Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 - 1986-87 Magic Johnson

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Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 - 1986-87 Magic Johnson 

Post#1 » by LA Bird » Sun Jul 17, 2022 1:08 pm

RealGM Greatest Peaks List (2022)
1. 1990-91 Michael Jordan
2. 2012-13 LeBron James
3. 1999-00 Shaquille O'Neal
4. 1976-77 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
5. 1966-67 Wilt Chamberlain
6. 2002-03 Tim Duncan
7. 1993-94 Hakeem Olajuwon
8. 1963-64 Bill Russell
9. 1985-86 Larry Bird
10. ?

Spoiler:
Please vote for your 3 highest player peaks and at least one line of reasoning for each of them.

Vote example 1
1. 1991 Jordan: Explanation
2. 2013 LeBron: Explanation
3. 2000 Shaq: Explanation

In addition, you can also list other peak season candidates from those three players. This extra step is entirely optional

Vote example 2
1. 1991 Jordan: Explanation
(1990 Jordan)
2. 2013 LeBron: Explanation
(2012 LeBron)
(2009 LeBron)
3. 2000 Shaq: Explanation

You can visit the project thread for further information on why this makes a difference and how the votes will be counted at the end of the round.

Voting for this round will close on Wednesday July 20, 9am ET.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#2 » by f4p » Sun Jul 17, 2022 2:47 pm

1. 2017 Kawhi

This is an excellent regular season with a monster playoffs where he showed that his playoff resilience didn't even care about facing the greatest roster ever, only to be taken out on one of the more famous cheap shots in recent memory. A full WCF would make people like this season more and I can't blame him for a cheap shot injury. 2017 Kawhi wins on lots of teams that had guys who will be listed above him here:

Kawhi's 31.5 PER is 13th all time based on 100 MP and 8th all time for multi-series playoffs. His WS/48 of .314 is 9th all time based on 100 MP and 6th all time for multi-series playoffs. And that's with 1954 mikan included above him. Even with very generous 100 MP and 20 PPG limits, his TS% of 67.2% is 24th all-time. For 200 MP and 24 PPG, it jumps to 6th, and one of the people ahead of him is himself.

If this was a one year phenomenom, I might understand the hesitancy. But "kawhi puts up huge playoff performance" is not a one year phenomenom. If we are truly talking about peaks, there aren't many higher than 2017 playoffs Kawhi.

2. 1987 Magic

Bounced back from 1986 playoff failure and won 65 games. Huge scoring increase. 27.0 PER as a high assist point guard is pretty crazy. Kept up the stats in the playoffs and comfortably won the title while going 15-3. i can't wait any longer to have a magic season.

3. 1983 Moses Malone

Fo' Fo' Fo'. Led the league in regular season PER and WS48 while putting up 24.5 ppg and 15.3 rpg and winning MVP. Then led the playoffs in PER (25.7) and WS48 (0.260) while putting up 26 ppg and 15.8 rpg on 58.7 TS%. In the Finals, he demolished (35 year old) Kareem with 25.8 ppg and 18.0 rpg in a sweep. I was actually just looking at this season to see where I might put it and then convinced myself when I looked at the rest of the Sixers in the playoffs. After Moses at 25.7 PER and 0.260 WS48, the next highest was Maurice Cheeks at 17.3 PER and 0.155 WS48 (Dr J really fell off in the playoffs). That puts Moses as far and away the best player in arguably the most dominant playoff run ever. One that he called before it happened just to make it more impressive. This isn't Shaq with Kobe or KD/Steph all having each other's backs in dominant 1-loss runs. This is a one man wrecking crew. Moses gets disrespected enough on all-time lists, he shouldn't get the same on peak lists.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#3 » by Dutchball97 » Sun Jul 17, 2022 3:16 pm

1. 1987 Magic Johnson - He won MVP pretty convincingly, while being the clear leading man on an incredibly strong team. The post-season is a bit weird as the path through the west was almost impossibly easy. Even then he didn't really dominate any of those average at best teams. I was starting to think maybe someone like Dr J, Curry or Mikan would be a better pick here but when it mattered most Magic showed up. In the finals against the Celtics I don't think anybody would dispute Magic being by far the best performing player in the series.

