25.7. That is however fairly easily attributed to the gaps in FGA (~4/5 per100 off the top of my head). With that considered I'd give a slight edge to Nash overall as the scorer, but it is slight and nowhere near the "far and away" that you stated. For the regular season volume is slightly Paul and efficiency is solidly Nash (edge Nash) in the playoffs the volume edge is large for Paul and the efficiency edge is slight for Nash (edge Paul). Nash has the advantage as a shooter and is also more dangerous off-ball due to this, they are close to a wash at penetration, and Paul is a better at drawing fouls.

Yes, defenses treated Nash as if he were an elite scorer. Don't believe me? Go back and read/watch the 2005 series against the Maverickks. Dallas was talking big about focusing on containing Nash's teammates and letting him get his because he's not that dangerous a scorer. What happened? Nash put up 30.3 points on 64% TS. That's a stat line that would make LeBron weep. Nash absolutely ethered the Mavs, and no similar strategies were ever tried again.

I don't particularly like using skills/examples from separate seasons to show a players ability in a peak project. If you'd like to try to argue that the 22.7pp100 Nash of '05 Nash was the far superior scorer to anyone you're welcome to try(you won't succeed, he was essentially flashy Stockton during that regular season). Use a more relevant series please (I can be snippy too I see).

When we talk about Nash, the thing we need to keep in mind is the pressure he put on defenses. He pushed the pace, threw his body into the lane, shot at will, and just kept defenders constantly on their heels. Paul is a half-court player. His Hornets were in the bottom 10 in pace every season except the one he played 45 games, and he Clippers were bottom 10 until Doc came on board and by some accounts went through quite a process trying to convince him to play faster. Nash had an intuitive understanding of how to get the best looks by playing fast, and while it meant his game wasn't as mistake-free as Paul, it also gave them a higher ceiling. Paul led the #1 offense, that's true, but this was he only season where this was the case and it still doesn't come close to Nash from 05-07 in relative terms (Paul's offense in the +6.8 range, Nash around +8.5 in 05) and it ignores the fact that Nash-led offenses do not have a peer when it comes to playoff efficacy. I'm cool with Nash's high turnovers because all the evidence is pointing to it being a function of him hinting the best shots at significant risk.

The first half of this is just talk... who cares what pace either of them played at? The '07 Suns(#1, +7.4) were a better offense than Paul's Hornets(#5, +4), but I feel like we just had a whole couple threads on how team offensive rating isn't necessarily indicative of individual offensive talent (Wade). In my opinion the offensive team gap is pretty easily explained by personnel around the two (Amare/Marion vs West/Peja) and by the SSOL system, which pretty clearly sacrificed defense at the cost of offense. Also side note - Paul has led the Clippers to the top offense the last two seasons (not relevant here, I'm arguing for '08 Paul).

Finally, and it irks me, you save the most significant offensive gap in favor of Paul until the last sentence and try to brush it away like it's nothing. Paul turned the ball over significantly less than Nash due to his tighter handles (3.6 tov100 vs 5.4 RS and 2.5 vs 5.9 in the playoffs). This is while generating a very similar number of assists and scoring at a higher volume. To me they are making the same number of positive offensive plays, while Nash is clearly making more negative plays. Balanced vs Nash's slightly superior scoring they are essentially equal on offense. Defensively though Paul wasn't at his peak there he was still significantly better than Nash. So I go his way.

Oho, you get snippy. You're right, I am a big fan of stats(opinions should be backed by something no?), and I just wanted to get a few out there. You originally stated that Nash is "a far and away superior scorer", which is not something I agree with. I do actually think that Nash was the slightly better scorer but I have Paul as the better playmaker, making their offense essentially equal to me. I'll reply to the rest of your post in more detail here(going to use '07 Nash and '08 Paul when comparing individual seasons).

[Dr Positivity]

Ballot 1 - Patrick Ewing 1990

Ballot 2 - Jerry West 1966

Ballot 3 - Kobe Bryant 2008

I vote by which seasons I would draft so I'm still leaning away from defense guys like Barkley and Nash and guys I wonder if they need the ball too much like Paul. I like Kobe 2008 over a year like 2006 because I'm concerned that the first few years after Shaq Kobe would want to put up his own stats too much. By the time of the Pau era he was fitting into an offense realy well

[Dr Spaceman]

The section I replied to originally, love the extremely arbitrary cutoff to leave out that Paul has seasons of 59.6 and 59.9 TS%. No doubt Nash is the more efficient scorer of the two 60.5% career, peaking at 65.4% compared to Paul at 57.8% and 59.9% in the regular season. In the playoffs though this changes a significant amount, with Nash being at 58.3% and 63.4% while Paul is at 58.4% and 67.0%. For the two seasons I look at as their peaks it's 65.4/57.7(RS/PS) for Nash and 57.6/56.5 for Paul. Seems to me a fairly reasonable conclusion is that Nash's efficiency edge drops off completely in the playoffs. Regular season efficiency obviously in favor of Nash. I would attribute this to his superior 3pt/ft shooting and having a quicker trigger.

