Stephen Curry/Kevin Garnett vs Dwyane Wade/David Robinson
Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2020 4:56 am
Peak only, which duo would you rather have?
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No-more-rings wrote:Wade’s offense is pretty rock solid in the playoffs in a way you can’t quite say about Curry imo.
fanofthegreats wrote:I feel like Steph/KG are being a little shortchanged here. I get that Wade is a superior isolation scorer and can play a playoff role (resilient iso scorer) better than the other three, but man— I can’t ignore the ceiling that a Steph/Garnett team has assuming they have the right system and supporting cast.
The-Power wrote:No-more-rings wrote:Wade’s offense is pretty rock solid in the playoffs in a way you can’t quite say about Curry imo.
How so? Genuinely asking, because the numbers don't show that at all.
No-more-rings wrote:Well I'd rather look into what they did over their best 3-5 years to indicate what you can expect from them on average, peak is usually one year but i factor in other years to help remove flukes and such. If we used 2016 and 2009, neither would come out looking very good in the playoffs.
No-more-rings wrote:It really just comes down to I think Wade has a more impressive track record against strong defenses than Curry.
2015- He had a subpar series against Memphis and that's even with Conley being pretty banged up and even missing a game
No-more-rings wrote:2016- We all know how the finals went that year, some excuse it away due to injury though there's good reason to think while that played a factor the way that the Cavs played him too played a big role. And those Cavs weren't even that great defensively, 10th in the regular season, 7th in the playoffs
No-more-rings wrote:2018: He underperformed against the Rockets. He really only had 3/7 games in the series where he performed up to par or greater, and one of them was in Chris Paul's absence. The Rockets did a great job defensively in the series, but someone of Curry's caliber backed by that kind of supporting cast I'd expect more from him period.
No-more-rings wrote:2019: He had a good series against the Raptors, though i wouldn't mark it down as anything extraordinary. He had like 3 mediocre games in there and 3 good-great ones.
No-more-rings wrote:We can compare that to Wade and again i think his track record against strong defenses/and or high pressure moments is just clearly more impressive.
2006: I mean just look at every series in that run, he destroyed the 4th, 5th and 11th ranked defenses. His worst series was against the 7th ranked DRTG Bulls, and in that he still managed 24.7 ppg/7.2 apg on 54 ts% and 3.6 tov, and just look at the last 2 games the Heat won both by double digits with Wade performing pretty well. The Bulls weren't really a serious threat anyway.
No-more-rings wrote:2010: Wade had a great series against the Celtics, who were arguably one of the best defensive playoff teams in history that year. Lebron and Kobe couldn't hold a candle.
No-more-rings wrote:2011: Wade dominated the Celtics again this year proving 2010 wasn't a fluke. He had a great performance against Dallas that got wasted due to Lebron's shrinkage, and just poor depth overall.
This isn't to say Wade's perfect in the playoffs, you can point to a series like the 2011 Bulls sure but that seems way more like a fluke than the norm for Wade, and in 07 he was nowhere near healthy.
The-Power wrote:
It is true that the series was underwhelming in terms of overall numbers. But if you want to assess how resilient someone's offense is when it really matters, as you seem to do, then it probably matters more how a player closes out the series. After being down, Curry had these three games that all led to wins and thereby a not-really-close series after all:
33 PTS on 64% TS, 5 AST to 4 TOV, +19 ; 101-84 W
18 PTS on 56% TS, 5 AST to 4 TOV, +16 ; 98-78 W
32 PTS on 62% TS, 10 AST to 4 TOV, +11 ; 108-95 W
So he had a great game in what was essentially a must-win game, followed it up by a subpar game to go up 3-2, and had a great close-out game to the series in which he was directly involved in around half of his team's points. So while not without flaws, he closed out the series a lot better than he started it – i.e. he has shown that he could figure out this defense over the course of a series and perform when the stakes were at the highest.
The-Power wrote:Certainly a comparatively poor series, no doubt. He was visibly hobbled but still should have performed better. Not sure why you bring this series up, though, as you wanted to focus on strong defenses (otherwise, why not also look at the 2016 Thunder for instance?). This feels more like listing bad series, which is fine, but you would have to do the same for Wade in that case.
The-Power wrote:He slightly underperformed based on the overall numbers but still put up 25/6 with only few turnovers on 58% TS. Hardly a clear negative outlier. More importantly, I find it very difficult to hold this series against him when once again, he absolutely showed up when the series was on the line.
Down 3-2, Curry had a game in which he put up 29/6 with only 2 TOV, 63% TS, +33 (115-86 W)
Tied 3-3, Curry had a game in which he put up 29/10 with 5 TOV, 61% TS, +13 (101-92 W)
Players who struggle against good defenses typically cannot perform at their best when the series is on the line. Yes, Chris Paul was missing but I find it very far-fetched to suggest that Paul was the key difference between Curry struggling and going off. The history of Curry vs. Paul indicates that Paul cannot really bother Curry in any special way.
