'15-16 RealGM Player of the Year Discussion Thread

[mtron929]

Anyone ever considered the crazy idea that playoff failings in general could simply be a sample size issue, and nothing more?

Sample size is small, but the games are important. In the regular season, the sample size is large, but the games are not as important. In the past when great players had both great regular and playoff seasons, we did not have to contemplate too much on who was the best player because these candidates covered all of their bases. When this is not the case, we do not know what to make of it because there just isn't a satisfactory answer here.

[Texas Chuck]

Anyone ever considered the crazy idea that playoff failings in general could simply be a sample size issue, and nothing more?

Somewhat, I think competition level is higher too. But its part of why I don't weight the postseason as heavily as RS personally.

Competition level and facing better coaching is a pretty big deal to me. The players who seem basically immune to better defenses/better game plans are especially impressive.

[lorak]

[The players who seem basically immune to better defenses/better game plans are especially impressive.

Who for example? Because I think there never was such player, even MJ struggled vs better defenses.

[ceiling raiser]

[The players who seem basically immune to better defenses/better game plans are especially impressive.

Who for example? Because I think there never was such player, even MJ struggled vs better defenses.

How about Dirk or Reggie? Probably not immune though. Would say Hakeem but the Sonics were an issue for him.

[Texas Chuck]

Poor wording on my part Lorak. I mean the players who manage to be consistently as productive/efficient in the playoffs despite facing better defenses/coaches are particularly impressive. I try not to be too hard on guys who playoff numbers drop a bit because its to be expected. So those guys who don't suffer that drop over large samples show to have a bit more resiliency and I'm personally impressed.

[tsherkin]

[The players who seem basically immune to better defenses/better game plans are especially impressive.

Who for example? Because I think there never was such player, even MJ struggled vs better defenses.

I think he's talking about guys who experienced much smaller dips than average against such fare.

[E-Balla]

[The players who seem basically immune to better defenses/better game plans are especially impressive.

Who for example? Because I think there never was such player, even MJ struggled vs better defenses.

I think he's talking about guys who experienced much smaller dips than average against such fare.

Hakeem, Wade, Reggie, and Isiah increased production. But outside of them you're right.

[makaveli_99]

1. Curry
2. Westbrook
3. Lebron

the gap between curry and the rest in the regular season was just too big. Sure he hasn't been as good in the playoffs, but he's missed a couple games and its a smaller sample.

[lorak]

[The players who seem basically immune to better defenses/better game plans are especially impressive.

Who for example? Because I think there never was such player, even MJ struggled vs better defenses.

I think he's talking about guys who experienced much smaller dips than average against such fare.

And how do you measure drop off in performance (because obviously box score covers only some part of the game) and how do you compare it vs different great defenses in history?

[Krodis]

Yeah at this point I have Curry pretty locked in at #1. Followed by Westbrook, LeBron, and then some combination of Durant Green and Leonars.

[tsherkin]

And how do you measure drop off in performance (because obviously box score covers only some part of the game) and how do you compare it vs different great defenses in history?

First-pass look at postseason numbers versus regular season numbers. Second, examination of performances versus defenses of differing levels in given postseason series. Video examination of why certain things happened and what differed about their game in the extreme series on either end of the spectrum. Third, look for consistent trends in performance over time. Fourth, further consideration of what counts as roughly average decline in the postseason for players in similar roles.

Something like that.

[lorak]

And how do you measure drop off in performance (because obviously box score covers only some part of the game) and how do you compare it vs different great defenses in history?

First-pass look at postseason numbers versus regular season numbers.

Box score? That's not enough.

Second, examination of performances versus defenses of differing levels in given postseason series.

How? How do you compare quality of defenses from different eras?

Third, look for consistent trends in performance over time. Fourth, further consideration of what counts as roughly average decline in the postseason for players in similar roles.

How do you measure performance?

[ceiling raiser]

This is a difficult situation. GSW's first 8 games of the playoffs:

1 - Curry leaves 2:47 into the 3rd, GSW is up 65-39
2 - Curry out
3 - Curry out
4 - Curry leaves after the first half, game tied 56-56
5 - Curry out
6 - Curry out
7 - Curry out
8 - Curry out

What we know about the two injuries:

1) Curry turned his ankle in G1 of the Houston series. Kept out the next two games (7 days), potentially playing it safe.
2) Curry sprained his MCL in G4 of the same series. Missing four games, or more precisely (14 days), being held out when he legitimately could not have played.