Hmm. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the bolded statement, but I'm going to bring up an issue that I have with another point you made as well: sample size. I don't think we have enough of it to do granular analysis of just 1 season between these guys. I understand it's a peaks project, but in the interest of not turning this into a rote statistical comparison I'd ask you why you think Nash's scoring skill set in 2007 was so diminished that we can't use a series from 05 (a pre-peak season) to inform us as to the skills he would go on to display in later seasons. If we're not going to use other seasons to inform our analysis, then I don't feel comfortable doing this project in general, because we have nowhere near enough information to make conclusions as strong as we are attempting to.

Okay, that said, back to sample size.

Here are Nash's scoring numbers against the Lakers: 16.0 PPG on .534 TS%.
Here's Nash's numbers against the Spurs: 21.3 PPG on .605 TS%.

Lakers were a +2.1 defense, Spurs were a -6.6 defense.

Okay, big picture: Nash has a disastrous scoring series against the 28th ranked defense, and then goes out and demolishes the 2nd best defense in the league. What about this makes sense to you? And why are you then comfortable taking an aggregate of both series and saying "See? Efficiency edge gone."

Given that 2007 is actually his career Phoenix low, and given that he performed exactly in line with his career average agains the Spurs who went on to win the title, which of these statements are more reasonable to you:

1. Nash had a fluke bad series against the Lakers
2. Nash's Lakers series should be extremely informative to us and we should use it as the basis of our claim that Nash can't keep up his efficiency edge in the postseason

Because you chose 2.

No. Nash doesn't really compare to Curry in getting a covered off the dribble shot off. Better than Paul no doubt though. Both were effective but not alltime iso scorers, not really what they are being asked to do. For the clutch stuff from 82games comparing each of their Clutch numbers(last 5 minutes if within 5 pts):

Nash- 38 game sample(24-14) 36.4 pp48 @ 56.3 eFG%, 26% assisted, 11.5 ft made/48, 2.8 ast/tov, net +12.8
Paul- 27 game sample(16-11) 38.8 pp48 @ 52.2 eFG%, 16% assisted, 13.2 ft made/48, 4.1 ast/tov, net +11.0

They were both superb in the clutch, certainly not blowing either one out of the water. I can't decide between the two for clutch play.

Fair enough. Nash has posted better numbers in his career, Paul has not, but we can just keep it focused on these two specific years since you prefer.

The only thing you've proven(or even supported) to this point is that Nash is a better shooter. You suddenly make the jump to that making Nash a better scorer. To the contrary we still have the fact that Paul is scoring at a higher rate of 29.9/32.9 pp100 compared to Nash at 26.4/25.7. That is however fairly easily attributed to the gaps in FGA (~4/5 per100 off the top of my head). With that considered I'd give a slight edge to Nash overall as the scorer, but it is slight and nowhere near the "far and away" that you stated. For the regular season volume is slightly Paul and efficiency is solidly Nash (edge Nash) in the playoffs the volume edge is large for Paul and the efficiency edge is slight for Nash (edge Paul). Nash has the advantage as a shooter and is also more dangerous off-ball due to this, they are close to a wash at penetration, and Paul is a better at drawing fouls.

Here is the difference in volume per100 between Kevin Durant's 2014 and Kobe Bryant's 2006: -3.8 (Durant - Kobe)
Here is the difference in efficiency: +6.4 % (Durant - Kobe)

Here is the difference in volume per100 between Nash and Paul: -3.5 (Nash - Paul)
And efficiency: +7.8% (Nash - Paul)

I don't particularly like using skills/examples from separate seasons to show a players ability in a peak project. If you'd like to try to argue that the 22.7pp100 Nash of '05 Nash was the far superior scorer to anyone you're welcome to try(you won't succeed, he was essentially flashy Stockton during that regular season). Use a more relevant series please (I can be snippy too I see).

