E-Balla wrote:liamliam1234 wrote:The weak results are not because of him.
That is your operating premise: the offensive rating was bad, so that is Kawhi's fault. But there is no evidence for that.
No there's plenty of evidence and it's been posted. You're dismissing it to instead focus on a 223 minute sample in the playoffs without Kawhi on the floor. A 223 minute sample in which he had equal on/off numbers with Lowry due to their overlapping minutes (Lowry without Kawhi had a -3.6 net rating and Kawhi without Lowry had a -2.7 net rating).
Regular season is not the same as postseason. And you know that. Especially for a player who acted in injury management all year. Sample size sure did not seem to matter against the, what, three good playoff defences David Robinson faced from 1991 to 1996? Sample size was not an issue when Bob McAdoo happened to lead a good offence against a historically good defence. Sample size does not seem to be an issue when you point to the 22 games without Kawhi; tell me again, how many games did the Raptors play in the postseason?
Your “evidence” is un-contextualised, superficial, and manipulated (“-3.6 = -2.7”) to be as misrepresentative as possible. It requires ignoring every possible contrary point, which is traditionally all you ever do. But I am tired of it.
No one but you is trusting a 223 minute sample more than 22 games missed and decade long careers. Those players didn't magically suck when Kawhi want around, it's just a function of over reliance, and small sample size noise. Danny Green didn't forget to shoot when Kawhi was on the bench, he just didn't get enough shots to hit an equalibrium.
Oh, yes, Danny Green was such a reliable shooter when Kawhi missed all of 2018. He was so consistent before Kawhi “forgot how to pass” in 2017. Kawhi hurt him so much he had a career year in the regular season; just imagine, he probably could have hit 50% on three-point shots without Kawhi dragging him down. Sure is weird how he was +5.3% on three-pointers with Kawhi this year. And how three-man lineups with Siakam and Kawhi had an overall three-point percentage of +5.5%, and lineups with VanVleet and Kawhi had an overall three point percentage of +10.4%, versus +4.3% in three-man lineups with Lowry and Kawhi. Strange how replacing Lowry with VanVleet led the starters to jump up +8.6% in three-point percentage, or how doing the same with Gasol instead of Ibaka led them to jump up +13.3%. Yep, we should attribute that all to Lowry. You know, looking by Danny’s shooting numbers, it was actually VanVleet who had the most impact on Danny. Gee, we better get him into the starting spot.
“Decade-long careers”. Because every year is the same, right? Players never degrade. They never play differently in the postseason. They never have worse postseasons than others, or worse years than others. You just need to look at the foreign variable and put all change on that.
You know, Siakam was way better this year playing next to Kawhi! Wow, Kawhi sure is an impactful player; his addition turned Siakam into a borderline all-star!
And gee, it sure was shocking to see how badly Chris Paul dropped off without Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah-ah-Moute. I had no idea they were so important to his ability to function as an all-NBA-level guard.
The offence was -14 without him. You baselessly speculate that it was a question of "rhythm" but ignore that these players shot better (alright, technically Marc and VanVleet were incredibly slim negatives, so we can say neutral impact for them) and avoided turnovers muuuch better with Kawhi on the floor. And that is just using postseason sample. If you want to use the regular season, total coast sample, every player shot notably better with Kawhi on the floor except for Anunoby and Delon Wright.
If you wanna talk regular season let's talk about their offensive rating being 5 points higher in the 22 games he missed. Here's your issue, you're ignoring better data for spotty days that supports your point. Regular season on/off is cool but when a player looks worse than everyone he plays minutes with it makes it seem like his impact was pulled up due to the fact you're always on the court with 4 other guys. We have a 22 game sample of the offense without him for the full game though, meaning we know how good they'd play if Kawhi was never around, and they were better. Why ignore data that good if it exists? Why ignore then winning 59 games and having a 7 SRS before he showed up? Why ignore then adding Marc Gasol? After they win 55 games next year, why ignore that?
I'm not picking and choosing data to craft a narrative. Include it all. If one piece of data runs contrary to everything else and it's a tiny sample (223 minutes) it's most likely noise. Not the most important piece of data just because you want it to be.
In a long history of this behaviour, this is an extraordinary level of self-obliviousness.
Really, you are not picking and choosing data? Pointing out end of season team results while ignoring how each player contributed to that is not picking and choosing data? Failing to mention the Spurs offence played better when Demar was on the bench while simultaneously claiming that Demar was just as offensively valuable for the Spurs as Kawhi was is not picking and choosing? Ignoring the fact that Kawhi increased his assist percentage and assist ratio in 2017 is not picking and choosing? Painting a 22 game regular season sample against teams deliberately chosen as rest targets as a “superior” sample to 24 postseason games in terms of determining postseason impact is offering the whole picture?
