Basketballefan wrote:rich316 wrote:Basketballefan wrote:What possible argument does Chris Paul have over Wade? The guy has never been to a conference finals.
Neither has Wade, when he didn't have a top 8 All-time great on his team. Yes, Wade was probably the best player on the 2006 Heat. But still, context is huge in that comparison.
06 shaq wasn't any better than Griffin was this year so that argument is flawed. I would go a step further and say this year's clippers were more talented than the 06 heat by a clear margin.
I don't know if the 06 Heat do any better in the 14 Clippers' situation. Wade had an absolutely incredible last couple playoff series, and a lot of people are simply going to say the Heat won the title and the Clippers didn't, so Wade was obviously better, but if you look deeper, it's not that straightforward.
The '14 Clippers had a 7.27 SRS, finishing 2nd in the league. Unfortunately, they ended up in an absolutely loaded conference. They played a 5.15 SRS Golden State team in the first round, and won in 7 games. They they played a 6.66 SRS Oklahoma City team in the second round, and that SRS underrates them, as Westbrook missed nearly half the season. Those were two of the top 4 teams this season without a doubt, and that matchup featured better teams than most ECFs over the past 15 years. The series was back-and-forth and very close, but OKC won game 5 in controversial fashion, and later the series. It was pretty close to a coin flip, and I wonder how the narrative would've changed had one play swung differently. Paul himself played incredible basketball, so it's hard to fault him for the series.
The 06 Heat finished the regular season with a 3.59 SRS, which ranked 6th in the league. In the East, that was good for the second seed, and two cakewalks in the early round. They beat the 0.51 SRS Bulls and 1.11 SRS Nets in the first two rounds. That illustrates pretty well why complaining that Paul has never made the conference finals doesn't hold up under scrutiny, even if we ignore the obvious objection that teams win playoff series and not players. The difference in level of competition between the 2014 West and the 2006 East is absolutely gigantic, and I have absolutely no doubt that the 14 Clippers would cruise to the conference finals without breaking a sweat against the two opponents Miami had to play to get there. After that, of course, Wade stepped up his level of play to a huge degree. He carried Miami against 6.23 SRS Detroit with an incredible run, and then had his legendary finals against Dallas. Both of those series will go down among the greatest individual playoff series in recent memory. And yet even there, it's easy to see how fragile the narrative is. Wade was poor in games 1 and 2 as Miami lost by double digits. Then, Miami won game 3 by 2, game 5 by 1 (in OT, on a very controversial play), and game 6 by 3. It's easy to see any of those games going the other way, and if they do, Wade is likely not seen as a champion until and LeBron comes to town.
I don't say this to discredit Wade. His 2006 playoffs was absolutely incredible, and at his peak and when healthy, he's one of the greatest guards of all time. My point is merely that when you look at the performances in context, considering Paul's much weaker supporting casts and much stronger playoff opponents, the two are very close. When you try to isolate the individual from the team by +/- or boxscore-based metrics, Paul looks every bit as good as Wade, if not better.
