RealGM 2020 Top 100 Project: #23 (Chris Paul)

[WestGOAT]

I don't know if DQuinn1575's post really made the difference in the final vote cause of the ghost voter, but freethedevil has a point. DQuinn1575's post seems much closer in substance to freethedevil's than most of the other posts in this thread. 

Of course, the length of the post does not mean it will contain adequate arguments or not, but the difference between the first two posts with votes in this thread by Cavsfansince84 and penbeast0 on the one hand and the posts of DQuinn1575 and freethedevil on the other hand is quite clear.

[trex_8063]

@freethedevil:

I don't keep track and carry votes forward from prior threads, enabling posters to do nothing and still have a counted vote in perpetuity [until their votes are rendered obsolete]. If someone doesn't want to put in the effort to write anything, a simple copy/paste of prior arguments is accepted. It's pretty easy to do, especially if one keeps a google doc saved [so you don't have to hunt down your prior vote post within an old thread].
But I'm not going to do that for people.

Each new thread, and the vote posts therein, are treated as a new entity (I'm not going to go back and track/note prior vote conduct to see if a trend emerges, etc), and per the project main thread:

You MUST provide some arguments/reasoning in support of your vote for it to be counted.........That reasoning must also pass a minimum standard of volume of content. You don't need to write a novel, but a single line may be deemed insufficient [particularly if the one line is particularly light on content or relevance].
e.g. Something like "1-time scoring champ" as the sole argument provided is unlikely to get a pass.

Short of providing a dozen or more examples of what is just below acceptable and/or creating pages of "legal-ese" to painstakingly eliminate all loop-holes, it comes down to a judgement call.

The poster you singled out had a vote post that was somewhat minimalist, but not to the degree yours was, nor was it pure conjecture. Something like "great scorer", while technically a subjective observation, is something that is to a degree verifiable as true by looking at some relatively specific figures.

A statement like "best peak" is a very broad subjective opinion (basically boils down to saying you think he's really good), and one that is not easily verified [nor would we necessarily know where to start looking for verification if you provide no other details into your thinking]. And "best longevity" applied to Curry is just simply untrue relative to other players receiving traction [particularly relative to someone like Stockton].
The difference(s) are very small, but they're there (EDIT: and a line needs to be drawn somewhere).

Additionally, the vote post by the poster you singled out is one of SEVEN posts he made itt, whereas [prior to this complaint] you'd made just 3 posts itt: the first was literally "1. NAME 2. NAME 3. NAME", the second was a reply to someone in which you [briefly] allude to your alternative view of Curry's longevity-----in between this post and your next I specifically stated to you your vote won't count without arguments [this was almost a full day before the deadline]---and the third post being the vote-post reprise that went no further than making the aforementioned "best peak, best longevity" arguments.

....For which I [with a little over 4 hours left] tried to nudge you AGAIN by showing your vote was not counted and stating that "a single line of vague(ish) conjecture does not constitute an adequate argument".

Honestly, if you put half as much time/effort into your vote-post as you did in complaining here, your vote would have been counted (which wouldn't guarantee Curry the spot, btw; it would have just taken us into our first runoff where NEW voters would have had to determine the outcome).

But I'll take you off the notifications list, as per your request.

[Owly]

From there, you have to ask yourself, why the difference?

Start leaning disagree here. I mean maybe you want to out of curiosity. But if variance isn't valuable it doesn't really matter.

"Variance" simply happens to the lens you're looking at that can lead you to something useful if you take it the right place. I'm trying to lead folks to the right place, though granted, one doesn't need to talk in terms of variance to get to the right place.

The classic game for Steve Nash on this regard came in the '04-05 series when Dallas decided in general, and in particular in Game 4, that the Mavs defense would just concentrate on eliminating Nash's passing by staying hard on their defensive assignments, which meant Nash was free to work one on one.

The result? Nash went 20 for 28. He scored 48 points with a TS% of 80.6. And in the end, despite the fact that Dallas won the game with their offense, the defensive strategy was a clear failure and they and everyone else backed off.

1) Peak adjacent Nash offense is a high bar. (Also Stockton has longevity, and defense and the poster I was quoting didn't invoke Nash and did invoke, among others Isiah Thomas ... but I'll try to speak to where you're going with this.)

2) Nash has 3 40 point games in his career. One in a double OT game. One in an OT game. They lose two of the three. They have a (very?) good offense offense in each game but also get outshot (efg%, and at a glance TS%) in each game. One can hypothesize that Nash saw the right openings. One can hypothesize he didn't keep teammates feeling involved enough to motivate them to defend or manage the games (this seems mean, but maybe). Or one can not put much weight into 3 (or 1) games.

If Nash doesn't have this one 48 minute game with over 40 points do you see him differently? If so, what if Dallas hadn't given him the looks? This takes me back to the questions how one systematically looks at this.

I'm not sure I'm following "everyone else backed off" is this to suggest no one else guarded him in such a way ever again (based off one 117.2 Phoenix Ortg game)?

Yes. No one ever guarded Nash the same way again as far as I'm aware.