Why ignore them being swept by the 2018 Cavaliers, who struggled against two far inferior teams? Why ignore years of their regular season effectiveness collapsing in the postseason? Why continue to act as if team offensive rating is a better measure of player impact than how the team performed with the player in the lineup? Why claim to know the future? Why pretend that if Siakam or Anunoby take some leap and they do happen to win more than expected that a.) that has any bearing on this past season, or b.) that has any bearing on whether they will be embarrassed by either the Bucks or 76ers in the second round (assuming they even make it past the Pacers or Heat or Celtics)?
It is not good data. It is “data” I have only ever seen espoused by people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
“In the 22 games Kawhi Leonard rested, Raptors opponents had a winning percentage of 45-percent, as opposed to 53-percent when he played. 8-percent might not sound like much, but it is actually more than four times greater than the difference between the easiest and hardest schedule in the NBA… In the 22 games Kawhi Leonard missed, Toronto played nine teams with .500 or better records. In those nine games, they were 4-5.”
And that seems like a pertinent point to the postseason to you? Remember a couple of years ago, when the Raptors would tear apart good to mediocre teams but get eviscerated by any top offence? How did that end up translating to the playoffs? How is this different from the whole “I do not care about David Robinson beating up on bad teams?”
And during the regular season, he was not even necessarily a ball stopper: his presence overall was correlated with a slight passing decline, but the bulk of that was concentrated in the bench pieces and Serge Ibaka; next to Lowry or Gasol, the ball moved at a fine pace. And that is not a quirk of the Raptors: despite your claims, he was a net positive to the ball movement of the 2017 Spurs as well during the regular season, albeit less so than in 2016.
At this point I'm exhausted having to look up dates to contest your gish gallop. The 2017 Spurs had a -1.9 drop in AST% with Kawhi on the floor. The Raps had a -6.0 AST% drop with Kawhi on the floor. In 2016 (a year he didn't stop ball movement) the AST% went up 0.3 with him on the floor. Stop just saying things because you want them to be true. You might like it as a debate topic and it's 10 times faster to type a lie than to confirm it but it's not adding to the conversation at all, just muddying the waters. I've been telling you to stop doing this for weeks now.
And I have been telling you to cut this bull for even longer. At this point I have done more research than you, but you complain about a gish gallop. You offered a couple of worthless statistics to support an invented narrative. I stayed consistent with what I watched and then when I bothered to look at the numbers, shocker, found they backed up everything I had been saying.
It is not a lie that the 2017 Spurs had +1.2 assists per 100 possessions with Kawhi in the lineup, or that in every two-man lineup he was positive there. You talk about needing to rank each player for the team while neglecting that Kawhi had the second-highest assist percentage among starters, and highest non-guard assist percentage, and was closer to Tony Parker in terms of assist percentage than he was to Lamarcus Aldridge, and increased his assist percentage from the prior year. And again, you want to tell me that I am “picking and choosing”? You lock yourself into one narrative, never depart, never share any new data, and then devolve into complaining about “gish gallops” when I call you out for doing so. You want to paint a clear picture? Stop focusing on one corner because it makes for a nice hot take.
How does that look in contrast to Russell Westbrook, known lifter of bad offensive talent? Well, Russell's overall impact on his teammate's shooting was effectively neutral (technically a marginal negative). Now, Russell of course helped his team shoot more overall, but there is no strong indication he was creating these amazing looks or this amazing space. And because he monopolises the ball so completely, everyone else's passing, except for Oladipo, was worse with him in the lineup. (Different in the playoffs, but if we are going to complain about small samples...)
Another blatant lie. Someone else could look this up and post the numbers, or maybe you can (know that has a snowball's chance in hell because you won't even stop lying for a post). Not even worth responding to.
Sure, hoped you would ask.
Adams: -0.4 assists per 100 next to Westbrook
Roberson: -0.8 assists per 100 next to Westbrook
Grant: -1.2 assists per 100 next to Westbrook
Kanter: -2.5 assists per 100 next to Westbrook
Sabonis: +0.1 assists per 100 next to Westbrook
Oladipo: +0.9 assists per 100 next to Westbrook
Overall Team: -0.5 assists per 100 next to Westbrook
Can you figure out why the team’s assist percentage is so high with Westbrook on the floor? Here is a hint: it is not because anyone else is passing more. But as you have repeatedly shown, you like to look at overall team production and extrapolate it all to one player.
