Owly wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Paul is an absolute +/- superstar in both RS & PS all throughout in his career and that's a big card in his favor for me...
but Paul's teams have a greater tendency toward getting upset than I think any other superstar in NBA history....
[Paul ... figured out]
So
1) The overall +/- stuff already includes this, surely.
2) All else equal would you rather have the guy strong early or late. I'd say early as if everyone else shows up I've got a good chance the series doesn't go late. [Now if all else equal meant holding net statistics equal you'd need either massive outlier positive game 6, 7s or more series are going long, so maybe you could be sure in retrospect they did go long. I more saying you have X goodness level of player, good early or late?]
3) Regarding figured out, we've discussed this before so feel free to repost your angle or link the thread but ... you've suggested a single Nash scoring explosion (in an efficient offense ... and a loss, the former being more relevant ... still then and even now a lot of thinking is "They lost. Why did they lose?" rather than a holistic overview at good and bad) deterred teams from letting Nash get his ... would a player consistently getting figured out be figured out ... by the league? And therefore stop being a high impact player? If it's something intrinsic to him getting figured out are they not figuring the same thing? Shouldn't more teams see this hole (or holes) being poked and use this advantage?
1. +/- from broader ranges misses the details from smaller ranges. Sometimes those smaller ranges are really significant.
2. Rather strong early or late? So, key thing here is that whoever loses the last game loses the entire series, and thus if you're on the losing side playing not-so-great at that critical time, the fact you had a great Game 1 doesn't matter a whole lot.
Of course, if we're just talking about wearing down, it makes sense to think in terms like you say: Be good enough early enough, eliminate them before you get worn out.
But if we're talking about the end of competitive series as a matchup-checkmate, then it doesn't really matter if the winning team beat badly early in the series. They used the time to adjust until they had the opponents' number.
3. Would a "figured out" player be figured out by the entire league? It's a good question, but I'd say not necessarily. It's very possible that only elite teams have the tools to exploit the vulnerability, and even with them, it might take some runs before the players are locked in on exactly what they need to do to counter the guys go-tos.
With that said, I do think it's quite possible that some players get figured out dramatically enough that we stop as much impact for the player even against regular season competition. I think Artis Gilmore might be a great example of this, not because he's the most dramatic - most dramatic would be going from highly positive to highly negative - but because he's around so long and really seems to go from being a superstar-level impact guy to a borderline all-star guy before he leaves his prime.
I'll say also that in other sports I'm confident this stuff exists.
In baseball, the story of the young, buff rookie who can't hit tricky pitches is a known thing. Similar are the young pitchers who stop being as effective after the league's had a chance to see their stuff.
In football, with some quarterbacks the rule is that if you can just beat them up enough, they start hearing footsteps. So make sure you hit him hard even if you can't get to him before he let's go of the ball.
In hockey, don't try to slap-shot that guy from distance, try to make him lose sight of the puck in traffic.
So, I'm not sure how dramatic this stuff is in basketball relative to other sports, but it's definitely a general sport phenomenon.
Re: defenses learned to be scared of Nash's volume scoring from one instance. I think you're hitting on something I consider important here that I've talked about with both Steph & Klay during their poor shooting periods:
Learning how to play against a particular opponent means learning "what you should be scared of". And then if you play scared of that particular thing, while it might be the best move, you're essentially gifting that player impact from that point onward.
Why would shooters like Nash get a boost from that while Paul (hypothetically) gets hurt by it? It's a great question and not one I want to claim I have the definite answer to.
But here are two things that I think should be kept in mind about Paul specifically:
1. He's an outlier in causing mistakes from other teams (drawing fouls, etc), and preventing mistakes on his own team (turnover reduction, as opposed to transition attack or raw scoring ability.
2. He's significantly undersized. I think he's probably the single best player in basketball history who is as short as he is.
Neither of these things prove that Paul is more figure-out-able than other guys, but they do make him distinct from other rivals, and so they are things for us to look at more closely to see how they might affect him when going up against elite competition in playoff series.
