What is the argument against Chris Paul in the top 20?

[ardee]

Figured this merits its own thread. Discuss.

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[70sFan]

I'm not sure if I have him in top 20 or not, but my concerns are:

- lack of durability and that's huge especially in postseason,
- great defensive player but his defense isn't good enough alone to anchor your team,
- his conservative style sometimes can limit offensive celling, although I'm not sure I'd agree here,
- his longevity is very good, but not elite ans he's already past his prime.

[SHAQ32]

Playoff performances and health.

[Heat4lyf]

off the top of my head, everyone in the top 20 or arguably in the top 20 had playoff success (at least one finals appearance) as great as cp3 career has been, he hasn't proven himself to be top 20 all-time when it matters most, in the postseason.

I will say, a lot of that has to do with back luck i.e. durability, but at the end of the day, there are other players who have proven it more than he has while having better or comparable career regular seasons.

[Dr Spaceman]

The argument against him is that he can’t stay healthy.

[Gooner]

Why is Chris Paul so overrated all of a sudden? Not even clsoe to top 20. Health issues and lack of playoff success are the main reasons obviously.

[Jaivl]

Health, basically. When healthy he pointed to a top 15-ish level prime.

[VDT]

Each one's top 20 might be a bit different but i would guess everyone there has gone to the finals as the guy and most have won the title in that fashion ( apart maybe from Robinson if you have him there).

The question should rather be what has Paul done to be in the top 20.

[Dr Spaceman]

Why is Chris Paul so overrated all of a sudden? Not even clsoe to top 20. Health issues and lack of playoff success are the main reasons obviously.

Yeah, so weird that a guy who was a top 5 player for a whole decade is held in such high regard.

[Gooner]

Why is Chris Paul so overrated all of a sudden? Not even clsoe to top 20. Health issues and lack of playoff success are the main reasons obviously.

Yeah, so weird that a guy who was a top 5 player for a whole decade is held in such high regard.

Which decade?

[Dr Spaceman]

Each one's top 20 might be a bit different but i would guess everyone there has gone to the finals as the guy and most have won the title in that fashion ( apart maybe from Robinson if you have him there).

The question should rather be what has Paul done to be in the top 20.

Well a place to start would be his statistical profile (both box score and plus/minus) which paint him as at best the 2nd best player of his era and at worst the 6th or so, having a comparable peak to guys like Curry, Wade, Harden, Durant and superior longevity to any of those guys. He peaked as arguably the greatest single-season point guard of all time, being a much better defender than e.g. Magic or Steve Nash. He has aged considerably better than most historical guards due to the insane pace of his skill development (look how far he’s come with his 3 point shot, for example), and at max effort his defense legitimately rivals the best defensive guards of all time (though he notably does not get to the level of the GOAT wings).

[LA Bird]

Missed games in the playoffs is the only argument.

I can't take 'lack of postseason success' as a serious reason when there is a point guard on everybody's top 15 who made the the playoffs less often than Paul (6 vs 9) and won less series than Paul did (2 vs 4) at the same age before teaming up with the league MVP. The difference was that one played with Harden and had to go up against the Warriors juggernaut while the other got to play with Kareem and only had to beat 41, 48, 42 win teams to win the title.

[VDT]

Each one's top 20 might be a bit different but i would guess everyone there has gone to the finals as the guy and most have won the title in that fashion ( apart maybe from Robinson if you have him there).

The question should rather be what has Paul done to be in the top 20.

Well a place to start would be his statistical profile (both box score and plus/minus) which paint him as at best the 2nd best player of his era and at worst the 6th or so, having a comparable peak to guys like Curry, Wade, Harden, Durant and superior longevity to any of those guys. He peaked as arguably the greatest single-season point guard of all time, being a much better defender than e.g. Magic or Steve Nash. He has aged considerably better than most historical guards due to the insane pace of his skill development (look how far he’s come with his 3 point shot, for example), and at max effort his defense legitimately rivals the best defensive guards of all time (though he notably does not get to the level of the GOAT wings).

Advanced stats are there to help quantify and make more easy to analyze the reality. They cant be a substitute for it.

Paul is excellent for what he is, a 6 ft guard. It is virtually impossible for a player of that height to dominate the game offensively or defensively. He may have maximized what he has but he will always depend on other players to anchor the defense or be the volume scorer on the team. This limits his real impact, particularly in the postseason, and is the reason that he cant be the alpha guy on a genuine contender, which players in the top 20 have generally been, and most of them for years.

