Post#26 » by Bad Gatorade » Tue Aug 22, 2017 10:35 pm
See, even though there are shades of KG reference in this post (does anybody, even the most statistically inclined, really view CP3 as a top 10?) I kind of agree with you. Not just because I'm the token CP3 guy on this board, but because so many people downplay just how good he has been because "winning bias/aggression lol."
Firstly, no, he's not top 10. Despite his gargantuan statistical production, there are some clear caveats -
He's still in his prime - contrary to popular belief that he peaked at some absurdly high level in 2008/09 that he's never been able to replicate, he's been a fairly similar level player, and that player is a top 5/borderline top 5 player for a decade now. Stats such as his gaudy PER, BPM etc are likely to fall off once CP3 is deeper into his career, so he'll be hard pressed to maintain this type of career statistical production forever. We won't be saying "CP3 is 6th all time in PER" in 10 years time.
Along this note, if one values peak highly, then it's worth noting that CP3 has been at a fairly similar level for such a long time, that there are players that might be, say, better over a 5 year span, but worse than a 10 year span that deserve to be ranked above CP3.
Expanded league - now, I think it's actually slightly harder to be considered a top 5 player now than it has ever been before, because the population that players are drawn from is larger than ever. In other words, being the 5th best player out of 227 million people in 1980 probably isn't quite as hard as being the best player out of 309 million people in 210 (this is incredibly simplified and is ignoring international influence, actual bball playing population, top level talent at certain points in the league etc but you get my point). BUT, I'd say that it's easier to accrue box score stats that stray further from the mean, thanks to the increase in NBA players, than in other eras. Eg, Larry Bird led the league in PER with 25.6 in 1986, and CP3 was 9th last year with 26.2.
Injuries - fairly self explanatory, but obviously worth mentioning. And honestly, anybody choosing to bring down CP3 from injuries isn't doing anything unreasonable at all, IMO. In the same way that Walton isn't considered a top 15 all time player because of injuries, penalising CP3 for his injuries is perfectly okay.
The underrating of other players via the box score - in 2014, the creation of BPM showcased that BPM and RAPM actually rate Paul the same (7.4 from 2001-2014). But, there were players such as Tim Duncan that performed worse in BPM, but better in RAPM across this same period. The takeaway here is that Paul is amazing via either metric, but there's reason to believe that some of the older guys whose box scores are comparable/slightly worse than Paul's could very well also be underrated in terms of actual impact (e.g. Hakeem - not quite as impressive on a metric level as Paul, but he's certainly got a better top 10 case, right?).
That being said, I think CP3 is generally underrated around here too, and I'm one of his biggest (if not the biggest) proponents on this board.
Some of the other reasons that his perception doesn't quite match up to his stats -
His raw box score doesn't stand out - he's a 19/10 guy. Even though he performs better in terms of impact than the other guys who get 19/10 (or better) such as Westbrook, Harden, Wall etc, it's hard to believe that a guy averaging 19/10 is still elite whilst not putting up video game numbers.
His game doesn't stand out as aggressive - one of the factors that makes Paul so good is that he doesn't make many mistakes. This is often criticised, i.e. I sometimes feel like people would prefer a guy averaging 20-10 with a TS% of 55 and 3 TOVs than CP3 doing the same with a higher TS% and fewer turnovers.
He's 6'0 - one of the selling points of Paul's game is his defence. This is reflected in his DRAPM (although it's not strictly his defence giving CP3 a higher DRAPM), and people often handwave this because he's short, and "therefore does not impact the game the way that a larger guard does." I actually don't disagree that Paul's defensive stats might be overrated relative to a guy like LeBron (whose DRAPM is similar, but clearly turns it up more in the playoffs) but IMO, they're dismissed far too easily based on his height. The guy is destroying point guard DRAPM right now.
People look harder to criticise CP3 - because he hasn't made the conference finals yet, I feel like people look harder to actually come up with weaknesses for CP3 than for other players. A lot of people state that CP3 isn't aggressive as a scorer, although he shoots at a notably higher rate than, say, Magic, who is never criticised for not shooting enough. And he shouldn't be - the way Magic did things works wonderfully, and he shouldn't have done it any differently. But because Magic won, this is never, ever brought up in a comparison. In no way am I saying Paul is better than Magic, but Magic (who feasted on some stupidly easy teams in the 80s, whereas Paul has never played an elimination game against a team winning under 51 games) is certainly criticised less because of his good fortune.
But, where my contention lies, is that people literally look at the win/loss result and come up with a conclusion. All too many times, I've heard people champion CP3's game 7 vs the Spurs as a display of aggression (when he took only 13 shots, only 5 free throws and had only 6 assists + 1 turnover. In other words, according to what many people state, one of CP3's clearly lower volume playoff games is apparently one of his rare showcases of aggression. And it bugs me, because the Clippers won by 2, and Paul shot lights out (5-6 from 3). If Paul shoots 4-6 from 3 instead, which is still a very, very good percentage, all of a sudden, the Clippers lose by 1, and Paul is "simply a choker again." Paul's career clutch playoff stats + elimination game results are outstanding, even against his ridiculously tough opposition.
If we look at the series where Paul played well (thanks to the box score), and his team got eliminated, his team has an average ORTG of +5.7. That's... pretty good. Without crunching the numbers now, I'm almost sure that this would be higher without his paltry Hornets supporting cast - I recall something like a +8.0 from the years 2013-2015. In other words, his team is still playing really good offence, even when they lose. The reason that CP3's teams tend to bow out of the playoffs is because they completely collapse on defence at the worst times. And before anybody mentions Westbrook in 2014, it's worth noting that Westbrook's numbers were epic in 2014 because he was on fire, not because he wasn't defended (his % of contested jumpers went up from 41% to 64%!). To an extent, this is because of team construction (and that's partly on how the Clippers have chosen to build around Paul), but if a team with Isiah Thomas can almost 3 peat based on a strong defensive supporting cast, I don't see why arguably the best defensive PG in the league (who is also an elite offensive player) couldn't do the same.
This isn't to say that he's without his flaws, but a lot of the criticism that he receives is simply because people look to find reason to criticise him, because he hasn't won.
Nobody looks to criticise Wade's clutch scoring game, because he won, but...
2006-11 Wade in the playoffs (clutch) - 27.3 PP36, 51.9 TS%
2012-17 Paul in the playoffs (clutch) - 26.1 PP36, 64.4 TS%
Would anybody, at all, have picked that to be the case without looking it up? (FWIW, the regular season sample for Wade is also quite underwhelming on this front).
I could mention more, but I'm at work atm, so I have to stop the post here. But yeah, that's some food for thought.
I use a lot of parentheses when I post (it's a bad habit)