2. 1976 Julius Erving - Dr J had one of the most dominant years ever in North American pro basketball in the final year of the ABA. Where you rank him mostly depends on how good you think the ABA was towards its end. I'd say I'm probably somewhere in the middle. With the likes of Artis Gilmore, Dan Issel, Bobby Jones and George Gervin the ABA had become a serious competitor to the NBA but it didn't become on the same level just yet and since even the mid-70s NBA is generally considered as a relatively weak era, the mid-70s ABA isn't one of the strongest eras either. Overall though this is still a very complete season and it remains a fact you can only beat who is put in front of you. What especially helps him out here is the Nets roster besides Dr J himself wasn't particularly special, which is a huge contrast to the other guys I'm considering around this spot.

3. 1983 Moses Malone - Moses has a pretty simple case tbh, he won both MVP and FMVP. Out of the other players who have accomplished this feat most are already voted in. The last 3 are Magic (who I got as my #1 pick here), Moses and Reed. Reed's case is a bit different though as the MVP voting was very close between him, West and Kareem. Reed also took a step back in the post-season and you could even make an argument Walt Frazier was as important to the Knicks that season, if not more. Moses in contrast won the MVP with pretty much no questions as het got 69 out of 75 first place votes. He also stepped up in the play-offs and was the clear leader and best player of a historically great squad. 2017 Curry has a pretty similar case but his coasting in the regular season puts him slightly behind Moses for me.

I was heavily considering Mikan here but I'm not sure about the year and by extention I'm not sure if any of his seasons are well rounded enough to make the list this soon. 1950 does seem like the most likely year for him but the only real competition were the Royals and a Nationals team led by rookie Schayes. Mikan had a very dominant post-season run in 54 against stronger competition than 1950 but even then Arizin was away doing his military service and it was still a year before Pettit entered the league so was it that much better than in 1950? Not being nearly as dominant in the regular season hurts 1954 but I'm wondering if this is Mikan declining or the league simply catching up to him.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#4 » by capfan33 » Sun Jul 17, 2022 3:53 pm

1. 2017 Curry
This is where everything starts to get very hazy, as I think 4-5 guys are essentially a coinflip here. Ultimately, I went with Curry in 2017 albeit I'm not convinced at all by it. It came down to Curry, Magic and KG to me. KG is someone I really struggle to rank, some of the recent posts have made me reconsider his case. While I love his versatility and IQ, I just can't put him in yet due to his scoring limitations. I just feel that no matter how good KG is at other aspects of basketball, he needs a very good to elite perimeter scorer next to him to be able to win a title, and I think that's a relatively high bar to clear to the point where I can't justify putting him in quite yet.

Magic and Curry are really close and I decided for the sake of logical consistency I need to put Magic and Curry next to each other, as there very similar in terms of their peak cases being based on their outlier offensive impact. I've seen a lot of good arguments for both of them and honestly still can't really make a decision 1 way or the other. Ultimately I went with Curry because I just think his anamolous mastery of arguably the most important aspect of modern basketball is insanely impressive. The fact that teams still can't figure it out and that no one has really come close to replicating his shooting ability despite how advanced a state the game is in is what tips me in his direction, but it's very close.

2. 1987 Magic
This is pretty self-explanatory from the post above, arguably the GOAT offensive player at his absolute peak. The competition he played against was garabage until the finals but he proved that he could do it against almost any team many times in his career and there's little reason to think he was just beating up on bad competition the entire time. I do have questions about his defense in the modern game, but not enough to put him any lower than this.

3. 2004 KG
Probably the greatest 2nd option ever (debatable between him and Robinson) I have to remind myself sometimes of how absurd KG was as a complete package. A 6-10+ physical freak that moved like a forward, could handle and pass the ball like the best point-forwards, but played horizontal defense better than anyone outside of Russell and maybe Walton/Olajuwon. Oh and he was an elite mid-range shooter with a beautiful array of post-moves. Just an absurd combination when you realize the full-breadth of his skills. It's hard to rank him because of how awful his teams were in his prime, and maybe with better talent around him he would be more viable as a #1 scoring option, but just based on what I've seen both watching him and statistically I have too many questions about his ability to be the #1 option on a title team to rank him any higher. However, his unrivaled versatility and portability make it hard to put him too much lower than here.

