2020-21 NBA Season Discussion

[Doctor MJ]

Negatives - CP3 is eating them alive

Don't see anyway around this when your main two guards are CP3's old back up whose never been known for defense and a guy who is way under 6 feet. I mean obviously if Paul's injured enough this wouldn't be the case, but no one is better at taking apart flawed defense than Paul. If the Nuggets were to somehow win this series and play the Jazz, I expect that Mitchell & Conley would feast just like Dame did.

[Doctor MJ]

The Nuggets ranked 7th with 117.1 ORTG while the 2006 Mavs ranked 1st with 111.8 (that's before considering 2003 and 2004 where they are nearly 2 points ahead of 2nd) so it's hard to for me to act like that means anything

So, what we're all running smack into here is the shift in eras and what to do with it in comparisons.

I think what I'd say most basically is this:

While I do value relative values, it really bothers me when folks take the relative value as if they are the only thing that's real.

2006 was a really short time ago. Offensive effectiveness in 2006 was basically unchanged from 1986. The reason why things are different in the last 15 years is because the basketball world finally identified what worked and started optimizing along those lines.

You saying "Yeah but Jokic plays in an era with high ORtg" is really no different from you saying "Yeah but Jokic is only this effective because he's learned to shoot from all ranges, and since he's playing in an era where other people are also learning to be this good at basketball, we should act like he doesn't have those skills."

So while I'm really not trying to say that Jokic is definitively better because he's leading offenses that are much more effective than any Dirk led, I do take issue with the idea that we should blindly be more impressed with guys just because their competition was dumber.

Quite honestly, basketball fans are going to grapple with this from here on out. Until the last basketball fans dies, there's going to be debate about how to evaluate before our current time period and after our current time period. We're the ones who've lived through the sea change, and if we're fortunate enough to live long lives, we're going to be talking with generations of basketball fans who come later are literally find the eras before now to be pre-historic in a way you really have to go back to at least the '60s to have seen previously.

All this to say, there's something really BIG going on here, and I don't want this to get too focused on the specific Jokic vs Dirk comparison.

If you went by this logic you would also have to credit Dirk for playing on a much better defense than Jokic. The 2006 Mavs would rank 1st in the league by 2021 standards, or to put it another way the 2021 Nuggets would rank 29th by 2006 standards.

It's not really fair to act like Dirk is a much better defensive big just because he played in a league with midrange shooting teams, but neither is to claim Jokic offense in 2021 is more impressive just because he played on a team with more 3pt shooting. If you judge Nuggets by even 2011 standards in a vacuum they look like Bargnani Raptors on defense.

Nope. There is no reasonable case to argue that the 2010s offensive revolution is built on NBA defenses en masse forgetting how to play.

What's changed is the offense. End of story.

[Doctor MJ]

Between my debates with 70s and Doc I now find myself asking myself a Kobe/Nash question that I am absolutely terrified to actually ask. But if some of their theory stuff is right I think I have to conclude I've had the wrong guy as the better offensive player and that's doubly confusing to me because I'm pretty sure Doc and I have long thought the same guy was the better offensive player and while I don't recall ever discussing it with 70s I think he does to.

But these Giannis/Kawhi arguments really has been thinking maybe I've had it all wrong.

Sounds like you're concluding that Kobe was the better offensive player with some reluctance. If so that's an understandable position and I hope my recent bloviations haven't made you feel like you'd be better off just avoiding more conflict with me. My apologies if that's at all the case. I don't want to make people feel that way.

What theory stuff are you talking about?

Why would I want to avoid discussions with you? I certainly wouldn't call any of it conflict. And yes I'm starting to wonder if Kobe's approach might have more playoff resiliency than Nash's.

The Giannis part is Giannis is unquestionably a great regular season offensive player. His individual and team numbers both tell us that. Playoffs he's less effective and more dependent on teammates. Nash for the most part was still very effective as an individual offensive player but his teams fell short quite a bit.

The Kawhi part is your discussion about him manipulating rosters that aren't actually best suited for him. Similar things with Nash. Teams were always built to give him offensive options at every spot on the court and often played guys up the lineup to make life better for him. Dirk/Finley at center/PF and STAT/Trix the same. Kobe's approach means more conventional lineups and better playoff defense.

And in looking back through champions for a while you see that generally speaking the scoring superstars are faring better than the playmaking ones with Lebron complicating things by being both. Curry, Kawhi, KD, Dirk, Wade, Kobe, Duncan is another tough one since his impact is so much defensive, Shaq, Jordan. Magic is really the guy in the last 40 years to be an exception to this.

