Lebronnygoat wrote:First off idk how you quantified spacers like that. Very weak criteria. When I tried doing what you did for 14-23 span, I only get 3000 possessions. Are you removing Draymond? By your definition he’s 31.7% on a lot more 3PA’s than 0.5 in the RS. Sounds like a spacer. With Dray I see similarly the amount of possessions you wrote down. The only huge non Dray at the 5 lineups Curry leads good offensively is with Looney at the 5. The most used Bogut at the 5 lineup they ran in this span was a horrible offense. 103 ORTG. In fact, without Durant in this span the offense falls to 111.5 ORTG. League average in this span was 110.0. That’s a measly +1.5 offense. Not to mention, Dray at the 5 provides a huge amount more spacing versus a traditional big, especially against non elite defenses. Dray is also not a bad shooter for a 5 during these times, especially 2016 to 2017. He carries all time passing and facilitation/connecting for a 5, seriously watch the passes he makes. Plenty of the times Draymond is mobile and brings the 5 out the rim, then he has pinpoint passing accuracy to dart the interior even without Curry having to gravitate anyone to him. Draymond is also the best screener you can put for the Warriors motion system, helps Curry get open and others move off the ball. We talk about Jokic with his h-offs and screening, Draymond is really a pleasure to watch doing those actions as well. GP2 and Livingston playing are the weak links offensively, Draymond is actually a clear positive offensively at the 5.
I determined who was a spacer on a year-by-year basis, so some years Draymond was included and some years he wasn’t. Which I think is pretty appropriate, because I definitely think virtually anyone would agree that some years he was a spacer and some years he wasn’t.
As for the rest of this, I’ll quote something I said earlier this thread about this:
Basically, Draymond ended up being counted as a spacer in this study in the years where impact data tells us he had a notably positive offensive impact. The rest of the years, he was a pretty neutral offensive player. Of course, a neutral offensive player is still at least somewhat better than your typical non-spacer, but LeBron played with multiple superior offensive players who were not counted as a spacer in all or nearly all of the years he played with them (i.e. Wade, Bosh, and AD). So the effect of playing with great offensive players that weren’t counted as spacers in this study *really* doesn’t go the direction you’re suggesting.
Another issue we don’t talk about enough is that LeBron James deserves to play with more spacers, why? Because he can play the 4 as an amazing defender. He’s literally in the conversation as the goat wing defender. He’s allowed to have more offensive pieces 1-3 as opposed to Curry 2-4, that’s one more offensive position freed up.
I understand what you’re saying, but the flip side of that line of thinking is that if LeBron is playing as a 4 then he “deserves” to play with worse defenders, because “one more defensive position is freed up.” So this intuition doesn’t really lead us to think the team outcomes would be better overall either way. It’s basically just shuffling around the deck chairs regarding the fact that spacers tend to be worse defenders and vice versa.
In any event, this doesn’t really get to the primary point of the thread—which is what happens to these guys’ offenses when they play with fewer spacers. One of these guys sees a big decrease in their team’s offensive efficiency when playing with fewer spacers, and the other does not. Which indicates you can more effectively surround one of these guys with defense-oriented players than you could with the other guy.
If you’d like to respond by saying that, as it relates LeBron and Curry, LeBron is bigger and a better defender so you can put him at the 4 and surround him with less defensively oriented players and still not necessarily have a worse defensive outcome, I think that’s a potentially valid argument in a discussion about which one of these two players is better overall. That’s not really what this thread is about though. It’s about what happens offensively with different types of players (indeed, the thread isn’t just about LeBron and Curry, but rather uses them as a case study). You might accept that LeBron’s offenses sink a lot more when he lacks spacing but try to argue that his ability to play the PF position mitigates the harm of that, but that isn’t actually arguing against the point of the thread.
And, in any event, I’d note that in reality we didn’t actually see defensive outcomes from LeBron-at-the-4 that were anywhere near as good as what we saw from the Warriors. Indeed, some of the years LeBron played the most at PF were amongst the worst defensive teams he ever had—teams like the 2014 Heat, 2017 Cavs, and 2018 Cavs were amongst the ones where he played the very most at the PF position. So yeah, I don’t think in reality we see LeBron being at the PF position seeming like it defensively makes up for needing more spacers around him to function anywhere near his best offensively. Which isn’t a big surprise, since putting LeBron at the PF position will tend to lower his defensive impact (while increasing his offensive impact by allowing more spacers to be put around him), because it puts him at a position he’s less suited to defensively and the opportunity cost defensively at that position is higher. His teams ended up often doing that anyways because the alternative was often to put LeBron with multiple non-spacers, and, as indicated in this thread, that really dampens what he can squeeze out offensively. So his teams were typically stuck having to choose which side of the ball they wanted to actually get the most out of. You could run LeBron at the PF with lots of spacers and you’d maximize LeBron’s offensive impact, but you’d get less defensive impact from LeBron and have the rest of the team tend to be weak defensively. Or you could run LeBron at the SF with fewer spacers and you’d get more defensive impact from LeBron and better defensive players around him, but you’d suffer a big drop off offensively. With a perimeter-gravity player like Steph, it seems like you don’t run into that catch-22.