Next for me will probably be West, Robinson and Oscar, maybe Dr. J if someone can put together a good case for him.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#5 » by eminence » Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:11 pm

Dutchball97 wrote:I was heavily considering Mikan here but I'm not sure about the year and by extention I'm not sure if any of his seasons are well rounded enough to make the list this soon. 1950 does seem like the most likely year for him but the only real competition were the Royals and a Nationals team led by rookie Schayes. Mikan had a very dominant post-season run in 54 against stronger competition than 1950 but even then Arizin was away doing his military service and it was still a year before Pettit entered the league so was it that much better than in 1950? Not being nearly as dominant in the regular season hurts 1954 but I'm wondering if this is Mikan declining or the league simply catching up to him.


I'm clearly in the camp of Mikan declining (injury related) - he temporarily retired after the season and had one of his kneecaps removed (not replaced) between '54 and his brief comeback in '56.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#6 » by trex_8063 » Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:11 pm

THis is mostly a copy/paste from last thread, with few small edits/augmentations....

1. '04 Kevin Garnett
I'll again point to the #8 spot recently taken by Bill Russell.......because I feel Kevin Garnett is one of just a few who is probably very near him in his defensive chops. No one ever achieved the level of defensive impact that Bill Russell did.......but to be fair, players like Garnett, Duncan, Mutombo, Hakeem, big Ben, etc never had the opportunity to be a defensive anchor in an era where the floor was so condensed (fully potentiating the impact of a rim-protecting big).
I don't know if any player could have matched Russell's impact in his own time......but I think Garnett [and perhaps Duncan] are the guys who'd have a shot. Both of them appear to be the top of their era in defensive IQ [Draymond Green is the only other defensive big of the last 25 years I can think of who perhaps can match them in this]; and they have Russell's length (and Garnett has at least really close to his athleticism, too).

On the flip-side, I'm skeptical Russell could do appreciably better in the modern(ish) era than Garnett did.

Short-version: I think Garnett is pretty close to Russell as a defensive juggernaut; but whereas Russell was merely fair-to-decent offensively, Garnett is actually REALLY good [though perhaps short of "great"] on that end too.

imo, such two-way dynamos at least marginally out-shine the more one-sided player peaks. So I personally feel he peaked slightly higher than Russell [or Magic Johnson, for example].
fwiw, this is not a purely retrospective viewpoint fueled by analytics. I distinctly remember composing an "NBA update" email to my dad in early 2004, and thinking fairly definitively at the time that Kevin Garnett was the best player in the world (which was perhaps striking in my mind, considering the league contained prime [if not peak] Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kobe Bryant).

imo, we're PAST due for Garnett's peak.
And I strongly suspect that if Cassell hadn't got injured and the TWolves had won the title that year [with Garnett playing NO BETTER in the playoffs than what he did], he would already be off the table.
This is the subtle unintentional [largely unconscious] ring-bias in effect, imo.


2. '95 David Robinson ('96 DRob, '94 DRob)
Not sure the best year to go with; each has a slightly differing selling point, and honestly I think he was near the same level in all three years.
I imagine this will be a contraversial pick, but it sort of follows in the same vein as my Kevin Garnett pick: two-way dynamos.
I think people sometimes fail to acknowledge how extraordinary an OFFENSIVE player Robinson was in the regular season.......they just focus on the playoff decline.
I've made this [only slightly hyperbolic] statement before: Robinson was essentially asked/expected to be Bill Russell on defense AND Michael Jordan on offense for those early-mid 90s Spurs teams.

And the crazy as **** part is: he was mostly successful during the rs.

Frankly if he HAD been able to maintain that in the post-season, he'd have more than a puncher's chance of taking the #1 greatest peak of all-time.

In addition to his off-the-chart box-derived metrics [in the rs], look at his rs impact metrics over this same three-year span:
'94 Top 5 APM (from colts18)
1. David Robinson: +7.31
2. Kevin Willis: +5.44
3. Karl Malone: +5.37
4. Hakeem Olajuwon: +5.10
5. Nate McMillan: +4.85
(NOTE: the separation between Robinson [at #1] and #2 is greater than the separation between #2 and #11).

'94 Top 5 AuPM (Backpicks)
1. David Robinson: +6.7
2. Karl Malone: +5.2
3. Nate McMillan: +4.8
4. Hakeem Olajuwon: +4.5
5. Kevin Willis: +4.3
(NOTE: the separation between Robinson [at #1] and #2 is greater than the separation between #2 and #6).