The-Power wrote:I find that a very harsh assessment and one that doesn't seem consistent with your previous tendencies. 30/6 on 60% TS with your best teammate going down 12 minutes into the series, meaning that your entire offenses needed to be re-adjusted on the fly, is really excellent in an NBA Finals series against a great defense. That not every game was equally good is certainly true but not something we shouldn't expect from anybody that isn't peak LeBron perhaps.
The-Power wrote:That seems very inconsistent. You suggest to ‘just look at the last two games’ when you haven't said the same about Curry versus the Rockets. And you say that ‘the Bulls weren't a serious threat anyway’ when this might also be said about the Grizzlies in 2015 (both series ended 4-2).
The-Power wrote:Also, you describe Wade's series against the Nets and Mavericks as ‘he destroyed’ them, yet Curry's finals against the Raptors were an ‘underperformance’. Again, I don't see that as consistent with what we see in the numbers.
The-Power wrote:You also mentioned versus the Raptors that Curry had some mediocre/poor games in that series; yet you don't mention that Wade really struggled in 2 out of the 5 games versus the Nets, including a disastrous close-out game 5 that the Heat won by 1 point thanks to his teammates.
The-Power wrote:And while the Finals were really good,I'm not sure they were noticeably better on offense than what Curry did against the Raptors at the individual level (Wade scored a bit more, but had a 1:1 AST/TO ratio and lower efficiency).
The-Power wrote:That was a great individual series, no doubt. Still, it bears mentioning that it was a backdoor sweep, i.e. the Heat never were much of a danger to the Celtics. And, more importantly, the Heat offense was absolutely terrible. 97.6 ORTG, 99 ORTG with Wade on the court (down from a 112 on-court ORTG during the RS). To use this series to show that Wade can get his against a great defense – that's fine. But it's absolutely not a great example of his offensive resiliency at the team level.
The-Power wrote:I'm glad you note the 2011 and 2007 Bulls series, but the way you do it I'd say comes across as pretty biased. You analyzed all the series in more detail but for those two series, you essentially just say: well, they exist, but we shouldn't look at them too much. Why not? I'm fairly certain that a series like the 2011 one would have not been glossed over like that if it was Curry who performed like that. It would probably even have been central to your argument.
For all the talk about how this has been a fluke for Wade: Curry NEVER had a series as bad as Wade had versus the 2011 Bulls.
The-Power wrote:Not even close. The Bulls were the #1 defense, i.e. exactly the team you were interested in looking at. Yet it's addressed in only one half sentence. Curry also never had a series in which he struggled as much as Wade versus the 2007 Bulls and Curry himself has been pretty banged up – to the point that he certainly wouldn't have played if it weren't the playoffs – in some series. But again, that wasn't even remotely used in the same way you use it for Wade here.
The-Power wrote:So that's two series in Wade's prime that were worse than anything we've seen from Curry – and Wade only played 11 series during this time, while Curry played in quite a few more in that span.
The-Power wrote:Also, you've left out some series against good defenses for Curry (not sure why, since you were happy to look at good series for Wade – i.e. it clearly wasn't just about focusing on the poor series).
2015 Rockets ranked 8th in DRTG during the RS. Curry's numbers: 31/6, 3 TOV, 68% TS
2017 Jazz ranked 3rd in DRTG during the RS. Curry's numbers: 25/6, 2 TOV, 68% TS
2017 Spurs ranked 1st in DRTG during the RS: Curry's numbers: 32/5, 4 TOV, 73% TS
– yes, Kawhi's loss was a big deal but he wasn't the difference between best defense in the league and not even a good one (see the on/off numbers for that season)
The-Power wrote:So yeah, while I appreciate the response, it appears as though you not only interpreted but selected series in a way that is clearly biased towards Wade. A number of series against good defenses you just left out for Curry (coincidentally, he played excellent in those), two terrible series for Wade you essentially skip over (while this isn't done for Curry, on the contrary) and some interpretations appear to be inconsistent to me in ways that favor Wade (e.g. describing series as ‘he destroyed those defenses’ for Wade when a comparable series for Curry is described as ‘underperforming’; focusing on factors (individual losses, individual games) to knock down Curry's performance in ways that isn't done for Wade; describing Curry's injury trouble versus the Cavs as ‘playing a role BUT...’ while describing Wade's injury trouble versus the Bulls as ‘he was nowhere near healthy’ etc.).
And to be clear: I'm absolutely fine with someone preferring Wade in the playoffs, even on offense (though I'd disagree with that). Also, I'm not claiming that my assessment here is complete – given how I feel about your interpretation and selection, my post might be a bit tilted towards providing a counter-perspective instead of making a comprehensive and consistent analysis. But I feel very strongly about the in my view false narrative that Curry is particular prone to playoff struggles and certainly that Wade has some obvious resiliency advantage on offense in the way you present it.
WarriorGM wrote:The phrase "and it's not close" is often used with wild abandon to no real purpose around here. But in this case it is useful and applicable. Some people seem to think this is a close comparison. It isn't. There is one pair here capable of ruining defenses and forcing coaches to rewrite the book on how to play the game. That so many here cannot even begin to grasp that shows how backward the thinking here is.