Doctor MJ wrote:AdagioPace wrote:toodles23 wrote:Curry and the Warriors play this season are showing how stacked and ridiculously high IQ the '15-'19 Warriors were. Teams like the Rockets and Lebron Cavs got a lot of criticism compared to the Warriors because of their simple, heliocentric model, but what we're now seeing is that for 99% of NBA teams Kerr's system doesn't work because it requires exceptionally high IQ players to function well.
In Kerr's system you're inevitably going to ask guys like Wiggins to make quick, quality reads and decisions in all kinds of situations. That makes you unguardable if it's Iguodala, but with your typical player it probably won't work out that well.
For all the talk of Curry's portability, in many ways I think guys like Luka/Lebron/Harden are much more portable because their games consolidate most of the team's decision making into their hands, making the game very simple for the other guys.
this is something I've thought about many times. There will always be more mediocre teams around needing a boost than all-time great ones.
It rests on how much you value being of great utility to as many teams as possible (a.k.a being widely expendable), vs, being of great utility to a minority of all-time great teams.
When talking about portabiity the discussion here has always revolved round "the best of the possible worlds" maybe because being portable in a low-talent environment is given for granted and not of much interest when talking about all-time rankings. Call it, "inverse-portability" if you want. (are we just squabbling around the definition of floor-raising ?)
Doncic,harden and lebron are literally more "portable", physically speaking. In classical latin there was the term "portāre" (it survives in italian) which means "carry" or "carry around".
They can be carried around the league and put in a variety of contexts without showing a decline in their performances making the most out of the amount of talent surrounding them.
PS: what applies to '15-'19 Warriors ,also applies to '12-'15 Spurs. Once Popovich realized that tony,manu,timmy and diaw were declining inexorably, he decided to go straight to iso kawhi-aldridge mode.
I think it's really important, when discussing Curry, to remember what things were like in '12-13 and especially '13-14. Under Mark Jackson, there was no requirement for high BBIQ players because the system had not IQ. And Green was on the bench, and Klay was not the Klay he'd be under Kerr...which has everything to do with why West and others wanted Jackson fired.
In that capacity, Curry was more ball-dominant, and was regularly taking and making astonishingly difficult shots. People see the 6 seed and the year after and conclude quite rightly that this Warrior team had something really wrong with it, but Curry managed to lead the league in +/- that regular season. I'm not talking about on/off, I mean, there was more winning done on the floor with Curry that regular season than anyone else in the entire league.
I think people confuse disrupting Kerr's motion offense with fundamentally stopping Curry. The reality is that he's proven to be a superstar level offensive anchor before "playing with joy", and when you're seeing him struggle with Kerr, you're seeing him struggle in the style Kerr has him play.
Now, I'm not trying to claim that Curry can be a one-man band like Harden because frankly Harden's blown past anyone in history on that front. There are guys who can handle great volume better than Curry, just not many.
This is another way of saying that if Curry is still basically prime Curry, I really don't think there's any doubt that he could do the heliocentric thing pretty dang well. Maybe he's not really physically up to it now, I don't know, but I know that either way Kerr wants to keep playing in the style he's been playing because that's what he loves, and if the Steph/Klay/Dray are able to come back to form together, that's probably still the best approach.
But it's a hard jump start pulling that off with a roster that isn't used to playing together and who largely has never played this way at all. It's easier to slot one new guy in than it is to re-create the necessary skill set from nothing.
Re: portability. Yeah, it's a term that's tough because the word can be applied to many things. I'd say the key thing here is that "portability" as we use it is largely a concept that normalizes for talent. The more portable player is supposed to be the one who can fit in around the game's of others. Similar to versatility, but you don't need to be able to that versatile depending on your style of play.
As for the more Harden-type concept, I'd lean on the "heliocentric" metaphor and I'd be inclined to say that where more portable players are better planets, Harden's a better sun.
Another terminology which is perhaps more practical here is floor-raising vs ceiling-raising. Floor-raisers can go anywhere and do their thing, but they may need to shove everyone else with major talent into tiny shadows of themselves in order to do it. Ceiling-raisers are the ones who make it easier for other major talents to thrive when they are actually on the court together.
We don't use the word "portable" for floor-raisers, but the implication of the term is that you can raise that floor anywhere, so we're aware that there is a sense of portability that applies.
As far as portable and ceiling-raising, someone who is portable may not be that much of a ceiling-raiser necessarily, because in the end if you can do several things pretty well but nothing exceptionally well, that's a lowering of ceiling. But there is a type of player that is both portable and scalable to exceptionally high ceilings, and Curry at his best is one of these.
Very interesting post. I'm interested to know where you think Durant falls into this "floor-raising vs ceiling-raising" discussion because I don't see him mentioned here. I feel he is a special case as well not just Curry but they are obviously different players. To me he is as portable as they as come and I think he can be equally great at both things (floor-raising/ceiling-raising) at the same time. It's hard for me to call him exclusively one thing or another. It feels like he can benefit any team to an optimal degree without any real diminishing returns. Certainly one of the most versatile players I have ever seen.
Interesting discussion tho. I agree that the term portable is a bit confusing sometimes.