So have I had it all wrong in just defaulting to of course Nash is the better offensive player? I think maybe yes. That while it feels completely wrong, come playoff time maybe you really do want that volume guy who isn't as impacted by the variance of teammates. Is this why CP3 has limited playoff success. Why KG never led an upset in Minnesota? Why Jason Kidd teams had a ceiling, etc?

You guys just have me thinking is all.

I've also come to have some appreciation for hero ball players against tough competition. Easiest way to avoid turnovers is just to "run the ball" rather than pass, and if you're someone who is specifically skilled at hitting tough shots from range, so much the better. That's Kobe down to the ground.

I'd be hard-pressed however to specifically argue that Nash's teams were weaker at playoff offense than the Kobe's. To me the concern with Nash in the modern game is how he'd handle getting targeted by the opposing offense.

On that note, I find Trae Young to be a great study in that. How would Young be if he were a) a better shooter, b) considerably smarter in the moment, c) a bit bigger, but d) slower?

(To be clear, Young is very smart by all normal NBA standards, but this is Nash we're talking about.)

I think Nash would be great today, but better than Kobe? Reluctant to say that.

[falcolombardi]

i dont think the 2004 mavs would put a +9 offense today but if you put those nash and dirk in a modern spread offense that avoid long 2's and playing any non shooters?

i am sure they would score way better than they did in 2004 in absolute terms, i honestly think that duo would fight for #1 offense in 2021 with good role players and better than healthy denver

but of course that team had nash who was a smarter and more skilled player than murray so the comparision wouldnt be straight up dirk vs jokic anyway

[Doctor MJ]

Random observation but I glanced at Crowder's basketball reference page and realized how many high profile trades he was in.

The draft pick he was taken with was in the LeBron sign and trade in 2010.

In the Rondo to Dallas trade.

In the Irving to Boston trade.

In the Conley trade.

Interesting.

While we're at it, I just want to sing Crowder's praises. Some "great role" players never make noise again after they leave the contender they were on, and then there are guys like Crowder who seem to be able to become essential wherever they go.

[Doctor MJ]

Seeing the Dirk vs Jokic discussion and I am really struggling to compare players from 2000-2010 and players from the last few years. The league is talented as its ever been but this really feels like a completely different sport being played out there now. It is approaching the passing stats change in the NFL in terms of difference.

Without handchecking I wonder how teams are gonna start scheming for these wings moving forward. Id argue elite pullup scorers/shooters have never been more valuable in league history than they are now due to the lack of defensive rules.

I mean, the handchecking rule shifted 15+ years ago and we're talking about an offensive revolution that really only gained steam 5 years ago. I don't think handchecking really has much to do with what we're seeing right now.

It's about shooting from range. Once you have 3, 4, 5 guys on the court who are in high value scoring position far from the basket and opening up space to attack on the interior, there's going to be a new equilibrium between offense and defense.

[Doctor MJ]

Seeing the Dirk vs Jokic discussion and I am really struggling to compare players from 2000-2010 and players from the last few years. The league is talented as its ever been but this really feels like a completely different sport being played out there now. It is approaching the passing stats change in the NFL in terms of difference.

The analogy to the NFL becoming a passing game instead of a running game is dead on. Both the NFL & NBA have had some strategic shifts on offense that makes the game more offensive - and yes, both have been further stoked by rule changes, but the strategy is the key change.

By contrast, I've been saying for decades that hockey needs to make changes because the supremacy of defensive strategy has made it really hard to get non-hard core fans excited.

The thing that's funny about hockey is that it's so, so easy to fix but hockey purists don't want to do it. If hockey goalies have to be allowed to wear absurdly excessive padding in the name of their safety, then you have to make the goal bigger if you want to have a similar balance to what it was in the Gretzky era.

Then of course there's baseball who put themselves in just a really tough position when they covertly embraced steroids and then had to backtrack with performative outrage when it became too obvious.

[Doctor MJ]

Very interesting thread on twitter I came across recently, that I think is worth sharing

Read on Twitter

A lot to unpack here.

I think it's telling that the author takes it as a given that he knows who the "MUCH better" player is even as he recognizes that the player he knows to be better is "less useful". This is where I'd point out that there's no actual difference between the two terms and those thinking there is have confused themselves.