[GhosDini]

Lack of team success, individual accolades, and durability. I think it comes down to what you value more: Theories and analytics or tangible results.

We all know Chris Paul is an analytics god but hes never translated that into actual results. As far as point guards go I have him behind Magic Steph, Oscar, Jerry, Isiah, Cousy, Stockton, Nash, Kidd, Russ, and arguably Frazier and Payton as well.

Chris Pauls success begins and ends at the box score. Never won any major awards, never led his team the even a Conference final let alone compete for a title, and always got hurt at the most critical moments.

For those that value results I think its tough to put him any higher than top 50.

[Bad Gatorade]

For me, it's health (if anything - I suspect that I'd still scrape him into my top 20). His healthy prime level of play was absurd, but the health is a real issue. Of course, it also begs the question of whether we look at other players in the same vein health wise - do we punish guys like Curry for his playoff injuries in 2016 and 2018, when his team was actually capable of winning series without him? CP3's injury history is pretty bad, but arguably looks worse than it is because his injuries basically ensured the collapse of his teams, which doesn't happen to all cases of injury in NBA history.

I'm not sure if I have him in top 20 or not, but my concerns are:

- lack of durability and that's huge especially in postseason,
- great defensive player but his defense isn't good enough alone to anchor your team,
- his conservative style sometimes can limit offensive celling, although I'm not sure I'd agree here,
- his longevity is very good, but not elite ans he's already past his prime.

Just going to highlight these two points.

The offensive ceiling point is one I simply don't buy. If we look at prime CP3's team's ORTGs when he's on the court, he is elite in this manner - best in the league levels.

2008: 8th in the league behind Radmanovic, Nash, Vujacic, Stoudemire, Kirilenko, Stojakovic (on his own team), Boozer. Aside from Nash, who of those players is anywhere near Paul offensively?
2012: 6th in the league behind Bonner, Harden, Nick Collison, Splitter and Butler (on his own team). Aside from Harden (who, even in 2012, was amazing offensively), none of those guys are even remotely close to him offensively.
2013: equal 1st with LeBron, with the top 6 all being from Miami or LAC.
2014: equal 4th behind Brandan Wright, Matt Barnes (on his own team) and Ginobili.
2015: 2nd to Blake (Who missed 15 games that year, whereas CP3 somehow played 82 games )
2016: 14th (behind a bunch of GSW, LAC, OKC guys, and don't forget, Blake missed heaps of this season)
2017: 4th (behind Curry, Durant and Pachulia)
2018: 2nd to Curry

That's an incredible run of offences. In particular, his Clipper years had him as the #1 ranked high volume guy from 2012-2014, and essentially equal 1st with Blake in 2015 (don't forget, collinearity and that). His 2017 and 2018 years were only beaten by the GSW juggernaut, and in 2016, he ran the 4th best offence in the league with him on the court with his top 10 lineup guys as Jordan, Redick, *big drop*, Mbah a Moute, Crawford, Blake (only 861 minutes for Blake), Pierce, Wesley Johnson, Jeff Green, Austin Rivers and Lance Stephenson.

To add to this, even looking at 2012-2017, the league average for ORTG was 106.3, and CP3 still had an ORTG of 113.5 without Blake (who had 109.3 without CP3), and 116.8 with him. In the regular season, CP3 has led a plethora of top end lineups.

His offensive on-off during the regular season in these years was:

2008: +15.2
2009: +16.0
2010: +3.7 (he was hobbled all year)
2011: +11.2
2012: +14.0
2013: +12.2
2014: +4.9 (low, but he was also the #1 ranked high-volume offensive player by ORTG that year anyway)
2015: +19.5
2016: +14.0
2017: +11.4
2018: +8.1, even though most of his "off" minutes had Harden on the court

In the 3 year RAPM samples that we have available that cover his prime (2012-15, 2013-16, 2014-17, 2015-18), he ranks 3rd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, in a clear top 5 with Curry/LeBron (clear top 2), Harden and Westbrook.

Even in the playoffs, he had a heap of series (the playoff series in 2008, 2013-2015) that have him with elite ORTGs in the playoffs. Playoff ORTGs etc are way harder because it's not a balanced playing field, but there's a sample that does show that CP3 is capable of very high level team offence in the playoffs.

If you want a brief playoff summary of say, CP3's LAC career in the playoffs (sans 2012, where he sucked), he drops from a 116.5 to 112.3 ORTG with CP3 on the court. That's a drop of 4.2 points. Of course... he also faced an average defence of -3.2, which would mean that his relative on court ORTG drops by a... gargantuan 1 point. The guy that arguably led the best offences in the league during this period (and in the regular season, his on-court ORTG ranks #1 in this time period) has a gargantuan 1 point drop on team ORTG.

