DraymondGold wrote:1. Portability: Curry > Magic
Hi y'all! I think "Curry is a better shooter" is underselling it by a bit haha. Curry's the GOAT shooter, and one of the greatest outliers in any NBA skills ever, and it just happens to be one of the most valuable offensive skills ever, and one of the most portable skills ever.
And this advantage isn't small either. Magic's 3P% is 20.5% in 1987 (and 21% from 86-88). To be clear, Magic did show that he could improve as a 3 point shooter in 89-91, but he didn't yet have that improvement for the peak year we're arguing, or even the surrounding years.
Maybe I didn't specify well what I meant by that, because I never argued that Curry is "just a better shooter" than Magic. He's significantly better, tiers ahead. Everybody knows that
The question is how much of a value it has in comparison to Magic's advantages. Quite a lot of people recently believe that Curry's shooting is enough to put him ahead of any player, but I want strong evidences for that. Curry didn't anchor better offensive teams than Magic. He looks top tier in imapct metrics, but the little we have from Magic shows him just as spectacular. I mean, we have seen another player who isn't close to Curry shooting-wise surpassing Curry's value in the very same era. LeBron isn't really a better shooter than Magic and a lot of advanatges he has over Steph are identical to the ones Magic possesses. Unlike LeBron, Magic proved consistently that his style of play was very scalable and portable with various different roles.
I really haven't seen any strong evidence suggesting that Curry is more impactful or more portable offensively than Magic. I have seen Curry-led team struggling a lot offensively in 2021 when he played his usual role. Magic transitioned from Showtime fastbreak into slow, grinding HC style in the 1990s effortlessly.
It's true that Magic does have the passing advantage, like y'all suggest. But Curry's more of an outlier with shooting than Magic is with passing. Curry's still an all-star level passer in his own right -- I'd argue he's a better passer than 87 Magic's 21% 3 point shooting (though to be clear this comparison doesn't apply era context).
I think Magic was all-star level shooter in 1987. You just can't look at three point shooting from that era as an indicator of shooting ability. Magic didn't take threes, it's pointless to provide three point efficiency to draw conclusion of his shooting ability. He was already excellet FT shooter that later became all-time great one at very high volume. I remember one tracking numbers from Magic's prime games (can't find it now) suggesting that his midrange shooting efficiency is top tier as well, which resonates well with my impression from watching his games.
I'd say that Magic was a better shooter than LeBron relative to his era, which isn't captured by 21 3P%.
I also have problems comparing specific skills regarded separately from themselves. Magic's offense wasn't so impressive strictly because of his passing game. You have to combine all of his size, ball-handling, foul drawing ability, post game, agressiveness to get an idea why he's so special. The same thing applies to Curry actually - his shooting alone wouldn't turn him into GOAT-level offensive player either. I just think Magic's overall package proved to be more dangerous, while being extremely portable as well.
I'd also argue shooting is slightly more scalable than ball-dominant passing if we're placing them next to other stars, since shooting can fit next to other creators and finishers, while passing really benefits more from finishers.
Magic's passing isn't strictly attached to him being ball-dominant though. As I said, Magic played with ball-dominant players in his career and it didn't stop him from giving his team massive boost. Magic was a capable off-ball player, of course not in Curry's league but his passing brings enormous value even without dominating the ball.
I also don't agree that passing doesn't fit well next to other creators. Having more creators is always extremely beneficial for a team. I don't think it's proven that two shooters are necessarily more impacful than two creators.
Speaking of finishing, Curry's also the GOAT off-ball player and a better finisher. This is important for scalability, since we're discussing how Curry fits next to star teammates. Compare this to Magic, who's far more ball-dominant with his actions.
Why do you think Curry is a better finisher?
Magic wasn't really that ball-dominant. He became more so in the early 1990s when the Lakers changed their style, but he didn't need that to impact the game.
falcolombardi mentions that Curry benefits from playing with passers, which is absolutely true! But I'd argue Magic equally benefits from playing with finishers instead of competing on-ball scorers or creators.
I agree here, I think both teams did reasonably good job on maximizing their talents.
This offball skill also helps Curry close the creation gap. Curry's the GOAT off-ball movement creator, the GOAT perimeter gravity player, an all-time playmaker with hockey assists, an all-time screen setter among guards.
It certainly helps, but the question is - does it close the creation gap? I'm not sure we can say that certainly.