Okay, let's pick a more relevant series. here is how they compared against the Spurs (note the 07 Spurs were a better defense than the 08 Spurs and won the title):

Nash 07: 21.3 PPG/ 60.5 TS%
Paul 08: 23.7 PPG/55.5 TS%

Finally, and it irks me, you save the most significant offensive gap in favor of Paul until the last sentence and try to brush it away like it's nothing. Paul turned the ball over significantly less than Nash due to his tighter handles (3.6 tov100 vs 5.4 RS and 2.5 vs 5.9 in the playoffs). This is while generating a very similar number of assists and scoring at a higher volume. To me they are making the same number of positive offensive plays, while Nash is clearly making more negative plays. Balanced vs Nash's slightly superior scoring they are essentially equal on offense. Defensively though Paul wasn't at his peak there he was still significantly better than Nash. So I go his way.
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It's not that I'm trying to brush it away, it's that I think the ends justify the means. For one thing, Phoenix was the 5th best team at protecting the ball in 2007. For two, Nash taking all those risks enabled the team to reach an offensive ceiling no other team ever has.

Re: pace, I just don't think it's a coincidence that both of the greatest offensive dynasties we've seen played at breakneck pace. Transition scoring is also by far the most efficient at a team level, pretty easily backed up.

If you think I'm giving Nash/Magic too much credit fine, but when two guys I consider actual savants happen to employ the exact same strategy and achieve the exact same results, I think there's a reason for it.

For the record, Magic Johnson has basically the same TOV% numbers as Nash through their primes.

[thizznation]

1. Kobe 08
2. Ewing 90
3. McGrady 93


08', 09' Kobe has it all. He has great athleticism, has mastered top level of skills, great bbiq, leadership, the highest respect from his teammates and opponents. McGrady has better stats but I believe Kobe could of replicated similar results if he was placed in McGrady's situation. I have McGrady and Kobe as very equal in terms of skills and effectiveness but I am picking Kobe because of intangibles. I know some people might have a problem with it but I think Kobe has more of an "it" factor than McGrady. McGrady could of probably taken those Laker teams pretty far with Phil Jackson coaching but I don't think he could of taken it as far as Kobe did.

[Lost92Bricks]

...

I understand what you're saying about Nash's shooting advantage along with the pressure he puts on defenses and I'm not gonna argue against it. It does allows him to be a more explosive, dangerous scorer.

What I disagree with is the notion that Nash's teams have a higher ceiling offensively. The Clippers last season played at the same level as the '07 Suns on that end.

'07 Suns: 113.9 ORtg (+7.4)
'15 Clippers: 112.4 ORtg (+6.8)

'07 Nash: 118.6 on-court ORtg (+12.1)
'15 Paul: 118.3 on-court ORtg (+12.7)

This isn't even factoring in the Clippers' numbers being deflated due to opposing teams' intentionally hacking of Jordan bringing their FT% down to bottom of the league levels.

I can buy Nash being better, but I don't think it's clear at all...Paul has proven that given a really good supporting cast he can run an offense on par with Nash's best.

[thizznation]

I'm not super into ortg, but 2008 Chris Paul has a higher ortg than anything in Steve Nash's career?

[drza]

Vote (same as last thread):

Dirk 11
Ewing 90
Kobe 08

I see we're getting a few Kobe votes here, but I really think he should be getting more discussion. Outside of Dirk, whose still really close, I have Kobe over any of the current players that are being named. I think he was better than Nash and Paul, as well as Durant. Heck, I think he was better than Curry. He was a score-first/do-everything wing that had it all come together with those Pau teams. His impact in those years was as good as anything we ever saw from the point guards and higher than we've yet seen from Durant.

But in addition to the consistency of impact, Kobe also had the ability to ramp it up on either offense OR defense, an added dimension to his game that separates himself from the point guards. I don't believe that Kobe deserves all the defensive attention that he got in his career, and his measured defensive impact was never game-changing over a season...but over a series? Especially in an instance where he could "take the challenge" in a 1-on-1 way? Kobe could bring it. The way that he could take advantage of the match-up with Rondo made life way more difficult on the 08 Celtics, and may have been one of the things that toppled the 10 Celtics. Relatedly, in a game 7 in which his shot was broken, Kobe grabbed like 17 or 18 boards and helped athletically dominate the more fragile Celtics to steal a win.

And while it's not necessarily quantifiable, I do believe that there is some element of Kobe was (one of) the best because HE believed that he was, and more than that, OTHER people believed that he was as well. I saw someone mention being scared of a Nash offense vs a Paul offense, but I'd submit that as great as Nash and Paul were, opponents just feared Kobe more. And often he used that to his advantage. He could also over-rely on that, as his (over)confidence could hurt his team at times as well, but on the whole I think that his confidence, his swagger, his belief in the legend of the Mamba was something that generally helped his team and hurt his opponents...especially in the playoffs.

