sp6r=underrated wrote:therealbig3 wrote:Colbinii wrote:Why do people have Curry over Love?
The reason the Warriors improved this season was defensively, not because of Steph Curry.
Kevin Love had a higher +/-, and was a better offensive player in terms of oRTG, win shares, getting to the free throw line, offensive rebounder, and Curry had a poor playoff series against the Clippers, not that a 6 game sample size should mean anything.
Curry was very good against the Clippers.
And Love has nice stats, but I don't think his skillset translates as well to the playoffs like Curry's. I think teams target defensive mismatches a lot more in the playoffs, and Love is a bad defender. Curry is passable for the most part.
And Love isn't a guy that can really self-create at an elite level in the half court. Curry does that as well as anyone, and if you notice, the Warriors went from being a defensive team to an offensive team against the Clippers. They had to score a crap load of points to make up for their poor defense in that series (because Bogut got hurt). And they were able to do so because of how much pressure Curry put on the Clippers' defense.
Curry had a +37.0 on/off in the Clippers series...that's absolutely insane.
And he also had a better on/off than Love in the RS too.
Should we really go so single-minded focus on the PS when a lot of the results could just be sample size? The Warriors in the last 2 years have played 3 series: in 2 of their series their offense over performed and in one it under-performed. Their over-performance was 3.1 over those playoff games but 18 games is an awfully small sample size such that I think we should be reluctant to not assume a healthy factor is randomness.
It seems that with Curry his supporter elevate him in part based on theory surrounding his dynamic shooting rather than actual performance.
But even looking at RS on/off, Curry played a huge role for his team.
And no, I see the results playing out in the actual performance.
Their offense was +5.1 EV against the 2013 Nuggets. And this is despite playing without their best offensive big man, David Lee, for the majority of that series.
Their offense was -1.3 EV against the 2013 Spurs. Yes, they underperformed that series...but it's also important to note that Curry was injured during that series and his performance fell off as a result. Again, they also played without David Lee for 2 of those games. Furthermore, Harrison Barnes and Jarrett Jack fell off badly in terms of their performance against the Spurs compared to how they played against the Nuggets. I think that explains their underperforming offense fairly well without indicting Curry or disproving the rationale for Curry's fans.
They would very likely have won against the 2014 Clippers with a healthy Bogut, as their defense struggled badly in that series, specifically with regards to Deandre Jordan. They still pushed the Clippers to 7 games, and barely lost that 7th game. They certainly overperformed in that series, and it's clear that Curry was the catalyst for the Warriors, especially since the departure of Jack meant that the Warriors had zero reliable ball handlers and playmakers outside of Curry. The fact that they still performed the way they did offensively is a testament to Curry's unique ability to warp a defense.
It's not really single-mindedly focusing on the playoffs either, Curry had a fantastic RS as well. But for the 2nd straight year, his unique skillset allowed his team to pull off an upset (2013 Nuggets), and nearly pull off two others (2013 Spurs and 2014 Clippers). I'm not going to ignore that. In fact, it's very possible that the entire landscape of the NBA is different this year if Bogut was healthy. The Warriors were a sleeper team for many people before he got hurt. I personally thought they had championship potential with a healthy Bogut. For a team to be that good despite the major question marks surrounding the supporting cast and the head coach, it speaks very highly of Curry's ability imo.
And is it unfair to Love that I give Curry that benefit of the doubt, since Love hasn't had the opportunity to showcase how his skillset would translate to a playoff series? Probably. But that's all I have to go on, because at the end of the day, playoff performance correlates to winning a championship, and that's what I care about. And since Love hasn't actually given me any data to work with in terms of playoff performance, I have to go on how I think his skillset would translate, relative to what we've actually seen with Curry.
at "Spurshank Redemption", brilliant 