It is meaningful to talk about context-specific value as opposed to a more general "goodness" which implies something more like an average-expected value, but if you're "less useful in the playoffs", you're not a "much better player" by definition.

I'm not going to agree with him that it's any kind of a given that Mitchell is better than Giannis in the playoffs. He's clearly the better scorer, but the overall comparison is more complex as always. But if Mitchell is better in the playoffs than Giannis, then by the standards established by the basketball world, he's better than Giannis period. For better or for worse, playoff basketball is used as the ultimate gauge of how good a player is in NBA basketball culture.

To get a touch more specific, what we're essentially talking about is Mitchell's "thing" scaling better against tougher, smarter defense than Giannis' thing. The great question of Giannis continues to be - for the 3rd post-season in a row - whether he can figure out a counter to the counter. Can he learn to hit the proverbial curveball, or not?

[Colbinii]

The concept of Mitchell being a better post-season player than Giannis stems from the fact of Mitchell having a skill-set significantly better for being a #1 option in comparison to Giannis.

At a certain point in rankings, the best #2 options would rank over the worst #1 options (2001 Kobe vs 2001 Iverson, for example) or something like 2016 Klay Thompson over 2016 DeMar DeRozan.

If you truly do see Donovan Mitchell as a top 5-10 #1 Option in the league and don't see Giannis as a viable #1 option for a contender, then the argument for Mitchell over Giannis is feasible and not outlandish.

[Doctor MJ]

i dont think the 2004 mavs would put a +9 offense today but if you put those nash and dirk in a modern spread offense that avoid long 2's and playing any non shooters?

i am sure they would score way better than they did in 2004 in absolute terms, i honestly think that duo would fight for #1 offense in 2021 with good role players and better than healthy denver

but of course that team had nash who was a smarter and more skilled player than murray so the comparision wouldnt be straight up dirk vs jokic anyway

To piggy back on this:

If you go back in time, and run a pace & space with pick & roll model with Nash, Dirk, and other players you groom to be 3 & D, you get a dynasty. Hindsight is always 20/20 so we shouldn't make too much of this, but sometimes it's hard not to think about.

Also, while the waters are muddy in terms of who was pushing for what in Dallas in that era, and while I admire Don Nelson more than most comparably successful coaches, it has to be said that he really seemed like he was more of an experimentalist rather than a theorist.

As in, Nelson tended to have a lot of wacky lineups that couldn't really be said to be proto-pace & space. They had elements of pace & space, but then "Hey, let's get the 7 foot 7 guy who killed a lion!".

By contrast, guys like Mike D'Antoni and (the forgotten) Rick Pitino had a specific theory based around the power of the 3 point shot which has now been shown to be absolutely correct.

[mikejames23]

2021 Chris Paul is similar to Prime/Peak John Stockton.

Yeah, this season is some of his best work in my recent memory. He's carving the Nuggets up and still somehow tied or better in elementary numbers like W/S per 48, BPM and PER to Booker in the playoffs, despite his first round injury.

[Colbinii]

2021 Chris Paul is similar to Prime/Peak John Stockton.

Yeah, this season is some of his best work in my recent memory. He's carving the Nuggets up and still somehow tied or better in elementary numbers like W/S per 48, BPM and PER to Booker in the playoffs, despite his first round injury.

He is going against one of the smallest guards in the league and Austin Rivers though and against a team with no rim protection.

I was more-so referencing the fact that Chris Paul at age 36 is as good as any version of John Stockton.

[eminence]

Who was coaching the Warriors when they went small back in ‘90 (I think) and upset the Robinson Spurs, was that Nelson?

[falcolombardi]

Seeing the Dirk vs Jokic discussion and I am really struggling to compare players from 2000-2010 and players from the last few years. The league is talented as its ever been but this really feels like a completely different sport being played out there now. It is approaching the passing stats change in the NFL in terms of difference.

The analogy to the NFL becoming a passing game instead of a running game is dead on. Both the NFL & NBA have had some strategic shifts on offense that makes the game more offensive - and yes, both have been further stoked by rule changes, but the strategy is the key change.

By contrast, I've been saying for decades that hockey needs to make changes because the supremacy of defensive strategy has made it really hard to get non-hard core fans excited.

The thing that's funny about hockey is that it's so, so easy to fix but hockey purists don't want to do it. If hockey goalies have to be allowed to wear absurdly excessive padding in the name of their safety, then you have to make the goal bigger if you want to have a similar balance to what it was in the Gretzky era.