There's very little to suggest that his play caps his team's performance at an unusually low ORTG. I mean, it's right in the ballpark of what the other top end guys are doing. Not calculating all the numbers for everybody because it's a lot of work, but the fact that CP3 ends up being a +9 guy (according to BBR) or +9.9 guy (according to NBA.com) in the postseason on offence is pretty excellent in my books.

As for the longevity argument...

Without going into too much depth/arguing how he ranks in different years, he actually ranks fairly highly on the all time leaderboard (I'm talking top 10ish all time) for "most seasons in the top 5/10 in WS/BPM"). 8th all time in seasons with at least 10 win shares, etc. There's nothing too scientific here, but there are a bunch of markers that do place him as a top 15ish guy in terms of "highly valuable seasons produced". Ranks 17th all time in total WS (and that number will likely increase a few spots as the season goes on, and will likely get higher in years future). Ranked 2nd in xRAPM in 2009 (without the 2007 prior weighing him down anymore) and still ranked 1st in RPM in 2018.

Lots of things point to CP3's longevity actually being excellent and actually kind of underrated on this front.

[picko]

CP3 has been incredibly unlucky. He should have won the MVP award in 2007-08 and without that injury Houston probably beats the GSW in the conference finals.

An MVP and a title + plus beating arguably the most talented team in the league history would do wonders for his resume. It can be a cruel sport sometimes.

[eminence]

A) He's in my top 20 at this point.
B) Injury timing is the main thing holding him back from pushing top 10.
C) One small criticism I have that I don't see many others have is on his defensive style. He captains the defense in a KG or Dray style, but I have serious doubts about how well this scales against higher level competition for a guard and playoff results seem to support it (Clippers D kind of struggled in the playoffs), it's just tough to tell other people where to be as the opposition gets better. Not that he's not a very very strong defensive guard, but I personally have the impact ceiling for any of those players lower than most. Sometime I should look into how his teams defensive performance relates to opponents offense (most great bigs there's no relation between their teams defense and opponent offense level). Relatively speaking of course.

[E-Balla]

Missed games in the playoffs is the only argument.

I can't take 'lack of postseason success' as a serious reason when there is a point guard on everybody's top 15 who made the the playoffs less often than Paul (6 vs 9) and won less series than Paul did (2 vs 4) at the same age before teaming up with the league MVP. The difference was that one played with Harden and had to go up against the Warriors juggernaut while the other got to play with Kareem and only had to beat 41, 48, 42 win teams to win the title.

I really hope this isn't talking about Oscar because if it is this post is bordering on being a flat out lie.

[Colbinii]

Missed games in the playoffs is the only argument.

I can't take 'lack of postseason success' as a serious reason when there is a point guard on everybody's top 15 who made the the playoffs less often than Paul (6 vs 9) and won less series than Paul did (2 vs 4) at the same age before teaming up with the league MVP. The difference was that one played with Harden and had to go up against the Warriors juggernaut while the other got to play with Kareem and only had to beat 41, 48, 42 win teams to win the title.

I really hope this isn't talking about Oscar because if it is this post is bordering on being a flat out lie.

How is it a lie?

[E-Balla]

Missed games in the playoffs is the only argument.

I can't take 'lack of postseason success' as a serious reason when there is a point guard on everybody's top 15 who made the the playoffs less often than Paul (6 vs 9) and won less series than Paul did (2 vs 4) at the same age before teaming up with the league MVP. The difference was that one played with Harden and had to go up against the Warriors juggernaut while the other got to play with Kareem and only had to beat 41, 48, 42 win teams to win the title.

I really hope this isn't talking about Oscar because if it is this post is bordering on being a flat out lie.

How is it a lie?

Oscar Robertson made the playoffs 10 times not 6 and he won 8 series not 2, plus he played in an era where there were only 3 series to be played max (not 4). If you wanna talk same age CP3 is 34, and Oscar already got a ring by 34.

It's not Oscar's fault that when he played with a league MVP (who wasn't an MVP prior to Oscar, so that's already a misframing of events) like Paul did he was actually able to win and be a good enough teammate to not be shipped away for an undeniably worse player.

As more time passes I get lower and lower on CP3. He's the biggest example of how off the court chemistry can effect the team because the Clippers and Rockets should've been much better.