LA Bird wrote:Curry played way outside of his usual in the 2017 playoffs because that was his peak year. There doesn't have to be another reason why, just like we don't really question why 03 TMac as his peak was an outlier season. If it was as simple as 2017 Curry's stats being inflated by playing on an overwhelmingly stacked team, how do you explain his 2018 playoffs being nothing close to his 2017 playoffs when the Warriors with Durant were still just as stacked? And Curry was the key reason why his team could so easily overwhelm their opponents in the first place (as shown in the +/- numbers later in this post).
With T-Mac we're talking about a clear improvement over 82 games playing similar opponents, with similar teammates, in similar circumstances. Not with Curry. If for some reason T-Mac only performed like that after Orlando added another star I'd think that star affected his game too. Plus T-Mac's difference came in the boxscore, his +/- numbers remained consistent because he was still a star with similar teammates, in the same role. It's rare you see a large difference in +/- numbers for stars once they're already stars without major improvements to their games or new rosters. Adding to that I can mark exactly what improved in T-Mac (or 2017 Westbrook for that matter), their shooting. TMac would be that good if he was 39% from deep all the time and Westbrook would be that good if he was 34% from deep all the time. Curry had no tangible improvements if you ask me, just new circumstances.
I just feel that's a lazy argument, his numbers got better so he got better. I'm just not buying that his improvement just happened to come when KD got on the roster and we just didn't see it at all in the regular season (and he actually had his worst regular season since he became a star).
Why Curry didn't play as good in the 2018 playoffs is simple, he missed 2 months worth of games to end the season and start the playoffs and anyone would be rusty after that. It's not really a representative example of how he'd be expected to play healthy at all.
You talk about how Curry can be stopped by tough defenses keying in on him and that 2017 Curry was lucky to avoid that problem but the 2015 Cavs weren't even an average defense. 2019 Curry went up against a much better defensive team in the Finals and scored more on higher efficiency, while turning over the ball far less frequently than 2015. What is there to say that 2017 Curry without Durant wouldn't have a Finals performance closer to 2019 than 2015?
I don't see much of a difference in his 2019 and 2015 Finals performances. He was slightly better in 2019 but most of that is because he shot better from the line, his other improvements in the boxscore are things we saw league wide from 2015 to 2019, and the numbers due to the rule changes have gotten absurd for tons of guys. For example Curry scored 14.0% of the total points in the 2019 Finals and 13.4% of the total points in the 2015 Finals. That 4.5 ppg gap in scoring would be more like a 1.5 ppg gap if the 2015 Finals had as much scoring as the 2019 Finals. PER is simple but his PER in the 2015 Finals is a 20.9. in the 2019 Finals it was a 23.7. Better for sure but with his defensive issues in 2019 (in defense of 2015 he had no one to take advantage of his bad defense even if he played bad) and both Finals are about equal IMO.
And outside of the box score stats, the +/- is still strongly in favor of 2017 Curry for the postseason.
Does team build not effect the impact of individual players? Maybe I'm not doing well to explain this but my whole argument is that being on the most historically stacked team ever means that his numbers look funny in the light. Citing them without explaining why Curry in 2015 and 2016 wouldn't get similar numbers on the same team makes no sense.
A 3-way impact chart still points to Curry being by far the most valuable player.
Adding Curry is
+13.9 to Draymond alone
+16.8 to Draymond + Durant
+16.7 to Durant alone
Adding Draymond is
+3.1 to Curry alone
+4.6 to Curry + Durant
+4.5 to Durant alone
Adding Durant is
+4.7 to Curry alone
+6.2 to Curry + Draymond
+3.3 to Draymond alone
I'm not comfortable making that observation based off a 231 minute sample with Curry alone and without signifying how many minutes in each split includes Klay. Of course Curry has the most impact, but again that's just an argument for him over KD, not really over prior versions of Curry unless you think 2015 and 2016 Curry (who had slightly better regular season +/- numbers) wouldn't also be the best player on the 2017 Warriors.
As far as Draymond goes
And if your argument is that 2017 should stand on the basis of his numbers alone we're back to the argument that no one has ever had a team that stacked, so there's really no point of comparison other than KD and his 68 TS% on that same squad and 29.6 ppg on 64.2 TS% in the playoffs over the last 3 seasons.
EDIT: And I want to add I get where you're coming from, I just don't personally agree. If a player just happens to play better than ever before when his roster becomes extremely stacked the argument that it was random circumstance isn't going to fly over the obvious explanation that KD had something to do with it.