'95 Top 5 APM
1. David Robinson: +7.42
2. Shaquille O'Neal: +5.80
3. Karl Malone: +4.93
4. Anfernee Hardaway: +4.68
5. Scottie Pippen: +4.63
(NOTE: the separation between Robinson [at #1] and #2 is greater than the separation between #2 and #6).

'95 Top 5 AuPM
1. David Robinson: +8.7
2. Scottie Pippen: +5.9
3. Shaquille O'Neal: +5.6
4. Anfernee Hardaway: +5.6
5. Karl Malone: +5.3
(NOTE: the separation between Robinson [at #1] and #2 is equal to the separation between #2 and #24).


'96 Top 5 APM
1. Michael Jordan: +6.67
2. David Robinson: +5.89
3. Anfernee Hardaway: +5.26
4. Scottie Pippen: +4.99
5. Karl Malone: +4.89

'96 Top 5 AuPM
1. David Robinson: +6.7
2. Michael Jordan: +6.5
3. Scottie Pippen: +5.8
4. Anfernee Hardaway: +5.7
5. Karl Malone: +5.2


I mean, holy cow. You look at these three years, and he's not just outperforming the competition......he's obliterating it! Except for a prime Michael Jordan [in '96], there's no one remotely close to him in the rs.
And these are almost exclusively all-timers he's obliterating.
In the playoffs, he comes back to Earth: down to maybe being only maybe like the 2nd or 3rd-best player in the league. Oh dear.

So how much deduction should he get for going from GOAT-candidate in rs to circa-2nd best in any given year in the playoffs?
idk.....decide for yourself. But don't sleep on how friggin' unearthly he was in the rs.
For myself, he's near the region of Duncan/Hakeem/Garnett; usually just behind, but really really close.


3. '21??? Giannis Antetokounmpo ('20, '22)
Continuing with the two-way juggernauts: Giannis is definitely that. And because in some ways they're similar players, it feels appropriate to have Giannis somewhere within 1-2 places of David Robinson [even if it's Giannis you have ahead].
I reserve the right to switch my last pick to one of my HM's below, but for now I'll go this route.

Other top considerations for me were Magic Johson, Nikola Jokic, Steph Curry. Bill Walton crossed my mind, but health/missed games is just enough of an issue to me that I back him out of consideration; he'd come up right after those fellows.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#7 » by mdonnelly1989 » Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:35 pm

#1.) 87 Magic -> Top 3 playmaker of all time. Great rebounding PG

#2.) 2016 Curry -> Its hard to get a true take on how good this season was considering his teammates.

#3.) 1983 Moses Malone -> Probably the most underrated Center of all time and underated superstar of all time.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#8 » by ShotCreator » Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:39 pm

8/9 of the greatest peak years came from title winners, apparently.

What are the actual odds of that being true?
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#9 » by falcolombardi » Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:44 pm

ShotCreator wrote:8/9 of the greatest peak years came from title winners, apparently.

What are the actual odds of that being true?


Only a bit

A top 10 player ever at his best has serious impact so the chance they win a ring are really high

Add to that the fact "floor raising" seasons where a weaker cast is propped are less valued than "ceiling raising" seasons where a good cast is elevated and players who did both have people default to the latter unless the former won a ring

That said, it definitely shows a strong ring bias persistsnce
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#10 » by f4p » Sun Jul 17, 2022 4:52 pm

ShotCreator wrote:8/9 of the greatest peak years came from title winners, apparently.

What are the actual odds of that being true?


If we could somehow play every season infinite times, with every player getting every possible set of teammates and opponents an infinite number of times, and we used that to determine the true peak of every player, it's probably unlikely to get 8/9. However, the best players have quite a few championships and almost certainly their titles were more likely to line up with their best years than just random years from their careers. Now the fewer titles you have, the lower that chance gets and we are all probably victim to rewarding the deep playoff run we saw as opposed to the very similarly dominant year that ended in round 2. So even someone like me who might actually think 1993 Hakeem is his best year will default to the year where I know he won the WCF and the Finals while dominating Ewing as opposed to the year where I think he was likely to play just as well, but I didn't get to see it.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#11 » by Proxy » Sun Jul 17, 2022 5:14 pm

I'm thinking Oscar might possibly be 4th on my ballot but would like some more discussion(more specifically on his defense honestly).