Oh, and then apparently we need to talk about how prior Raptors teams performed. Tell me, who was a major rotation piece leftover from 2016? Literally just Lowry (playing at his peak), and that was when they faced the bulk of their defensive opposition (who, by the way, no, were not bigger defensive threats than the 2019 76ers; again, major difference between regular season and postseason, which we already know because the Toronto defence was also substantially better in the postseason). 2017? Lowry, Ibaka, and kiiiiind-of Norman Powell (eighth man in 2019); Siakam and VanVleet were on the roster, but they had next to no playing time in the playoffs. Those two enter the rotation in 2018, but in limited minutes, and as a significantly worse player in Siakam's case. Ibaka has been in general decline since 2016. Marc has also been in decline. And you want to talk about some incredible performing history of this 2019 roster?
I noticed you skipped 2018 and that's because when I mentioned 2018 you wrote it off saying they didn't play anyone and it was only one year. So now I can't bring up old data at all. You just wrote off every piece of data we have on guys like Danny Green, and Marc Gasol as playoff performers. You wrote off everything we have on Toronto pre Kawhi. But a 223 minute off court sample? SIGN ME UP!
What did I skip? The 2019 Raptors, by the end of the season, had four new starters. Siakam was a completely different player, and Powell had fallen out of the rotation, but here you are trying to figure out the team based on 1 player’s carryover from 2016 and effectively 2 and a half player’s carry-over from 2017. Maybe you would have a point if this was a totally anomalous postseason for Kawhi, but we saw in 2017 that it was not. You complain about sample sizes and then talk about ten games they had against garbage defensive teams in the 2018 playoffs. The Raptors played more games in 2019 than in 2018 and 2017 combined, but here you are acting as if those are more meaningful. Are you trying to parody someone?
How's this for a off court sample, Toronto lost 2 games where Kawhi had a positive +/-. He had a +1 and a +4. They also won 2 games where he was a negative with him being -2 both times. His supporting cast clearly didn't hold him back at all.
About as valuable as FTD saying Kawhi and Giannis were respectively +16 and +13 in their series meaning they had the exact same impact.
Also, you can do the same for basically every player. You can do the same for Lowry. More classic dishonest manipulation. Keep it up.
The Jazz without Mitchell, referring to last year, have no one who can create a shot and were functionally inept without him in the playoffs. Gee, starting to see a pattern here.
Mitchell can't create a shot in the playoffs himself. He averaged 21.4 ppg on 42.3 TS% and the team offense was terrible. This is not making the point you think it is.
Lamarcus Aldridge. Like with Kawhi, the offence cratered without Mitchell, because Rubio is worthless and Ingles is not a guy you want as a secondary scoring piece and Gobert is heavily dependent on passers setting up baskets for him.
Without Giannis in the playoffs, that way the Raptors played him? Yeah, suddenly all that attention goes to everyone else. Middleton at least has that Klay profile where he can serve as a first option for stretches, but Bledsoe is not a first option, nor is Brook, nor is Brogdon, nor is Hill. To say nothing of how the ball movement would do, or how the spacing would do without Giannis opening up the arc for his teammates.
Well it's a good thing Bledsoe, Brook, Brogdon, and Hill don't have to be first options with Middleton around. And Giannis didn't open up the spacing, that was the story of the series. How bad his passing and shooting was and how it limited their offense because Bledsoe also couldn't buy a shot.
Middleton could not even be a second option in that series, and here you are thinking he can be trusted as a reliable first option. Middleton makes Klay look consistent, and you want to enter the playoffs with him as your best option. I was half-joking about you irrationally worshipping role-players, but I guess I stumbled across a truth.
Also, we cannot have a scenario where the Raptors collapse three or four guys on Giannis every time he drives… while somehow also locking down the perimeter. Whether or not he passed to the players on the perimeter well enough is a separate point, because fundamentally if he is not doing that then those three or four players are not collapsing in on him.
You seem to have this idea, and I saw it with Harden, that if you just take a bunch of good roleplayers they can function as this excellent playoff team.
You seem to have this idea the Raptors were an excellent playoff team. They had a +1.1 offense through the Eastern Conference. You telling me a bunch of great role players can't give you a +1.1 offense? Explain the Clippers last year?
And how was their defence. That is the problem with role-players – guys like Harrell and Lou Williams only have so much overall impact when it matters. So what, you think the Raptors, who were not receiving much defensive support from Kawhi, established a historically amazing postseason defence… while also being secretly offensively amazing had they not been held back by Kawhi’s lack of passing. Brilliant takes all around. Really is too bad Kawhi was on the team; they probably could have challenged the 2017 Warriors as the most dominant team ever.
