JoeMalburg wrote:You've perfectly illustrated the problem with looking at stats without the context of seeing what actually happened.
You can't debunk anything I said in my post because it's not my opinion or a statistical analysis, it's what actually happened. When you look at the stats, you would assume that Paul would be excellent in clutch situations, but when you watch the actual games, he's either bad or invisible. That's not my opinion, that's an objective truth.
Paul is my favourite player, and I've probably watched him more than anybody across my NBA watching life, and it's actually insane to me that when people have players they're fans of, others that disagree with their assessments would tell them to "watch the games." We all have different eye tests, and different inclinations and capacities towards interpreting data.
I think where the dissonance lies is that I think some of the assessments just don't make as much sense in terms of how much they're truly worth on a series-wide level. For example, mentioning the 2011 Lakers and 2017 Jazz series - these series don't even go to 6 and 7 games respectively if Paul doesn't play out of his mind in the first 5 and 6 games. For example, in 2011, the Hornets were
wildly outmatched, and the reason that the series makes it to 6 games is that in the first 5 games, Paul was clearly the best player on the court (Kobe did not have a great series at all). A mediocre Hornets team missing their 2nd best player all series (David West didn't play) should NOT be taking the defending champs (who retained most of their team) to 6 games. The idea that this series is cast as a criticism because he had a bad game when his entire series was a 22-12 performance on 67 TS% (which, I repeat, was the CLEAR best performance on either team) is absolutely nutty to me. I get the criticism for injuries, and when he has a bad series (e.g. I've repeatedly been on record in not defending 2009 and 2012, because he was not good in those series at all), but posts like this are
criticizing him for literally being the best player on the court against the defending champions.
Would it be better for Paul to have a lousy game 1 in a series, and then save his best performances for later? Absolutely not - this is likely to result in the series ending quicker. And why doesn't your post mention things such as defeating the defending championship Spurs in the 1st round of 2015, where he hit TWO buzzer beating shots in game 7?
Just like the idea that Malone had better clutch numbers than Jordan. That doesn't tell me that Malone was better in the clutch, that tells me that the sample size is so small, that the numbers are very misleading.
I don't generally care for clutch numbers, but it's an example to exhibit that what we perceive to be "clutch" is sometimes straight up wrong when data is presented to us. And to use your words,
this is what happened. We're not supercomputers - we're human beings, and we miss a lot of information. And this is why data is important - our own ability to track what's happening visually is much more limited than any of us would like to admit.
Data analysis has actually also showcased that clutch play, and having a "closer" on a team are
highly overrated concepts that actually have an incredibly low impact on win probability in basketball.
Same thing with the notion that had Chauncey and Rip Hamilton rotated properly on Rasheed Wallace's corner trap in game six of the 2005 Finals, that Billups would be remembered as comparable to Isiah Thomas. Living here in Detroit my whole life, being around Pistons fans everyday and having had the good fortune to talk with most of the sportswriters here, no one thinks Chauncey is anywhere near Isiah. Because we lived through both eras.
I don't live in Detroit, so I'm happy to take your word on Isiah being remembered more favourably. Of course, I think the opinion of him being remembered more favourably is generally a mainstream belief.
Thomas put up better stats in the early to mid-80's and received more accolades, but he was not an appreciably better player, in fact, he wasn't a better player at all. Chuck Daly said as much, Isiah said as much, his teammates said as much and here in Detroit we know he was never better than he was from 1988-1990.
I concede what the stats say, I understand why people who didn't watch it think what was most likely base don those numbers, but I also know what actually happened. I put much more stock in the later.
What makes him a better player? I'm not being accusatory on this, but rather, inquisitive. From what I've gathered over time, he's a slightly better defender in those years, but also a worse offensive player. And why do you think this wasn't really captured in, say, MVP voting, when team success is normally heavily correlated with MVP voting? And by the same token, Dumars winning Finals MVP?
Looking at 1991 too, the Pistons dropped from around a 53 win pace with Isiah to a 46 win team without him (he missed almost half the season), and this is a guy whose 1991 season seems to be almost a carbon copy of his 1990 season. Regular season wise, anyway. He definitely seemed to have an impact as shown by the data, but if an ATG, top 20 contender (who is the primary shot creator of his team) is truly at his peak, then why did his team not drop off more?
I simply feel like looking at the available evidence, there's not much to suggest that Isiah was regarded as highly as a top 20 ATG player should have been during his playing career, and that at the time, these perceptions made a lot of sense, because... he was simply not
that good (and this isn't a slight on him - guys like Scottie Pippen were amazing, and not top 20 ATG guys today either). Nothing about his stats, impact, accolades (e.g. MVP voting, the 1989 Finals MVP) tell me this.
Isiah was the offensive anchor of his teams, right? Well, in the better of his two playoff championship runs (1990), the Pistons were a mere +1.7 offence, which is WELL below what a guy like CP3 regularly accomplished even in series in which he was eliminated (and CP3's elimination series ORTGs are actually higher than his regular season ORTGs, which have topped the league numerous times). They were literally the second worst offensive team (playoff offence) to win a championship since 1980. They happened to be an incredible -8.8 defence, and some of this is because Isiah himself was a solid, scrappy defensive player, but the Pistons were defensively stacked, and the sheer credit Isiah got for leading a fairly pedestrian offence to a title seems like an overwhelming distribution of credit.
An over dependence on stats as an evaluation tool would lead you to believe Paul is a good clutch player. An set of eyeballs or the ability to read my post and an internet connection to verify the facts laid out would set you straight real quick.
Almost anybody that goes on a forum like RealGM watches a
lot of basketball, and it's incredibly baffling that the eye test is used to defend opinions when everybody's eye test is different. And as for reading your post... I've already said it, but some of what you wrote (e.g. treating the 2011 series as a criticism) seems wholly unfair, and somewhat bemusing, and hardly enough to "set me straight."