Then of course there's baseball who put themselves in just a really tough position when they covertly embraced steroids and then had to backtrack with performative outrage when it became too obvious.

many other sports have became optimized too

soccer doesnt have rule changes but offense and scoring have gone up as strategy and táctics get better in both sides (less long ball game, more defensive pressing, eh )

baseball with bunts or base stealing becoming discouraged

Boxing has become Cleaner and more tsctical/technical with violent slugfests becoming a thingh of the past

statistics have changed the way the games are played to be more optimized, but optimized doesnt always means it is liked by fans

nfl, soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball a bit from what i have seen

all of them seem to have evolved/changed, whether aided by rules or not to their most optimized styles

and in all of them part of the fans dont like the changes and sometimes blame somethingh, whether new rules or player "softness" or "advanced statistics" for running the game.

it seems to be a common trend in all sports i have series at among its fans

[Texas Chuck]

As in, Nelson tended to have a lot of wacky lineups that couldn't really be said to be proto-pace & space. They had elements of pace & space, but then "Hey, let's get the 7 foot 7 guy who killed a lion!".

By contrast, guys like Mike D'Antoni and (the forgotten) Rick Pitino had a specific theory based around the power of the 3 point shot which has now been shown to be absolutely correct.

I wonder how much of that is actually true about Nellie and how much of that is him intentionally playing up that image. He was such a fun guy and loved doing bits with the media from the fish ties to Pismo Beach Panthers and a million things in between. Absolutely he experimented with Bol shooting 3's and Wang Zhi Zhi and that sort of thing, but when it came down to it I think he was a pretty serious coach who imo deserves to mentioned with those other guys for how he created offensive advantages for his teams.

And he absolutely was playing tons of small ball before small ball was a thing.

[parsnips33]

Would having Murray back help the Nuggets defense much against these guards like Dame, CP3, and Mitchell? Or is the idea just that they'd have enough offense going that it wouldn't matter much what they give up?

[Texas Chuck]

But WHY did Nash's teams fall short? Because it certainly wasn't the offense. The 2005 Suns put up a 118 ORTG in an era far harder to do so, eclipsed only by the 2017 Cavs, Warriors in the past 10 years off the top of my head. And... they lost 4-1. Lol. They put up a worse ORTG against the Spurs 2 years later, but we all know what happened that series (and it went to 7!).

I didn't go through every Nash series and cross check it against the regular season efficiency. I do recall as a Mavs fan the Mavs offense falling short in the playoffs multiple times and sometimes Nash being a major part of that. But admittedly my memory could be flawed as that's 16-20 years ago now. I'm asking a question that I was thinking about not reaching a firm conclusion.

[Outside]

Read on Twitter

Chris Paul is obviously really good at minimizing turnovers, but I think people are making too big of a deal of the zero turnovers thing. In game 2, the announcers were talking about him not having any turnovers during some particular stretch, and literally right then, someone poked the ball out away from him from behind, and it pinballed around between multiple players and bounced back to him in the paint, and he made one of his midrange shots. It was a total fluke that he got it back and it wasn't a turnover.

For a guy who handles the ball as much as he does, I'm not sure that zero turnovers on the regular is a good thing. Is he only making safe passes? Is he not willing to take chances because he doesn't want turnovers? It's all good as long as they're winning, but Denver has looked as soft as a marshmallow so far, and it will get tougher in future rounds.

Just an observation and speculation.

[Texas Chuck]

I'm a bit confused on what you mean because players like Dirk and Duncan are not really high volume players like the other guys you mentioned.

I mean we can pretty much dissect why Garnett, CP3 and Nash's teams lost and it's usually not cause they're not scoring enough. Especially for the latter two.

As for why there is more guys who big time scorers who won championships than guys who dominate through assist - because there are more players in general who dominate through scoring than dominate through assist. It's much more difficult to reach the top tier of basketball playing pass first - just like it is much more difficult for a player to dominate others via defense (Bill Russell). Higher pool of go to scorers than passing savants.

Duncan is a counter-factual of sorts. Or just an exception. But I can't leave him out of a list of best players on champions. Dirk I think does qualify as the archetype I'm talking about even if he's slightly lower volume. He's more scorer than creator though obvious his creation is still there just in a different way.

And maybe you are correct that its a simple numbers game. Just found myself thinking about it and wanted to see if I was crazy or if others thought there might be something to it.

[falcolombardi]

is weird that pace and space took nearly 40 years to truly get going when you think about it

in hindsight it looks so obvious that you wonder why it took this long