And of course love to see you spouting the +1.1, as if I did not already show that all of that was a product of the minutes Kawhi spent on the bench.
On top of that my argument against Harden is defensive. I've said plenty of times he's the worst defensive SG ever and that's my argument against him.
The point is that Kawhi had more offensive impact than Harden and Lillard and was arguably more offensively impactful than Jokic.
But that is not how it works. A team of Brogdon/Danny/Ingles/Tucker/Brook is a respectable lineup in isolation, but they are getting blown off the court against any decent team. In the playoffs, someone needs to create a shot for themselves. Someone needs to handle the scoring load. The 2014 Spurs are an anomaly for a reason... and even then, calling them a mere collection of "roleplayers" would be a gross insult.
None of this applies to Toronto though. Toronto won with a historic defense ala the 04 Pistons. Not with their +1.1 offense. If their offense performed at a level we haven't regularly seen offenses without stars, including the Raptors, perform at I wouldn't be saying anything about Kawhi but as it is they only had a +1.1 ORTG before the Finals. Like we just saw the Celtics without Kyrie almost make the Finals, we know how this goes.
And that +1.1 offence would have been historically bad without Kawhi. That is what matters.
And lol at the 2018 Celtics citation. Yes, it sure was nice of Terry Rozier and Jayson Tatum to shoot out of their minds, but we have pretty clearly seen how sustainable that was. Do you worship at the alter of Josh Smith after 2015? Citing to them is not a response to how the Raptors actually played. It does not change the fact that Marc was not looking to score – and if you want to blame someone for that, the blame goes to Nurse, not Kawhi. It does not change the fact that VanVleet was played off the floor before the Milwaukee series. It does not change the fact that Siakam struggled against stout front courts. It does not change the fact that Lowry’s shooting was really rough prior to the Milwaukee series. It does not change the fact that Ibaka is comically inconsistent and essentially needs to find a success early if he is going to have the mentality to have a good game (also not Kawhi’s responsibility). It does not change the fact that Danny Green has never and likely will never be able to maintain a consistent shooting level of like 40%; his nickname is IcyHot, and you want to blame Kawhi for him living up to that name after an unprecedented regular season.
None of that matters to 2019! Lowry has historically had shooting woes (in large part because of injury, but still), and his ability to score at volume declines every year. Siakam was untested and served as a very inefficient second option against Philadelphia, and you want to hang your hat on that? Ibaka has been in general decline and was never famous for his offensive impact anyway; he played well in what time he had, but he was still ultimately only covering twenty minutes per game. Danny famously goes cold for long stretches, and he did so here. VanVleet was in a horrid slump until his kid was born, nowhere near his 2018 level (and even then it is not like he was good in those playoffs); he could not get on the floor against the 76ers because of how comically undersized he was by comparison. And Marc straight up hates shooting now.
You're right. These historically great performers just all happened to start sucking in 2019.
But they are not historically great on offence! Marc was great defensively, but he was a very willing fourth or fifth option who had not been in the playoffs in a couple of years and had dealt with injuries in the interim. Serge has never been a guy anyone would describe as offensively great. VanVleet was irrelevant until the prior year and had a down season. Again, Danny Green is famously inconsistent. Siakam was irrelevant until that year. Lowry had been on a demonstrable scoring decline over the past two years. This is not a tough concept. You want to create this conspiracy where one star player is to blame for it all, when the far more common and reasonable interpretation is that they simply were a.) not as good as you thought offensively, b.) struggling against good defences, and c.) playing somewhat below what they were supposed to. If playoffs draw from regular season, why did their positive offence in Kawhi-less minutes – and here I mean in games in played – suddenly vanish? He disrupted the rhythm? All you have said is that he never played in rhythm! But they have a meltdown without him in the playoffs, and somehow that is his fault too. It is a ludicrous theory, and I would love to hear whether anyone else paying the slightest attention to this thinks otherwise.
None of those guys are first option material. Depending on the series, their next best two were barely second option material (I would say neither truly were against the 76ers, and only Lowry was against the Bucks). Their defence is and was proven. And that was the calling card, and that was why they were able to get by with only one real offensive threat. But without Kawhi, they were not doing anything on offence. I love Kyle Lowry, but he is pretty far from a traditional second-best offensive piece on a championship roster.
If you want to attribute primary responsibility to stars for their team's offensive performance prior to the databall era, fine; that is something of a necessity, unless someone comes in with film analysis showing what happened when the star went to the bench. But we have on/off data for modern players.