[RebelWithACause]

PG ballot:
1. Nash
2. Penny
3. Paul
4. Baron

Wing ballot:
1. West
2. Kobe
3. McGrady
4. Durant

Big men ballot:
1. Nowitzki
2. Ewing
3. Barkley

That's my ballot going forward position wise.
Unfortunately Won't be able to contribute much until late tonight though.

My overall ballot going forward:

1. West 1966
2. Kobe 2008
3. Dirk 2011
4. Nash 2005
5. McGrady 2003
6. Penny 1996
7. Durant 2014
8. Paul 2008 or 2015

[E-Balla]

The section I replied to originally, love the extremely arbitrary cutoff to leave out that Paul has seasons of 59.6 and 59.9 TS%. No doubt Nash is the more efficient scorer of the two 60.5% career, peaking at 65.4% compared to Paul at 57.8% and 59.9% in the regular season. In the playoffs though this changes a significant amount, with Nash being at 58.3% and 63.4% while Paul is at 58.4% and 67.0%. For the two seasons I look at as their peaks it's 65.4/57.7(RS/PS) for Nash and 57.6/56.5 for Paul. Seems to me a fairly reasonable conclusion is that Nash's efficiency edge drops off completely in the playoffs. Regular season efficiency obviously in favor of Nash. I would attribute this to his superior 3pt/ft shooting and having a quicker trigger.

Hmm. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the bolded statement, but I'm going to bring up an issue that I have with another point you made as well: sample size. I don't think we have enough of it to do granular analysis of just 1 season between these guys. I understand it's a peaks project, but in the interest of not turning this into a rote statistical comparison I'd ask you why you think Nash's scoring skill set in 2007 was so diminished that we can't use a series from 05 (a pre-peak season) to inform us as to the skills he would go on to display in later seasons. If we're not going to use other seasons to inform our analysis, then I don't feel comfortable doing this project in general, because we have nowhere near enough information to make conclusions as strong as we are attempting to.

Okay, that said, back to sample size.

Here are Nash's scoring numbers against the Lakers: 16.0 PPG on .534 TS%.
Here's Nash's numbers against the Spurs: 21.3 PPG on .605 TS%.

Lakers were a +2.1 defense, Spurs were a -6.6 defense.

Okay, big picture: Nash has a disastrous scoring series against the 28th ranked defense, and then goes out and demolishes the 2nd best defense in the league. What about this makes sense to you? And why are you then comfortable taking an aggregate of both series and saying "See? Efficiency edge gone."

Given that 2007 is actually his career Phoenix low, and given that he performed exactly in line with his career average agains the Spurs who went on to win the title, which of these statements are more reasonable to you:

1. Nash had a fluke bad series against the Lakers
2. Nash's Lakers series should be extremely informative to us and we should use it as the basis of our claim that Nash can't keep up his efficiency edge in the postseason

Because you chose 2.

No. Nash doesn't really compare to Curry in getting a covered off the dribble shot off. Better than Paul no doubt though. Both were effective but not alltime iso scorers, not really what they are being asked to do. For the clutch stuff from 82games comparing each of their Clutch numbers(last 5 minutes if within 5 pts):

Nash- 38 game sample(24-14) 36.4 pp48 @ 56.3 eFG%, 26% assisted, 11.5 ft made/48, 2.8 ast/tov, net +12.8
Paul- 27 game sample(16-11) 38.8 pp48 @ 52.2 eFG%, 16% assisted, 13.2 ft made/48, 4.1 ast/tov, net +11.0

They were both superb in the clutch, certainly not blowing either one out of the water. I can't decide between the two for clutch play.

Fair enough. Nash has posted better numbers in his career, Paul has not, but we can just keep it focused on these two specific years since you prefer.

The only thing you've proven(or even supported) to this point is that Nash is a better shooter. You suddenly make the jump to that making Nash a better scorer. To the contrary we still have the fact that Paul is scoring at a higher rate of 29.9/32.9 pp100 compared to Nash at 26.4/25.7. That is however fairly easily attributed to the gaps in FGA (~4/5 per100 off the top of my head). With that considered I'd give a slight edge to Nash overall as the scorer, but it is slight and nowhere near the "far and away" that you stated. For the regular season volume is slightly Paul and efficiency is solidly Nash (edge Nash) in the playoffs the volume edge is large for Paul and the efficiency edge is slight for Nash (edge Paul). Nash has the advantage as a shooter and is also more dangerous off-ball due to this, they are close to a wash at penetration, and Paul is a better at drawing fouls.

