E-Balla wrote:Throwing this in a spoiler so y'all don't have to read it if you don't want or scroll past it. Trust me you're not going to learn anything from reading this post.
No one ever has from reading any of your posts on Kawhi.
I am not going to put this in a spoiler, because if I have to endure responding to this perpetual dreck, other people can at least endure scrolling past it.
liamliam1234 wrote:Regular season is not the same as postseason. And you know that. Especially for a player who acted in injury management all year.
Are you trying to help Kawhi here or hurt him? Yeah Kawhi played so bad in the regular season he didn't even deserve an All-NBA nod, how is this helping? Why is this relevant?
Either you cannot grasp the idea of trying harder in the regular season (unlikely), or you are deliberately acting, as you have throughout this entire discussion, in bad faith. See, when you build an entire narrative on extrapolating regular season play to the postseason, it kind-of matters whether that regular season play is the same as the postseason play. But you know that.
Since you're hard of reading:
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.
Another manipulated point of data totally looking past the point, as per usual. It is not essential for the Raptors to strictly be a -14 offence without Kawhi. I have never locked myself into saying, "Oh, if the Raptors were only -10 without him, I would support him less!" Because it is not just those 223 minutes. No, it is the other 900 minutes where he was the biggest positive on the team.
But you know, this sudden concern over the minutes sample size is funny, because who was it who wanted to claim the off-court drop-off was indicative of some failing on Kawhi's part? Why does it become an issue of sample size after I pushed back by showing players shockingly did
not actually play worse next to Kawhi? Purely accidental, I am sure; after all, you are certainly not trying to "win".
Robinson has 6 series I pointed out where he played a good defense or opposing HOF C. Those 6 series covered multiple seasons, 28 games, and 1,078 minutes for Robinson on the court. How the hell is that a small sample? That's a pretty large sample, especially for a postseason sample, especially for a sample with no exceptions. He ALWAYS sucked. I said before if he had at least one good performance it would cast some doubt, and I said that because with mixed evidence sample sizes become relevant.
How about the mixed evidence over two separate postseasons on two separate teams indicating Kawhi as a supremely impactful offensive player.
Sample size was not an issue when Bob McAdoo happened to lead a good offence against a historically good defence.
Yeah because McAdoo's small sample didn't contradict previous trends in more reliable data. McAdoo's larger sample of data says he's the best scorer of 74 to 76, and one of the best scorers ever. His performance against Washington reinforces this.
You mean like the career playoff sample showing Kawhi to be one of the best postseason scorers in NBA history?
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?
Are you serious? 22 FULL GAMES without a player is a quarter of a **** season. That's 1056 minutes of FULL GAMES WITHOUT A PLAYER at least. You're comparing that to a 233 minute sample of mostly bench lineups and pretending they're just as reliable as each other?
Do you see why I keep calling you out for trying to win instead of actually making points worth responding to? If the question is "how do the Raps play without Kawhi in the lineup completely" what's a better way to determine that, looking at games he missed, or looking at a 233 minute off court sample?
The question is not how the Raptors play without Kawhi in the lineup. The question is how they do without him 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.
Umm... Never happened. Again read to understand and stop trying to score cheap wins by building strawmen.
Kawhi had a +13.8 on/off in the playoffs and Lowry had a +13.7. Like I said almost equal +/- numbers. Those numbers were to show you Kawhi's on/off wasn't a function of just his play but a function of his lineups. That's why on/off in small samples is unreliable. The on court is way more important than the off.
I am seeing +16.8 for Kawhi and +14.1 for Lowry. Is this the part where I get to call you a liar for "making up" numbers?
And I agree, on-court is more valuable. Good thing Kawhi has the best on-court value, offensive and overall.
Oh, yes, Danny Green was such a reliable shooter when Kawhi missed all of 2018.
He shot 116 of 320 in 2018. He shot 118 of 311 in 2017. What the **** are you talking about? Are you seriously trying to tell me DANNY GREEN is only a good 3 point shooter because he plays with Kawhi? Even from 12-15 when he was 42% from deep, breaking Finals records in 3s made, and Kawhi was a distant 3rd or even 4th option?