As much as I love subtle skills in basketball, I don't think Curry's screen setting ability is important in this discussion
To be clear, Magic's not terrible from a scalability perspective. Thinking Basketball rates him a 1 in his early years and a 0 in his peak years (compared to Curry's 2). I personally don't have nearly the same offensive scalability concerns with Magic that I did with Hakeem or Duncan. Still, he's a far cry from Curry's near-consensus GOAT status as a scalable offensive player.
Ben's scalability rating is completely arbitrary though. He believes that Curry is more scalable, so he gives him higher rank. I haven't seen any evidences of that being true though.
Thanks for posting these! It's true that Magic on average faced higher defensive opposition than Curry over the course of his prime. And Prime Magic's teams' offensive numbers look great! But I think there's a few things that limit the effectiveness of this argument, at least to me.
A) Curry faced harder defenses at his peak: If we just look at the peak year we're discussing (87 vs 17), Curry's team offense was far more successful against far more difficult average defenses (and remember: Curry's team's offenses were only world-building when Curry was on the court).
We can look at other years though, to conclude that Magic was consistently great against elite defensive competition. That was my point, we shouldn't stick to one year in such comparisions. The bigger sample, the better.
B) Kerr was defense-first: he consistently followed the Popovitch approach of preferring defense-first players over offense-first players. Once Draymond's shot fell off after the 17 Playoffs, the Warriors' best lineup contained 2 non-shooting and non-major scoring threats. Iguodala and Draymond were clearly defensive first guys, whose best offensive skills were their intelligence and their creation. This was going into 2018, when opposing teams (e.g. 18 Rockets) put a priority on having 4+ shooters at once.
So how did these lineups remain so offensively potent? It's pretty clear that Curry's shooting, gravity, and off-ball movement enables Draymond and Iguodala to remain as offensively passable as they were. The film study supports this (e.g. all of Draymond's short-roll passing would be null without the doubles demanded only by Curry and not Klay/KD) and the data supports this (again, the Warriors are only world-beaters with Curry on). This is more of the scalability I mentioned earlier.
That's a good point, but does it explain quite a big difference in actual results? Remember, Magic in 1988-90 period played with wahsed up Kareem or Thompson's father at center, both of whom were bad offensive players at this point. AC Green wasn't bad, but he wasn't a shooter or creator either. For all limitations of Green or bench Warriors players, Curry still had Durant on his side - who was significantly better than any player Magic played with in 1987-91 period.
Magic played mostly with finishers who had no creation ability (outside of Worthy, but he wasn't a great creator either). They didn't have that much of a shooting either, although Scott/Cooper combo certainly helps. The fact that Lakers were GOAT level offensively shows that Magic also boosted good, but limited rosters to the highest level.
C) Peak Curry' still faced far better teams than Peak Magic did. I appreciate the numbers you gave 70sFan! Let me update them to include both the regular season and the playoffs:In literally every single one of Curry's prime playoff years, he faced better average opponents than peak 1987 Magic. The same is true if we take a 3 year peak for Magic from 1986-1988. If we just look at defensive rating, every year Curry won he was facing a harder defense than 1985-1987 Magic.Spoiler:
It's true that Magic's average opponent and opposing defenses got tougher from around 88/89-91. But you'll notice that's when Magic's team started losing... Magic never won in the years he faced harder defenses or harder average opponents than Curry. And remember: Magic's average opponent numbers are slightly overrated vs Curry's, because Magic only played 3-game series in the first round. If we just look at hardest opponent, the 2017 Cavs were a harder opponent than any team Magic ever beat from 1985-1991.
Thanks for more detalied numbers
To be completely fair, Magic got injured in 1989 finals which destroyed Lakers chance of winning the title. In contrast, Kawhi got injured in 2017 WCF, so the numbers clearly overstate Warriors opponents strength in 2017.
Either way, it looks that overall Magic faced slightly better defensive competition in 1987-91 vs Curry in 2015-22, but Curry faced better teams on average. I don't think the gap is that significant.
And to reiterate, Curry was playing at a time of more complex and optimized offensive/defensive schemes (per Doctor MJ) and a massive increase in the talent pool (almost 10x as many international players per Ty 4191).
I know that, but I don't use time machine or era comparisons arguments too much. You see me voting for Mikan recently after all