Here is the difference in volume per100 between Kevin Durant's 2014 and Kobe Bryant's 2006: -3.8 (Durant - Kobe)
Here is the difference in efficiency: +6.4 % (Durant - Kobe)

Here is the difference in volume per100 between Nash and Paul: -3.5 (Nash - Paul)
And efficiency: +7.8% (Nash - Paul)

I don't particularly like using skills/examples from separate seasons to show a players ability in a peak project. If you'd like to try to argue that the 22.7pp100 Nash of '05 Nash was the far superior scorer to anyone you're welcome to try(you won't succeed, he was essentially flashy Stockton during that regular season). Use a more relevant series please (I can be snippy too I see).

Okay, let's pick a more relevant series. here is how they compared against the Spurs (note the 07 Spurs were a better defense than the 08 Spurs and won the title):

Nash 07: 21.3 PPG/ 60.5 TS%
Paul 08: 23.7 PPG/55.5 TS%

Finally, and it irks me, you save the most significant offensive gap in favor of Paul until the last sentence and try to brush it away like it's nothing. Paul turned the ball over significantly less than Nash due to his tighter handles (3.6 tov100 vs 5.4 RS and 2.5 vs 5.9 in the playoffs). This is while generating a very similar number of assists and scoring at a higher volume. To me they are making the same number of positive offensive plays, while Nash is clearly making more negative plays. Balanced vs Nash's slightly superior scoring they are essentially equal on offense. Defensively though Paul wasn't at his peak there he was still significantly better than Nash. So I go his way.
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It's not that I'm trying to brush it away, it's that I think the ends justify the means. For one thing, Phoenix was the 5th best team at protecting the ball in 2007. For two, Nash taking all those risks enabled the team to reach an offensive ceiling no other team ever has.

Re: pace, I just don't think it's a coincidence that both of the greatest offensive dynasties we've seen played at breakneck pace. Transition scoring is also by far the most efficient at a team level, pretty easily backed up.

If you think I'm giving Nash/Magic too much credit fine, but when two guys I consider actual savants happen to employ the exact same strategy and achieve the exact same results, I think there's a reason for it.

For the record, Magic Johnson has basically the same TOV% numbers as Nash through their primes.

I'd just like to add that CP3's assist to turnover ratio in the postseason isn't as high as in the regular season. IMO it shows maybe his low turnovers don't really matter as much as you'd think and its more of a stylistic difference than an efficiency difference between Paul and the other ATG PGs. Here's a flawed metric but I'll post it anyway.

PGs career AST/TOV in the PS:
CP3 - 9.5/2.8
Nash in PHO - 10.7/3.8
Magic Johnson - 12.3/3.7
Jason Kidd pre Dallas - 9.3/3.3
John Stockton - 10.1/2.8
Zeke - 8.9/3.3
Deron pre 2014 - 9.4/3.5
Rondo - 9.1/2.8

Those gives them the following AST:TOV ratios:
CP3 - 3.39
Nash - 2.82
Magic - 3.32
Kidd - 2.82
Stockton - 3.61
Zeke - 2.70
Deron - 2.69
Rondo - 3.25

Paul still comes out high but in the regular season he has a sizeable gap over the field that's not there in the postseason where he's actually beat by Stockton easily and barely over Magic and Rondo.

[Lost92Bricks]

I'd just like to add that CP3's assist to turnover ratio in the postseason isn't as high as in the regular season. IMO it shows maybe his low turnovers don't really matter as much as you'd think and its more of a stylistic difference than an efficiency difference between Paul and the other ATG PGs. Here's a flawed metric but I'll post it anyway.

PGs career AST/TOV in the PS:
CP3 - 9.5/2.8
Nash in PHO - 10.7/3.8
Magic Johnson - 12.3/3.7
Jason Kidd pre Dallas - 9.3/3.3
John Stockton - 10.1/2.8
Zeke - 8.9/3.3
Deron pre 2014 - 9.4/3.5
Rondo - 9.1/2.8

Those gives them the following AST:TOV ratios:
CP3 - 3.39
Nash - 2.82
Magic - 3.32
Kidd - 2.82
Stockton - 3.61
Zeke - 2.70
Deron - 2.69
Rondo - 3.25

Paul still comes out high but in the regular season he has a sizeable gap over the field that's not there in the postseason where he's actually beat by Stockton easily and barely over Magic and Rondo.