You need to understand we're not talking about a random game where Nash happened to score 48 points. We're talking about arguably the most significant team offensive season in NBA history in terms of deviation from standard thought, about a major part of that being based on a pass-first point guard rather than the team's scorers, and we're talking about Dallas trying to disrupt that by taking away the passing. They said "Beat us yourself Steve", and as a result Nash got to show off a repertoire of shots from all over the half court that made clear "Ah, yeah, he can volume score."

It was a very specific experiment that everyone watched - it was a highly anticipated playoff series between a star and the team he was on the previous year - and had it worked - as in shut down the Phoenix offense - the entire league would have pivoted to that approach from that point forward. But it didn't work, so that was that.

I think it's important to separate out the "worried about low sample size" part of your basketball brain from the "watch team strategies while knowing every other team is looking to copy what works". This is the deal with scouting in general. Nothing gives you rapid insight into a player's capacity in various skill domains like scouting does. You can't gauge efficiency well with this approach, and this is where scouting-oriented people tend to go wrong when gauging player impact, but once you see that a guy can volume score using a variety of tools if you leave him one on one, you know that he has those tools and you're not crafting approaches hoping he doesn't have them any more.

Re: What if Dallas hadn't given him the looks? Someone else would have tried it. Again, Nash on the court had the best ORtg in the league for 7 years running, and this was year 1.

Also noteworthy: This was his previous team who hadn't used him that way. This was a clear statement that they did not actually think Nash could do what he did even though they believed in him more than most.

But I will say this: When you ask "But what would you say if you hadn't seen Fact X, might you rate the player differently without that information?", the answer is "Yes, but why would a more ignorant version of myself have a leg to stand on compared to a more knowledgeable one?"

That said, while I was absolutely one of those folks wondering how Nash would do at the time, something else I soon learned was that Nash was frequently in volume scoring mode in the clutch. I think this is actually a pretty common phenomenon among those who live with the ball in their hands even in they are known for pass-first play, and it pertains I think to why it makes sense that these players sometimes naturally rack up more numbers. (Our knowledge of Stockton is incomplete here I'll note.) I'll note that on that clutch PER list, Jason Kidd is 11th and is also clearly in volume scoring mode in crunch time.

Also, here's data from a bkref query that this post made me do on 30+ point games:

Ricky Rubio had 5 such games. In those games his median FG% was 60.0%. His career peak was 41.8%.
Rajon Rondo had 9 such games. In those games his median FG% was 57.9%. His career peak was 50.8%.
John Stockton had 13 such games. In those games his median FG% was 69.2%. His career season peak was 57.4%.
Andre Miller had 19 such games. In those games his median FG% was 60.0%. His career season peak was 49.2%.
Mark Price had 23 such games. In those games his median FG% was 64.7%. His career season peak was 52.6%.
Mike Conley had 25 such games. In those games his median FG% was 58.8%. His career season peak was 46.0%.
Jason Kidd had 42 such games. In those games his median FG% was 52.4%. His career season peak was 44.4%
Steve Nash had 48 such games. In those games his median FG% was 63.2%. His career season peak was 53.2%.
Chauncey Billups had 52 such games. In those games his median FG% was 55.6%. His career season peak was 44.8%
Deron Williams had 59 such games. In those games his median FG% was 55.6% His career season peak of was 50.7%
Kevin Johnson had 81 such games. In those games his median FG% was 56.3%. His career season peak was 51.6%.
Chris Paul had 87 such games. In those games his median FG% was 59.1%. His career season peak was 50.3%.
Isiah Thomas had 118 such games. In those games his median FG% was 50.0%. His career season peak was 48.8%.

And just for good measure:

Allen Iverson had 381 such games. In those games his median FG% was 45.7%. His career season peak was 46.1%.

I think there's a lot of juicy stuff in there I don't want to get in the way of with judgments of good or bad, but I think clearly the overarching thing here is that guys who score 30 points less frequently tend to achieve 30 points on particularly efficient games relative to their own norms, and thus it's almost certainly a case of "a thing going well" as opposed to them being forced/choosing to a ton of bad shots.

I'd say the obvious question here is whether we think we can identify a predictable "sweet spot" where we can say with some confidence "This is range that's reasonable. If you're FG% (or whatever) is above X, then you should be calling your own number more". I don't think we really can, but I'm sure I'm not the only one seeing these numbers on a map.

Stockton by contrast played his entire career with teams more concerned with Malone than Stockton, and yet this literally never happened with him.

I won't assume that I know what team's scouting reports and coaching plans were. I tend to lean skeptical of anyone else claiming such. If I were to speculate I'd suggest it was a false dichotomy and that team's likely focused heavily on both. But I guess if you mean specifically scoring-wise maybe ... though whether it teams stopped Stockton/ the Jazz getting the shots they wanted ... in general I'm inclined to say no - though I don't dig too deep into the playoffs and think the Jazz tended toward a slightly flawed construction more broadly.

My stance on speculation is that it needs to be done to optimize performance, but it's an mistake-fraught process and you need to look to recognize any assumptions you're making.