Here are some impact indicators for anyone interested to get started on some. He truly looks like one of the more impactful players ever and one of the best offensive players ever in his prime, like not too far behind Steph or Magic who have both been getting traction for a while now(WOWY numbers taken from backpicks.com).
https://backpicks.com/metrics/wowy-data/
Oscar WOWY:
Pre Oscar:
• 1960 Royals: -5.92 SRS(-1.7 rORTG)
• Oscar Joins in 1961:-3.04 SRS (+2.3 rORTG) - Team improves by +2.88 SRS and +4 rORTG
• Oscar Misses 9 in 1961(SRS Change of +12.6) / -1.8 SRS In
• Oscar Misses 9 in 1965-66(SRS Change of +4.4) / +1.8 SRS In
• Oscar Misses 12 in 1967-68(SRS Change of +8.9) / +1.8 SRS In
• Oscar Misses 16 from 1969-1970(SRS Change of +6) / -1.3 SRS In
• Oscar Misses 27 in 1972-73(SRS Change of +1.6) / +9.5 SRS In

WOWY from 1961 - 1970(46 Games) - +8 SRS Change

WOWY over that full stretch(73 Games) - +6.7 SRS Change

Prime Scaled WOWYR = +7.8 (7th All-Time)

1962-1971 10 Year Scaled Game-Level adjusted Plus Minus = +7.7 (7th All-Time):
Image
https://backpicks.com/2017/11/17/part-iv-historical-impact-multiple-wowyr-studies/


His offensive resilience in his peak for the playoffs looks impressive as well. ScoreVal and PlayVal are 1 number metrics that estimate a player's value just from scoring or playmaking and have an adjustment for teammates and opponents(era).

62-64 Oscar RS ScoreVal & PlayVal averages: +1.67 ScoreVal +1 PlayVal = +2.67
62-64 Oscar PS ScoreVal & PlayVal averages: +2.2 ScoreVal +0.6 PlayVal = +2.8

Image
(He was also the best playmaker of the era)

Numbers from backpicks.com

I'd also like to point out his average TS% from '61 - '71 is literally higher than the league average TS% right now, and he did this being top 3 in volume in the league almost 60 years ago lol. He has ZERO seasons below 113 TS+ until 1972(10 seasons with 200 or more TS add), possibly the most efficient volume scorer in the regular season ever. (Via basketball reference)

Explanations for the metrics:
ScoreVal:
https://backpicks.com/2019/10/09/the-most-valuable-scoring-seasons-in-nba-history-scoreval/
PlayVal:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2VBerOHZrLRxpFQFBGBqCL?si=uWcz_H9AQLGS0-PKIBrHVQ&utm_source=copy-link

They also had arguably some of the more impressive team offensive results ever(like I said before in my Bill arguments in earlier threads - I think taking these relative ratings at face value and comparing them to other eras is not an even comparison because the less points available):
Image

Now they DID slant heavily towards offense to get those results, but the collapse they had without Oscar still looks tremendous so i'm not sure how much to quite balance those factors:
Image

Here is some film I found on youtube(shoutout to 70sfan again btw for not being one of the channels randomly taken down the last few days):




Anyways, what do you all think?
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#12 » by MyUniBroDavis » Sun Jul 17, 2022 5:14 pm

2017 Curry

Was thinking of putting Giannis above but I feel it was the perfect offensive performance on a great team, level of play it’s hard to beat but I don’t know if I’d pick Curry over giannis in a vacuum



2021 Giannis

I’m a bit conflicted here, but contextually I do think he should be on here already.

One thing I will say though is that I was looking through the retro player of the years for 2019 and 2020, while I thought he deserved a spot here, my assumption for why Giannis hasn’t been chosen yet or had much consideration was because people were lower on his offense than I was, I now realize it looks like people really didn’t rate him highly on defense?

The peak Duncan vs peak Giannis on offense thread suprised me a bit, I didn’t think it would be so clear cut, my assumption was that people weren’t high on his offense as much as his defense.

The basis of my argument comes from 2021 and 2022 giannis not being a different defender than 2019 or 2020 giannis, rather less effort in the regular season (and I know this past season they mixed up their screen coverages like Miami for postseason versatility), supported by his impact data in the playoffs, the bucks going from league average to probably best or near best in the league defensively in the playoffs

I don’t think 2021 or 2022 Giannis is intrinsically a different defender than his 2019 or 2020 versions, I do think that in general they took those defensive seasons off and ramped it up in the playoffs.