This is a weird situation, since it's not like 78 Walton (or even CP3 this year) where a guy is knocked out for the playoffs, or like some other years where a guy's injuries prior to the playoffs would keep him out (92 Robinson, 00 Duncan, 09 Duncan). To be honest, 03 Dirk seems like the best comparison. Sprained knee, similar injury to Curry. I understand both takes here (though to be fair, they're not necessarily this clean-cut):

Take A: A team should not be expected to win one series without its best player, and being down 0-3 is a very real possibility. A player needs to be penalized because if he was placed on a number of random teams, many would be eliminated before he could return. Just like Dirk in 03, if the player had a lesser supporting cast and was playing a better opponent, that would be the end of the road.

Take B: Similarly to how it means more to many to be the catalyst transforming a team from good -> great than subpar -> pretty good (I'm probably in this camp), it shouldn't matter as much if a guy missed time early in the playoffs against mediocre teams. If we care primarily about raising the level of play to make a very good team elite, we should only consider scenarios comprising the subset of all random scenarios in which the supporting cast is capable of treading water well enough while he's out and in which the opponents are not world-beaters because the star was good enough to get you the 1 seed (i.e. typical 8 seed and 4/5 seeds).

Again not everybody's opinion falls so neatly into one of these two camps, but I think they illustrate the dichotomy pretty well. My current thinking:

• Holding Curry out for the ankle injury was likely precautionary. Furthermore if a team is a legitimate contender, they should be trusted not to get into a terrible hole even if Curry missed the bulk of the series.

• The second injury (sprained MCL) I'm not so sure. Here are the 4/5 matchups in the East and the West for this year and the prior five (SRS in parentheses):

16: E - ATL (3.49) v BOS (2.84) ; W - LAC (4.13) v POR (0.98)
15: E - TOR (2.45) v WAS (0.17) ; W - POR (4.41) v SAS (6.34)
14: E - CHI (1.20) v WAS (0.48) ; W - HOU (5.06) v POR (4.44)
13: E - BRK (1.25) v CHI (-0.02) ; W - LAC (6.43) v MEM (4.32)
12: E - BOS (2.26) v ATL (2.67) ; W - MEM (2.43) v LAC (2.82)
11: E - ORL (4.92) v ATL (-1.10) ; W - OKC (3.81) v DEN (4.81)

I see six different ways of trying to gauge the average SRS GSW would be facing in the second round:

1) Look at both conferences, 4 and 5 seeds equally likely to win (2.94 SRS)
2) Look at both conferences, 4 seed expected to win (3.49 SRS)
3) Look at both conferences, higher SRS expected to win (3.80 SRS)
4) Look at West only, 4 and 5 seeds equally likely to win (4.17 SRS)
5) Look at West only, 4 seed expected to win (4.38 SRS)
6) Look at West only, higher SRS expected to win (4.93 SRS)

If CP3 and BG weren't knocked out, GSW was likely facing a 2-1 hole at the least with this supporting cast, and a 3-0 deficit isn't out of the question. For those posters for whom all random scenarios are equally relevant, this is a big problem. In past years, considering the West, the opponent on average would be tougher than the Clippers as well. Even if we bring the East in, and allow the possibility of upsets, you're still looking at a team with a significantly higher SRS than Portland as your second round opponent.

• Curry's play since his return in G4 vs POR doesn't doesn't vary significantly enough in either direction (better or worse) to alter the perception I had of his year after the regular season.

Where does that leave me? I'm really not sure. I honestly believe the Warriors would have been down 1-2 vs the Clippers when Curry returned. That being said, I think I would still favor GSW winning that series. If I did believe that Curry's injury put his team in a nearly impossible situation though, I probably wouldn't be able to slot him in my top 5. I guess it might come back to what you do for Dirk in 03.

[GSP]

Who for example? Because I think there never was such player, even MJ struggled vs better defenses.

I think he's talking about guys who experienced much smaller dips than average against such fare.

Hakeem, Wade, Reggie, and Isiah increased production. But outside of them you're right.

Wade? How so?

Dirk should be there.

[tsherkin]

Box score? That's not enough.