That's only because of his injured postseason in 2012 and his injured series against Denver in 2009 where he clearly wasn't himself. It has nothing to do with any "stylistic differences". Look at his AST/TO ratio outside of those 3 series and it matches up with what he does in the regular season.

I don't know why people try to minimize turnovers. They're even worse than missed shots because they completely end your possession (while a miss can be offensive rebounded) and they can hurt your defense as well since they often result in easy baskets on the other end. They're apart of maintaining an efficient offense and when someone is as good at reducing them as Paul, I don't see why it shouldn't be considered.

[Quotatious]

#1 - Tracy McGrady '03
#2 - Patrick Ewing '90
#3 - Moses Malone '83


Still the same votes as I had in the previous thread. I don't buy the arguments for Kobe over T-Mac. McGrady's productivity was clearly superior (Bryant never had a season even close to '03 T-Mac in terms of boxscore metrics, even if he had seasons, like '03 or '06, that were close to '03 T-Mac in terms of raw numbers) and his on/off court net is about as good as Kobe ever had.

Already explained why I have Ewing ahead of Malone. Slightly more complete skill-set and about equal statistical production. Difference in terms of team success doesn't really mean anything because of totally different circumstances/supporting cast (same applies to T-Mac vs Moses). Besides, even though Ewing played only two playoff rounds, he still played more games than Moses did (92 for Ewing, 91 for Malone, so the sample is pretty equal, and Patrick also faced really tough opponents in the playoffs, and played very well against them).

What I saw from T-Mac in '03 makes me believe that he could lead a championship team, if he had a better supporting cast, or if you replaced Jordan, Wade or Bryant on some of their championship teams, with '03 McGrady. I totally don't buy the argument that he struggled in the playoffs that year. In my opinion, he actually helped his team overachieve - on paper, they didn't seem to be good enough to take the Pistons to 7 games (or take a 3-1 lead), and even when he was supposedly "struggling", he still went for 31.7/ 6.7/ 4.7/ 2 stl. on 56.1% TS (which is 4.2% above regular season league average TS that year, and the average playoff TS% was probably even lower than that, so McGrady was a very, very efficient scorer). Also, keep in mind that the Pistons (4th best defense in the league) were much better defensively than an average opponent McGrady faced in the regular season, so he pretty much played up to his RS standards in that playoff series. You know a player is really great when he gets criticized for putting up 31.7 ppg on 56.1% TS in a playoff series against a much better team...I mean - damn, those expectations would be pretty high even for peak Jordan, let alone peak McGrady.

Fun fact about T-Mac - he scored below 20 points in only 6 of the 82 games he played that year, and he scored 30 or more in 54 of those 82 games, including 13 games with 40+ points.

Also, let's don't act like he had no right to struggle a bit with his shooting in the last 4 games of that ORL/DET series. He didn't have a real second option (his supporting cast was generally horrible), he averaged 39.4 minutes per game in the regular season, and had to fight really hard just to make the playoffs. He also had to deal with a bad back. I mean, read this article:

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2002-10-03/sports/0210030214_1_gutman-mcgrady-magic

It's incredible how he went on to have his career-best season if he considered not playing at all that year.

Taking all of that into account, he had the right to be a little tired...

[Dr Spaceman]

Okay I think this is my final ballot:

1. Dirk Nowitzki 2011
2. Jerry West 1969
3. Steve Nash 2007

[MyUniBroDavis]

...

I understand what you're saying about Nash's shooting advantage along with the pressure he puts on defenses and I'm not gonna argue against it. It does allows him to be a more explosive, dangerous scorer.

What I disagree with is the notion that Nash's teams have a higher ceiling offensively. The Clippers last season played at the same level as the '07 Suns on that end.

'07 Suns: 113.9 ORtg (+7.4)
'15 Clippers: 112.4 ORtg (+6.8)

'07 Nash: 118.6 on-court ORtg (+12.1)
'15 Paul: 118.3 on-court ORtg (+12.7)

This isn't even factoring in the Clippers' numbers being deflated due to opposing teams' intentionally hacking of Jordan bringing their FT% down to bottom of the league levels.

I can buy Nash being better, but I don't think it's clear at all...Paul has proven that given a really good supporting cast he can run an offense on par with Nash's best.