So my arguments on 2021 Giannis defensively will revolve around the impact of his defense in 2019, and in 2020 first and foremost

I wasn’t going to make much of a take about giannis’s defence mostly because I didn’t realize what the general opinion was vs I guess my opinion on his defence.

However, for this to make sense a base assumption is that 2021 playoff giannis on D is the same as 2019 or 2020 RS giannis on D, although there’s an argument for him being better than his 2019 self at least.

So ive kinda gotten the vibe that people (based off retro player of the year voting) didn’t think of him as a super clear DPOY those two years? 2020 I can understand because of ADs postseason exploits, but purely RS wise, those two were imo the best DPOY seasons post 2010.

I realize that might seem like a wild take (I honestly thought it was a pretty normal take) but It’s just that… it just seemed kind of obvious?

First of all, data when he did play vs when he didnt

NOTE: for games with giannis, I got it for 2019 but since it was the same as the on court percentage +_

2019
72 games
105.3 def rtg with giannis

10 games, 108.5 def rtg
(107.7 def rtg 8 games, 2 without starters)


- Avg off rtg faced (10 games) - 108.9
- Avg off rtg faced (8 games) - 108.5

2020
102.5 def rtg with giannis 63 games

108.6 (7 games)
108.5 (10 games, 2 in bubble 1 without starters)

- avg off rtg faced 109.2
- Avg off rtg faced 108.45

So in the 20 or so games that they played without giannis, the bucks were a slightly better than league average defense given their competition, taking only the 15 games their starters played or that weren’t in the bubble, they’re still slightly above average

Not the biggest of samples and there are a few outlier results both ways as is the nature of games in small samples, but still not insignificant. The bucks with giannis otoh, are a -5.2 defense in 2019 and a -7.7 defense in 2020.

Keep in mind budenholzer is weird with rotations, giannis only plays 30 minutes a game not because he’s unable to play longer but because budenholzer is known to be SUPER conservative in this regard

His on court and raw net rtg compared to other ATG defensive teams

https://syndication.bleacherreport.com/amp/2185159-ranking-the-nbas-20-best-defenses-of-all-time.amp.html

On court def rtg

2019 bucks
G 104.5 in 2019 (-3.7 net) (110.4 league avg)

2020 bucks
G 99.6 in 2020 (-7.9 net) (110.6 league avg)

1999 Spurs
David Robinson 92.0 (-2.4) (102.2 league avg)

2004 pistons
Wallace 94.8 (-2.0 net) (102.9 league avg)

2004 Spurs
Duncan 92.1 (-5.4 net) (102.9 league abg)

2005 Spurs
Duncan 94.5 (-8.9 net) (106.1 league avg)

2008 Celtics
Garnett 97.3 (-4.1 net) (107.5 league avg)

2014 pacers
Hibbert 98.9 (-2.9 net) (106.7 league avg)

In this comparison Giannis looks pretty solid, his 2019 season maybe a bit behind, his 2020 season fully deserving to be here.

I’m of the belief that top end defensive impact is limited in the past few years, the advent of three point shooting just means there are less shots to contest at the rim, and the pick and roll means especially in the playoffs you need versatility. Furthermore, even in the RS this leads to the defensive impact one individual can have to be a bit limited in comparison.

Kind of similar to how offensive numbers are inflated nowadays, defensive numbers are probably deflated (in terms of blocked shots and everything) because less blockable shots at the rim occur compared to back then (like it’s easier to block someone driving in a Congested paint than in a 5 out while ur drawn out to the three point line)

I think offensive impact isn’t as inflated maybe because general offensive “scheme evolution” and to a large extent more lax rules as well just means teams can do a bit better when their stars leave the court, but this pretty much has the opposite effect defensively

I think here’s where a bit of an issue comes in for me. Like how I believe it’s probably silly to say, oh devin booker averaged XXX he’s as good as Kobe, it’s also similarly strange for me to think that all the best defenders of today are clearly inferior to the defenders back then.