Next time you type reread it before you send and make sure it makes sense and that you're making a point you'd want to stand behind.
These little eruptions when you fail to read are beautiful; keep them coming.
No, I am saying it is nonsense to act as if Kawhi has held back Danny's shooting. If Kawhi was so poisonous to the offence that it hurt Danny, I would expect Danny to really show it during the massive sample we had without Kawhi. But it turns out that is not how it works. Who could have known.
And citing a couple of 2013-14 series is such a pertinent application to 2019, especially for a player I have already said goes on hot streaks and cold streaks. Or do you think Danny is the special type of player who just suddenly becomes a good three-point shooter in the Finals, and would have done so this year had Kawhi's lack of passing not disrupted him?
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.
https://stats.nba.com/vs/#!/?PlayerID=201980&VsPlayerID=202695He was 43.7% with Kawhi on the bench and 46.5% with him on the floor. That's not +5.3% at all and it's a percentage that's within a small margin of error (that gap in percentage is only 4 more made 3s with Kawhi off the floor) so I'm not even going to look up the rest of those numbers, I'll just assume this is more gish gallop and blatant lies. You haven't really earned the benefit of the doubt.
Again, the only person who has been conducting a gish gallop in this conversation is you, with the amount of bull I have had to look up to correct you. But rather than consider the possibility that there was some different resource or calculation, you just decided, "Yep, probably made it up." Really rational conclusion.
Fortunately, that data does not contradict the actual point – which, as is your pattern, you breezed right past. There is no evidence that Danny's shooting suffered by playing next to Kawhi.
“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.
So let's get this right, now the argument is that these players with decade long careers in both the regular season and postseason showed a level of play without Kawhi consistent with their reputations in the regular season, but they regressed only in the postseason, and only in the postseason
while Kawhi was on the bench?Danny Green played 71 minutes without Kawhi on the floor in the playoffs (30% of the minutes). Marc played 49 minutes (21% of the minutes). I can keep going but I won't because even though you're playing dumb we all know how off court samples work. You're telling me that sample which is mostly of the bench in the playoffs is indicative of how
the team would play without Kawhi?
Or you just trying to "win"?
I do not know, I lost track around the time you decided to move away from, "Kawhi made everyone play worse without him," to, "Everyone played like normal and the negative impact indicators are entirely disconnected from the starters." In which case Kawhi led the
starters to like a +3.5 offence and had even
less responsibility than you claimed for that dip down to total mediocrity. Which is fine by me. See, that is the problem with dishonest portrayals: it makes it a lot harder to hold that narrative together if you start to lose track of the "support" you have offered.
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?
I said "the Spurs offense in 2019 with Demar was better than the Spurs offense in 2017 with Kawhi+Danny". What;s relevant to that point is how good the team offense is, or am I mistaken?
What is relevant is whether Demar is in any way responsible for that (hint: he is responsible for about +2.2 of it). But I do not think you ever made this argument in good faith anyway.
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?
*Citation needed*
Do I need to explain implications for you, or is this just more sheer dishonesty?
"the Spurs offense in 2019 with Demar was better than the Spurs offense in 2017 with Kawhi+Danny"
Hmm, now what would be the point of this claim? Just a fun, incidental fact designed to say nothing about either player? No narrative? Completely disconnected with you talking about how Kawhi actually was not very impactful in 2017?
"Pop has a better offense than the 2017 Spurs NOW with Kawhi being replaced by Demar. You mean to tell me DeMar is better offensively than Kawhi+Green, or is there something else up?"
^ In a conversation specifically about how Kawhi created a "bad" systemic reliance on himself because he did not pass enough. You know what the "something else" could be?
Like thirty different factors going from 2017 to 2019.You discredit yourself much too willingly.
Ignoring the fact that Kawhi increased his assist percentage and assist ratio in 2017 is not picking and choosing?
Who ignored this? Why is it relevant? Who mentioned assist percentage and assist ratio at all? What relevance does this have? What point are you attempting to make with this factoid? Player that increases primacy of the ball increases their assist totals?????? Wow how amazing and unexpected!