Once again, this is because of the lineups played

according to bball reference, these are the lineups that the Clippers played without Paul (10 minutes was the breakoff point)

according to bball reference, this was their lineups without Paul
R. Bullock | J. Crawford | G. Davis | J. Farmar | S. Hawes
J. Crawford | G. Davis | S. Hawes | A. Rivers | H. Turkoglu
R. Bullock | J. Crawford | G. Davis | J. Farmar | S. Hawes
M. Barnes | J. Crawford | G. Davis | S. Hawes | A. Rivers
R. Bullock | J. Crawford | J. Farmar | S. Hawes | D. Jordan

Neither Redick or Griffin were in a lineup without Paul according to bball reference.

this is reflected on their on-off stats

Redick had +10.2 on offense
Griffin had +14 on offense.

Amare, who I think most will agree isnt exactly blown away by Griffin on offense, was a mere +3

[eminence]

Hmm. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the bolded statement, but I'm going to bring up an issue that I have with another point you made as well: sample size. I don't think we have enough of it to do granular analysis of just 1 season between these guys. I understand it's a peaks project, but in the interest of not turning this into a rote statistical comparison I'd ask you why you think Nash's scoring skill set in 2007 was so diminished that we can't use a series from 05 (a pre-peak season) to inform us as to the skills he would go on to display in later seasons. If we're not going to use other seasons to inform our analysis, then I don't feel comfortable doing this project in general, because we have nowhere near enough information to make conclusions as strong as we are attempting to.

Okay, that said, back to sample size.

Here are Nash's scoring numbers against the Lakers: 16.0 PPG on .534 TS%.
Here's Nash's numbers against the Spurs: 21.3 PPG on .605 TS%.

Lakers were a +2.1 defense, Spurs were a -6.6 defense.

Okay, big picture: Nash has a disastrous scoring series against the 28th ranked defense, and then goes out and demolishes the 2nd best defense in the league. What about this makes sense to you? And why are you then comfortable taking an aggregate of both series and saying "See? Efficiency edge gone."

Given that 2007 is actually his career Phoenix low, and given that he performed exactly in line with his career average agains the Spurs who went on to win the title, which of these statements are more reasonable to you:

1. Nash had a fluke bad series against the Lakers
2. Nash's Lakers series should be extremely informative to us and we should use it as the basis of our claim that Nash can't keep up his efficiency edge in the postseason

Because you chose 2.

Or maybe, both series were a bit of a fluke (cause he didn't duplicate that Spurs series) and the reality is somewhere in between. Nash consistently fell in efficiency in the playoffs and there really is no argument there, it's a fact.

Fair enough. Nash has posted better numbers in his career, Paul has not, but we can just keep it focused on these two specific years since you prefer.

Not between 05-07 he doesn't, I would expect most Nash peak arguments to come from that era. And those were his best clutch numbers during that time period.

Here is the difference in volume per100 between Kevin Durant's 2014 and Kobe Bryant's 2006: -3.8 (Durant - Kobe)
Here is the difference in efficiency: +6.4 % (Durant - Kobe)

Here is the difference in volume per100 between Nash and Paul: -3.5 (Nash - Paul)
And efficiency: +7.8% (Nash - Paul)

Ignoring playoffs again, woohoo! Nash has the regular season scoring edge, but in the playoffs he has no such edge.

Okay, let's pick a more relevant series. here is how they compared against the Spurs (note the 07 Spurs were a better defense than the 08 Spurs and won the title):

Nash 07: 21.3 PPG/ 60.5 TS%
Paul 08: 23.7 PPG/55.5 TS%

Gap between the two defenses is pretty small ('07 Spurs #2 -6.6, '08 Spurs #3 -5.7) And as I'm sure you know the Suns played at a much higher pace, 100.5 ppg to 92.1 ppg, Paul scored a greater portion of his teams points by a solid margin (25.7% vs 21.1%).

It's not that I'm trying to brush it away, it's that I think the ends justify the means. For one thing, Phoenix was the 5th best team at protecting the ball in 2007. For two, Nash taking all those risks enabled the team to reach an offensive ceiling no other team ever has.

Re: pace, I just don't think it's a coincidence that both of the greatest offensive dynasties we've seen played at breakneck pace. Transition scoring is also by far the most efficient at a team level, pretty easily backed up.

If you think I'm giving Nash/Magic too much credit fine, but when two guys I consider actual savants happen to employ the exact same strategy and achieve the exact same results, I think there's a reason for it.

For the record, Magic Johnson has basically the same TOV% numbers as Nash through their primes.

Got work, so gonna be brief, you're trying to prop up Nash as an alltime level scorer and it's not the truth. He was good, but has no huge edge over Paul in that department like you're trying to make it seem.

[E-Balla]

I'd just like to add that CP3's assist to turnover ratio in the postseason isn't as high as in the regular season. IMO it shows maybe his low turnovers don't really matter as much as you'd think and its more of a stylistic difference than an efficiency difference between Paul and the other ATG PGs. Here's a flawed metric but I'll post it anyway.