Sure, and we also have a 22 game sample of Toronto's offense without Kawhi playing great. We have a full season long sample of Kawhi having a lower +/- offensively than everyone he shared most of his minutes with. You're ignoring that to focus on a 233 minute off court sample...
That settles it: Danny Green is the best player on the Raptors.
It goes both ways. And again, even if Kawhi was only like the third most important Raptor during the regular season, no one, absolutely no one, on the team or watching the games or following the team, thought he was playing anywhere near his playoff level. But you keep ignoring that, because it is inconvenient. Which would be annoying but tolerable if you were consistent with it, but you have repeatedly said you care more about the playoffs than the regular season, so it makes zero sense for you to suddenly pretend it is remotely indicative of his true performance capacity here.
And we can see that against a stout defensive trio (Orlando was a top defensive team once they settled into the new scheme; Philadelphia was a top defensive team by talent which finally put it together against Toronto;
This again? Already proven false...
In what deluded world.
You cannot adopt the stance that the Raptors had a historically good defence because of their postseason performance while simultaneously pretending that the 76ers were exactly the same in the postseason as they were in the regular season.
and Milwaukee speaks for themselves), Kawhi led a +3.9 offence as the only true scoring threat,
No he led a +1.1 offense. I've posted that plenty of times. That's not impressive.
You have chosen to die on a lot of dumb hills, but this is an especially impressive one. The Spurs played at a roughly average level with Demar on the court and a great level when he was on the bench, averaging out to a good offence, but somehow Demar gets credit for that overall good offence. The Raptors play at a good offensive level with Kawhi and a historically dreadful level without him, averaging out to a mediocre offence, and Kawhi gets all the blame for the mediocrity. Brilliant analysis as ever.
an offence which could not score at all when he was off the floor, and he led that team to a title. And given the status of their opposition relative to the other best performing playoff offences, I could probably make a case that his individual offensive lift would have qualified as the second or third best of the playoff bunch considering he was a locked on-court 114.3 offensive rating overall. Lillard's individual on-court rating was 112. Harden's was 114.1. Jokic was 115.8 against some abysmal defences.
Removing the Finals from the calculation and using real ORTG from NBA.com Kawhi had a 110.8 ORTG in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The average DRTG of their opponents was 107.2. That +3.6 ORTG while Kawhi was on the floor wasn't at all strong. To compare to those other guys you mentioned Lillard had the Blazers playing at a +3.0 level while he was on the floor and Jokic had Denver playing at a +4.6 level while he was on the floor. Kawhi leading them to a +3.6 ORTG while he was on a floor and +1.1 overall isn't that impressive and is about on par with 2 borderline All-NBA guys.
More amazing framing. Those two first-team all-NBA guys (
) were also two of the best offensive players in the league this season. As I said, Kawhi was either second or third, depending on how you adjust Jokic’s metrics to his opposing defences. For someone who cares so much about era relative rankings, you sure are eager to dismiss that one. And he had better overall metrics than Giannis, even with Giannis’s defensive advantage, and regardless of any adjustment had comfortably better overall metrics than Jokic. So he pretty demonstrably was at worst the second most impactful player in the postseason.And even if you are irrationally high on the postseason offence of Toronto's other players, I think it would be hard to argue they were a better offensive cast than the casts of those three (with Lillard's being the most debatable). And that, of course, is reflected in their respective on/off offensive ratings. Those individual numbers also correlate reasonably well with their respective OWS/48, OBPMs, and box offensive ratings (for those who like those metrics).
He clearly has better offensive support than Jokic and Jokic is clearly a better offensive player than Kawhi and probably was the best offensive player in the league last year.
No question Jokic is more impactful on offence in the regular season, though.
Your whole post is basically just you admitting all data outside of the 233 minute off court sample in the 2019 playoffs is useless in determining how good Kawhi's supporting cast is. At that point you're standing on a hill no one else is going to die on because that's just crazy talk. A 233 minute sample means absolutely nothing by itself especially when it contradicts all other available data.
What was that about straw men?
The funny thing is that it really does not contradict the data, if you can look at it critically. It does contradict the nonsense you have been pushing, but that more speaks to how much you had to abuse the data to push your point. Kawhi was a good but not great impact piece in the regular season based on his rest and general lack of full exertion, on a team built for regular season success. In the playoffs he stepped up, much as he did in 2017, let the team focus on their defence, and led them offensively to a title. Pretty simple. If people want to ding him because he coasted in the regular season, that is their prerogative, just as people are free to claim Lebron has only been like the fifth-best regular season player for the past few years. But those who care about the postseason can freely see his offensive impact in the postseason, and what that can do on a team with an otherwise gaping hole when it comes to postseason offence.