That's why we read the rest of the post before starting to comment, really.

How? How do you compare quality of defenses from different eras?

We don't, on first pass. We look at in-era performance first, and that's why we supplement with video examination, to see what kind of specific defensive pressure was being applied. Later, we can look at how that differs across eras.

As to measuring performance, it's a mixture of different things, obviously. I know you're leading into some kind of PM stat that I don't generally trust and over the value of which we disagree, but we can agree that it's certainly something to work into the examination because if nothing else, ignoring data is foolish.

Obviously, we have to look at the end result of what was actually happening on the court, and to some extent, the various APM stats and what have you help that, but video examination is critical here to see explicitly what he was doing and whether or not it was actually helpful or if the team was just clicking while he struggled. Stuff like watching Curry cutting to draw defenders away to open up shots, or guys boxing out at relevant moment to permit offensive rebounds or whatever, you know what I mean, individual moments where their actions led to positive outcomes not in the box score, without solely relying on the scoring margin at the time. After all, as you noted and with which I agree, the box score alone is not enough, nor is just an examination of scoring plays in the PBP data.

[lorak]

tsherkin,

it looks like video examination is big part of your performance evaluation. And while agree it's important at the same time I have to criticize such approach, because it's impossible to do. I mean, if we would want to know what is average drop off level (or quality of defense) we would have to evaluate hundreds of players and no one can do it that way, because video examination takes too much time and not many video is available for past players.

[mischievous]

I think he's talking about guys who experienced much smaller dips than average against such fare.

Hakeem, Wade, Reggie, and Isiah increased production. But outside of them you're right.

Wade? How so?

Dirk should be there.

Agaisnt top defenses? I'd suggest maybe taking a look at Wade's stats against the Pistons in 06, and the Celtics in both 2010 and 2011. That's when he was in his prime and not the broken down version we saw in the last couple years of the big 3 era.

[Doctor MJ]

The thing is good enough isn't good enough when we naming the top 5 players and the others were more than good enough. I get what you mean but in the case of the Finals +5 wasn't needed from Curry it was -2. So when Curry shows up with 2 0 games and a -10 to lose it there's an issue. Now I get that he can win it without showing up but in this ranking every game you're not at top 5 level makes you lose ground.

I think of it like class standings. When I was in highschool there were about 4 people close to getting valedictorian. Heading into my senior year the number one student was a girl who decided to duel enroll her last year of HS while the other 4 stayed in highschool. Now in GA when you duel enroll an A is only counted as a 95. She got straight As both semesters giving her a 95 average on the year but she ended up 3rd in my class (yes she wasn't even salutatorian) because the 2nd and 3rd place students got 99s and 100s in their highschool classes (she was so pissed when went back to Korea and skipped graduation). When Curry sweeps giving 10/10 performances in my eyes he gets a 10 and when he gives 3 3 performances and 4 10s I give him a slight boost for showing up in 4 games when that's all he needed to win but I take points off for him losing 3 to begin with.

The issue is with the simplification.

Cleveland clearly went into this series saying "We are going make the other guys beat us", and so they gave the Warriors opportunities to win blatant enough that Curry never had to actually fight against the teeth of the defense to get his team a good shot in the first two games. Curry may look "bad" in those games, but if he's not on the team, the Cavs plan entirely differently and those other shots would utterly disappear.

In game 3 what we saw was that between the Cavs' initial intensity edge and starting "hot" the game was basically over quite quickly. Curry even managed to do his classic 3rd quarter streak, but the Cavs were just playing too well to catch up.

And then now of course you have game 4, which was THE game where both teams put it all truly on the line, and which saw Curry score 38 points leading his team to win the game Cleveland new it absolutely could not lose. And yeah that was a padded total at the end, but not only does that happen in a lot of big scoring games, it was still happening against a defense that was determined not to let themselves get beat that way.

Scoring like that against a defense like that in a game like that is a considerably more impressive than anything any of his teammates are capable of except for Klay. I say this as someone who at this point thinks Draymond's +/- edge is a real thing. Curry's impact is considerably more sporadic than Draymond's...but Curry & Klay burning nuclear also seems to be how Golden State reliably beats elite teams.