PGs career AST/TOV in the PS:
CP3 - 9.5/2.8
Nash in PHO - 10.7/3.8
Magic Johnson - 12.3/3.7
Jason Kidd pre Dallas - 9.3/3.3
John Stockton - 10.1/2.8
Zeke - 8.9/3.3
Deron pre 2014 - 9.4/3.5
Rondo - 9.1/2.8

Those gives them the following AST:TOV ratios:
CP3 - 3.39
Nash - 2.82
Magic - 3.32
Kidd - 2.82
Stockton - 3.61
Zeke - 2.70
Deron - 2.69
Rondo - 3.25

Paul still comes out high but in the regular season he has a sizeable gap over the field that's not there in the postseason where he's actually beat by Stockton easily and barely over Magic and Rondo.

That's only because of his injured postseason in 2012 and his injured series against Denver in 2009 where he clearly wasn't himself. It has nothing to do with any "stylistic differences". Look at his AST/TO ratio outside of those 3 series and it matches up with what he does in the regular season.

I don't know why people try to minimize turnovers. They're even worse than missed shots because they completely end your possession (while a miss can be offensive rebounded) and they can hurt your defense as well since they often result in easy baskets on the other end. They're apart of maintaining an efficient offense and when someone is as good at reducing them as Paul, I don't see why it shouldn't be considered.

That's not the only reason he goes from a 4.33 ratio to a 3.39 over that period and I can also remove his 08 postseason performance and watch his ratio plummet. In 2012 Paul had a bad (for him) AST:TOV ratio even before his injury (7.8:3.4).

And no one is minimizing turnovers in general but as far as great playmakers go turnovers seem to be the downside of making amazing plays for others and even CP doesn't keep his ratio down in the postseason. Now most people don't see his low turnovers as anything more then a result of how he plays but when you ask a poster to make note of it in a comparison to Nash it makes it look like you're using his low turnovers to say he's a better playmaker than Nash.

[Quotatious]

Got work, so gonna be brief, you're trying to prop up Nash as an alltime level scorer and it's not the truth. He was good, but has no huge edge over Paul in that department like you're trying to make it seem.

Agreed. Nash was a very, very good scorer, but he's not a better scorer than guys like Magic or CP3, and none of them were all-time great scorers (they were maybe "all-time good", but not "all-time great"). Volume matters, and Nash never even averaged 19 ppg for a full season. I know he's extremely efficient, especially for a guard, but he's not close to guys like Barkley, Durant, Kobe, peak T-Mac, as a scorer (just mentioning the players who haven't been selected yet). He's arguably the GOAT shooter, at least top 5, but scoring and shooting are two separate categories.

Nothing indicates that Nash is a better scorer than CP3. I mean - why would we complicate it more than just looking at their volume and efficiency? Paul is a higher volume guy, Nash higher efficiency, the gaps are very similar in both aspects, in the RS as well as in the playoffs. They're about equal.

[E-Balla]

PGs:
1. 08 Chris Paul
2. 66 Jerry West
3/4. 05 Nash/96 Penny (in order of who I'm leaning towards)
5/6. 99 Kidd/85 IT

Wings:
1 03 T-Mac
2. 06 Kobe Bryant
3. 14 Kevin Durant
4. 61 Elgin Baylor
5. 97 Grant Hill

Bigs:
1/2/3. 11 Dirk/90 Pat/83 Moses (in order of who I'm leaning towards)
4. 90 Charles Barkley
5/6/7. 11 Dwight/98 Karl/00 Zo (again, in order)

My nominations will be:
1. 03 Tracy McGrady
2. 11 Dirk Nowitzki
3. 90 Patrick Ewing

[ceiling raiser]

PGs:
1. 08 Chris Paul
2. 66 Jerry West
3/4. 05 Nash/96 Penny (in order of who I'm leaning towards)
5. 99 Jason Kidd

Wings:
1 03 T-Mac
2. 06 Kobe Bryant
3. 14 Kevin Durant
4. 61 Elgin Baylor
5. 97 Grant Hill

Bigs:
1/2/3. 11 Dirk/90 Pat/83 Moses (in order of who I'm leaning towards)
4. 90 Charles Barkley
5. 11 Dwight/98 Karl/00 Zo (again, in order)

My nominations will be:
1. 03 Tracy McGrady
2. 11 Dirk Nowitzki
3. 90 Patrick Ewing

When do you think Stockton comes into play for PGs? Is he far from the pack?