Who was it who said Kawhi's passing dropped off a cliff in 2017 and hurt the offence as a result? Actual lies, by the way, not simply a matter of different sources.
Painting a 22 game regular season sample against teams deliberately chosen as rest targets
Pause. They didn't deliberately choose ****. If anything I'm being light on Kawhi. They played half of each back to back without him aka the toughest games of the year. If you'd expect a team to play bad it'd be those games. He missed games against Milwaukee, a back to back at Utah and at LA while LA was still looking good early this year with Bron and Zo, a back to back against the Clippers and Warriors on the road, the 2nd half of a back to back vs Philly, the 2nd half of a back to back vs Indiana, the 2nd half of a back to back at Indiana, and the first half of a back to back against Miami among other games. Half the games he missed were vs playoff teams, and most of them were parts of back to backs. Kawhi played the EASY games if anything.
Again stop the gish gallop. You could've easily looked up who they played without Kawhi or when Kawhi sat if you didn't know (and if you didn't know that presents a problem in itself because it means you obviously didn't watch the Raps much).
One of your funniest little habits is how you very obviously write responses as you read them, and then do not go back to change anything if you read something later on which addresses it.
Tell me, while you were looking up the schedule, how exactly did you avoid checking the results of those tough games?
Alright, add the Lakers, they still went 5-5. Oooh, what a scary postseason profile.
as a “superior” sample to 24 postseason games in terms of determining postseason impact is offering the whole picture?
You're not using 24 postseason games as your sample. You're using 233 minutes without him on the floor over than span of 24 games in minutes the rest of the starters rarely played as your sample.
Nah, I am also using the 900 minutes of +3.9 offence.
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?
I've literally posted their prior postseason data plenty of times to SUPPORT my point.
This post is comedy.
It is, but you are laughing without getting the joke.
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?
I haven't? I broke down why those numbers aren't impressive too already...
And yet still no worse than third best in the league, against a far tougher slate than the player with a superficially stronger claim to second.
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.”
The Raps went 22-20 vs .500 teams overall, or 18-15 with Kawhi assuming that 4-5 is true (I'd guess it is but I never know with you). That's not much of a gap...
And it would be concerning had it not be a clear product of coasting.
Although worth mentioning Lowry's own absence factors in there.
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?”
What are you arguing here? No one said Toronto would win a ring without Kawhi. No one said he didn't make them better. Actually I specifically said on multiple occasions he raised their floor and is the reason (along with good luck) they didn't have their usual terrible series. You're trying too hard here, why not actually contest the points I'm making, and not the ones you wish I was making because no one would make them because they're stupid. Why do you suddenly decide to make a good point whenever you're responding to **** you made up?
How about you make a coherent point first rather than belly-itching over whether a guy who "raised the floor"
straight to a championship was actually not helping his team's offence enough.
What, do you think a real ceiling raiser would have led them to a championship sweep? Yeah, alright, maybe Jordan or Lebron could have pulled that off, but that premise is hardly relevant twenty spots past their discussion. Second-round exit to title; what, is the distance between the ceiling and the floor like half a metre?
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,
Well no **** they scored more with Kawhi on the floor because news flash, he's a great offensive player. That doesn't mean their ball movement increased, that's why their AST% went down. Less of their made shots were assisted when he was on the floor.
Okay, so they remembered to pass to him, but just forgot how to pass to each other. And then when they started passing to each other once he was out of the lineup, they forgot how to make shots. Really sensible argument.
or that in every two-man lineup he was positive there.
Again what are you even arguing against? No one said Kawhi was bad...
Yes, much more reasonable to claim he handicapped the team's offence and made his teammates worse.
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.
What does it tell you if a player has a "high" assist percentage but when he hits the floor the team wide assist percentage drops? This is an open question to anyone that was enough of a sadist to read your post to this point or my rebuttal to this drivel.
Assists do not equal ball movement. You know that, so why even mention this as if it's making your point and not the exact opposite?
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.
Because he moves the ball more than he stops others from moving the ball? They had a 53.8 AST% with him on the floor and a 51.2 without him. That clearly shows he increased ball movement.