Last thing I'll add here: What we saw through 3 games is essentially the same thing we saw from LeBron in '11 against Dallas. The difference between the two players as scorers was that LeBron out of his element basically couldn't get into a groove for the rest of the series even after it became clear that that was what the Heat needed, whereas Curry at most spent one game in that funk before turning it on and breaking Cleveland's serve - and in reality if game 3 were close, he probably keeps on playing like he did in the 3rd quarter and ends up burying them in game 3.

Westbrook is a different situation than either of these guys because he only plays one way and so he never really lets the offense thrive with himself off to the side. People tend to see that like it's a good thing, but I'd argue that the need for Westbrook to be able to step aside in favor of Durant is actually at least as important as Curry or LeBron allowing their teammates to thrive. So once again, things are complicated. All of these guys have quirks to their game that lead to particular good or bad things.

Westbrook vs Curry: As far as scoring goes I 100% agree but I strongly disagree with your playmaking argument. Westbrook isn't he reason why OKC transforms into an iso team. He's one of the reasons but I'd say the coaches and KD hold just as much responsibility as he does. And Curry is in an offball role now but when he was in a team situation more similar to WBs he was devolving into iso commonly too and he wasn't even passing as much as WB either. I'm not giving Curry a boost because Golden State has a ton of great playmakers (including 2 or 3 I'd say are better than Curry) and they don't devolve into iso ball. It wasn't like they turned to iso ball without Curry and it's not like OKC moves the ball when Westbrook is off the floor. Actually Golden State moves the ball a lot more without Curry (they were assisted on about 67% of their baskets when Curry went down and their TOV% dropped too) and OKC moves the ball a lot less without Westbrook.

I think what I'd say here is that Curry spending more time off ball is EXACTLY what Westbrook should have learned to do years ago. Neither of these guys is Steve Nash.

When you're the point guard and the offense devolves into iso ball no matter the coach, it's on you. It's your job to make sure the offense doesn't bog down in the face of up'ed pressure.

It's true that Durant isn't really any better at playing that on-ball, but since he's 7 feet tall, it makes about as much sense to lay that on him as it does to lay it on Shaq.

Also it's not lucky that his injury didn't affect anything it's because his team covered for him. Every missed game he missed he was openly hurting his team. If he played those 6 games and performed like he did in game 3 (actively hurting the team) would you have dropped him any? If so why not penalize him for hurting the team by not being there?

I'm not say saying that I'm going to pretend Curry was amazing when he was not playing, I'm just saying that you're holding these 6 games to be infinitely more important than 6 games in the regular season despite the fact that when people look back on this years from now, both will basically have the same amount of impact on where Golden State actually ended up.

Credit his supporting cast for what they did, and if that credit means you're not that impressed with his impact in general that's a big deal, but the reality is that either way Curry would have played the same amount of time and had the same final result so you're making a big deal out of something that is entirely hypothetical in its consequences. Feel free to do so, I'm just explaining why it doesn't necessarily stick with me as being "devastating" in how I see his season.

[GSP]

Hakeem, Wade, Reggie, and Isiah increased production. But outside of them you're right.

Wade? How so?

Dirk should be there.

Agaisnt top defenses? I'd suggest maybe taking a look at Wade's stats against the Pistons in 06, and the Celtics in both 2010 and 2011. That's when he was in his prime and not the broken down version we saw in the last couple years of the big 3 era.

The problem with Wade is the small sample size in the playoffs against top defenses in his prime compared to other greats. He did perform great against those defenses u named tho . He was also terrible against the bulls in 2011.

In 2012 he was inconsistent too despite some big games.

[mischievous]

Wade? How so?

Dirk should be there.

Agaisnt top defenses? I'd suggest maybe taking a look at Wade's stats against the Pistons in 06, and the Celtics in both 2010 and 2011. That's when he was in his prime and not the broken down version we saw in the last couple years of the big 3 era.

The problem with Wade is the small sample size in the playoffs against top defenses in his prime compared to other greats. He did perform great against those defenses u named tho . He was also terrible against the bulls in 2011.

In 2012 he was inconsistent too despite some big games.

2012 was the year he exited his prime. When he got his knee drained in the Indiana series he went off in the last 3 games.

The 2011 Bulls series is the only time he was healthy and underperformed that i can think off. If anything i'd say the Bulls was a small 5 game sample. In the 06 playoffs he played all top 10 defenses in the eastern conference playoffs i think.