When defensive schemes are designed specific to a given opponent, they are generally done against the primary vectors of attack. On a team like Utah that operated by getting Malone the ball, letting him work with it, and then either shoot or pass, those vectors are the primary things you've got to be looking to address, no? I'm not saying Stockton isn't apart of that, or that the defense wasn't guarding Stockton when he had the ball, or that the defense didn't have multiple goals, but every offense has a primary mode of attack and every defense scheming against that offense looks to identify it and mitigate for it. The face of that attack was Malone.

Sidenote: After all this I looked up a couple of the Barry guides and there are things like "only when the Jazz are in dire need of a hoop, does Stockton think shot first" (after '96) or "It's been said before but we'll say it again: Stockton could easily average 20 points a night" (after '95). My reading of their opinions is that he has the skills to score more, but has a pass first mentality based on a belief that getting teammates involved is the best option. Of course even if true, if he applied it too rigidly in the face of defenses daring him to shoot that theoretical capacity would be irrelevant.

Taking this out of the spoilers because I think it's part of the same conversation and should be read by others.

In terms of my opinion on the matter, and looking at data such as the stuff above, to me it's not remotely a question of whether Stockton was too pass-oriented for his own good, it's a question of whether a guy like Nash was too pass-oriented for his own good. Stockton's WAAAAY out there in a place you would not expect a capable scoring threat to be, and it's one of those things where even if we "blame it on Sloan" means that what we've seen from Stockton is quite stunted. But it also has to be noted that Jerry Sloan allowed his perimeter playmakers to score more than Stockton before and after Stockton, and when he was a player he played with guys who didn't just pass. In Stockton we're really not talking about a "typical Sloan point guard", he's his own thing.

I do think the reality is that there are a lot of folks a bit stat-struck by Stockton's assist totals and efficiency and who really don't see that performance as missing anything, but I think based on what I've seen in my analyses that if you're "taking what they give you" as a point guard, you're going to end up volume scoring considerably more often than Stockton did, and I'm sure that absence had a cost.

You're smart, I respect that you've thought about this, and you probably know more about it then me.

I disagree on samples and scouting. I don't know if the whole league reacted off a one game sample and I don't know how I would find out. I really think they shouldn't have (especially with different defensive teams, turnover in Phoenix, over multiple years).

Different people will rate single games differently but I think I might be lower on the game than you - I'd have to rewatch and honestly am not a good game watcher beyond enjoying it. But 9 turnovers seems a bit rich, shooting is high variance anyway (and this is where all Nash's value comes from in the game) and Phoenix's global offense isn't at some blow you away level (at the margins it doesn't help that Phoenix always seem to be chasing after the first quarter - rarely if ever single figure margin - not sure if this matters but maybe doesn't help, and not like they're winning when Nash is on court).

Personally while I get the logic offered I struggle with a method that values that one game so much, it feels like ... maybe no one ever dared other players to shoot. Or they did they did and we don't know (or know the outcome). Maybe you're right and I'm making perfect the enemy of good.

I think a lot of stuff is open to framing: e.g. low variance is resilience, you can't stop X getting what he wants.

I don't think Sloan had control of his playmakers in Chicago (and he reportedly hated/clashed badly with Sobers) fwiw. Your point stands though.

It depends on what you think of as / mean by "a capable scoring threat" but I wouldn't sneeze at a career 2465.6 TS add.

I do think the reality is that there are a lot of folks a bit stat-struck by Stockton's assist totals and efficiency

Honestly I see the opposite. He's been dismissed in this thread for this spot because he couldn't be a volume scorer (as all apart from ... oh our fourth place guy ... can). I think there's more than one way to skin a cat. I think every box-composite, including one known to overvalue scorers and missing out on defense (where reputation and impact stats and books from the time note Stockton as elite) i.e. PER, see him as consistently excellent - oh and these numbers miss spacing (heck Pelton's WARP, which did have spacing and seemed to skew pro-PGs had him first in the WARP-era circa 2010- I assume LeBron has passed him).

As before I tend towards not rating players on what they weren't (i.e. he could be leaving stuff on the table ... if his net goodness was what it was - I guess maybe you see him as "solveable"). Impact (97-14 RAPM, 94-96 on-off, WoWY) and box-composites (EWA, WS, VORP, WARP) might otoh (and without a systematic means of aggregating) support him in a while ago, perhaps even if curving towards exponential value growth to super-elite years. I don't think he has to be prime-Nashian offense to be very high overall. Circling back to where this started with another poster I'll balk at it being a problem him not having Isiah's mentality where he tried to "score more when his team needed it" (I've got 23 game videos in which he shot 24 or more FGAs, Detroit win 8, lose 15; at 23 fga plus its 13-17; at 22+ it's 15-22; at 21+ it's 17-32 ... not claiming [shooting] cause and [loss] effect, maybe it's an unrepresentative sample, games tilt towards playoffs ... good/televised teams where you'll lose more etc. Just that being willing to shoot a ton and it occasionally working isn't some great thing.)

I'm inclined to leave at at this if possible.