Because my point is that the majority of the players individually increased their ball movement without Westbrook. Now, obviously that does not replicate Westbrook's ten assists per game, but that base phenomenon is the same as with Kawhi. And I would not be surprised if it were the same for most ball-dominant stars. My point is that it is not some inherent negative if non-star players move the ball around more without the star; if anything, that is exactly what I would expect them to need to do.
As for the last sentence, we're talking about how the team moves the ball with a player on the floor. I'd think team production would matter. What you posted isn't team data. It's individual player data of his teammates. You didn't post the team data because it would prove you wrong, and you love nothing more than posting bad stats and lies.
I did not post the team data because it was not part of my point. But you love nothing more than posting misapplied stats and lies, so I am not surprised that also went over your head.
What did I skip? The 2019 Raptors, by the end of the season, had four new starters.
Pause, so you did skip it... You admit that.
Even for you, reading, "What did I skip?" as "I admit I skipped this" is baffling.
Whether or not you give reasons for skipping it, none of that excuses you doing so since that's the same team he was on. They added new players but unless you're telling me Demar+Jakob+Val for Danny+Kawhi+Marc is a negative value trade (we already have the team ORTG before and after trading Val posted to show at the very least Val for Marc was an upgrade) what are you saying here?
It does not need to be a negative trade value for the team to operate differently. And this is also not a hard concept to understand if you spent more than a second thinking about it (fingers crossed).
And one of the new starters was already on the roster and got better. Again this means we'd expect the offense to be even better.
Maybe if everything happened in a vacuum, but in reality, no.
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.
No this is what you're doing. I'm the one that mentioned maybe using 2018 to make this point. Hell originally I made that point using only 2018 and YOU responded by bringing up their playoff performances prior. This is what happens when you just say ****, you don't actually mean it, and you don't remember it.
This is rich coming from someone who has regularly lost track of conversation threads and needed to be reminded of how they progressed. Or is this just another weak gaslighting attempt?
This was my response:
"Oh, the 2018 Raptors had an okay offensive rating against the Bucks and no-defence Cavaliers? Shocking."
Your response?
I already brought up 2 other years of postseason data including series against the 2016 Pacers (-3.5 defense), and the 2016 Heat (-2.0 defense) who are both better than the 2019 76ers defensively and Indiana was better than Orlando.
And that data was in response to Cecil, not me.
I have told you this before, but lying about how a conversation developed is a lot easier when there is no record of the conversation. And yet for some reason, you try to do it like every ten posts. Do you think eventually it will work out?
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.
You can't do it for players with actual trash supporting casts. Westbrook in 17 for example lost 3 games where he had over a +10 +/- (he only lost 4 games) and didn't win the one game where he had a negative. The 2003 Spurs lost 5 postseason games where Duncan had a positive +/- including one where he was +15 while winning no games when he was a negative. Kawhi's numbers are comparable to Lowry's in this way for a reason, neither of them were being held back by their teams. That's my whole point. If the Raptors were as bad as the numbers say without Kawhi, you'd expect them to have lost some leads while he was out the game for 9 minutes a night.
Does plus minus only cover half the court now? This is not relevant to the question of Kawhi's offensive impact.
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.
Nah you're just too slow to read. They lost WITH Giannis. No **** they'd lose without him. Their offense looked bad anyway, and that's my point. Who's giving Giannis credit for making his offense bad, but slightly less bad? The story of the series was how bad they looked on that end, and you're wanting to give Giannis props for how he played on that end? Why, because he's the first option? Does his effectiveness not matter? How impressed are you with Devin Booker?
So your thesis is that if an offence is mediocre or bad with a star, it does not matter how much worse it would be without that star?
Ace analysis as ever. Garnett fans in shambles.
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.
"He got defensive attention, why cares if he took advantage of it or not that means he was great!"
Please, feel free to show where I said Giannis was great offensively in that series.
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.
Dropping here because you typed a lot, most of what I've read so far was completely baffling, and I saw how much is left and assume there's nothing of value there either. If there is maybe another poster can point it out, but I'm guessing most didn't even make it this far in your post.
Same old same old. You know, if you keep getting baffled, maybe you should start putting a little more thought into your reading. Just an idea.