Or another way to say it, comparing the best defenders now to the best defenders back then, maybe I would get it more had TD and KG been so far head over shoulders above everyone else in defensive impact stuff, the first few Boston KG and some years of TD were, but as a whole while they stand out it’s not in the sense that they consistently dwarfed everyone else like currys offensive impact stuff I think, rather it seems there were usually a few guys that had really high impact in general

Another way to say it, I think the potential defensive impact today has lessened, and that especially on good teams if you transport a guy like Mutombo to todays game, he would not be AS impactful, despite his in eta impact based off rapm and what not making him seem like a (non russell) GOAT defender candidate with how much he dwarfed everyone else

Like, when we talk about how KG is perfect defensively today, I agree, but I don’t think that means he’s more impactful today than he was in the 2000s, I think this means he has less of a dropoff than some others would. This isn’t to say the others wouldn’t be absolutely fantastic but I think defenders have less impact in general today. I feel if you take a Rudy Gobert, whose absurdly dominant as an interior defender he’s probably gonna be a perennial DPOY candidate

Like he’s probably about as good as a mutombo, but even if we say a bit worse, who by some RAPM data consistently dwarfed the competition, and some of his post prime years were competitive or even better than some prime TD years, so I think peak Gobert is probably in the running for DPOY and in that category, even if he probably didn’t peak as high on that end (thats a whole can of worms)

The likes of TD and KG do dominate their era in metrics like defensive RAPM far more than Gobert does, although bigs don’t tend to dominate that as much as they did back then.

I used bball ref for the stuff above, admittedly just because it is far easier and older data seems hard to find.

Luck adjusted RAPM vs regular RAPM is a can of worms imo, luck adjustments generally work better in testing but for multiple years apparently they’re worse so take that with a grain of salt. (They may be worse in individual testing)

Regular defensive RAPM
2019 Giannis ranked 2nd behind PG
2020 Giannis ranks 1st by a lot

Regular luck adjusted defensive RAPM
2019 Giannis ranked 1st by a lot
2020 Giannis ranks 1st by a lot

To be clear, ranking second isn’t a sort of death sentence, this is NPI rapm so it’s a bit more noisy and to my knowledge TD never ranked first in his career, although was really close a bunch, Garnett only did so in his Celtics run, and while he was a clear first in 3/5 years 08 was the only year with a large seperation between him and second

Just checking a user named shadows data on apbr who seems respected, giannis’s placements are the same although the gaps are different (he’s a clear second with PG as a crazy first in 2019, and he’s a clear first with a Decent amount of seperation but not a crazy amount over bron in 2020. It’s still roughly equal to most of they Boston KG years though, and it should be noted high end defensive values are higher in general).

To be blunt, I’m way too lazy to make a Google doc with the files from the shotcharts website, especially since it’s easily publically available and accessible. While comparing across seasons with standard deviations is important, for this I’ll only put the top 2 values each year with the name of first place if it seems significant.

While this seems dumb and might not tell enough, I think it’ll be clear what im trying to say when I put in the data. For giannis’s 2020 year I’ll add more incase there’s doubt for that year specifically

RAPM regular 2010
2.77 (Tim Duncan)
2.7
RAPM regular 2011
4.25 (Garnett)
3.19
RAPM regular 2012
4.21 (Taj Gibson)
3.46
RAPM regular 2013
4.06 (Garnett)
3.39
RAPM regular 2014
2.47 (Iggy)
2.21
RAPM regular 2015
2.57 (Tony Allen)
2.55
RAPM regular 2016
2.54 (Kawhi)
2.45 (Green)
RAPM regular 2017
2.32 (Gobert)
2.03
RAPM regular 2018
2.73(Covington)
2.56
RAPM regular 2019
2.03 (Wayoff P)
1.79 (Giannis)
RAPM regular 2020
3.49 (Giannis)
2.49 (Matthews)
2.28 (Schroder)
RAPM regular 2021
2.74 (Gobert)
2.25 (Conley)
2.1 (PJ Dozier)
RAPM regular 2022
2.41 (George Hill)
2.23 (Kenrich Williams)

The overall DRAPM declines as a whole I think after a certain point, Giannis’s is almost certainly the highest here in terms of seperation from second as a percentage and in terms of standard deviations from 0.

This site has luck adjustments too

LARAPM 2010
2.99 (Bogut)
2.87
LARAPM 2011
5.39 (Garnett)
4.65 (Dwight)
3.99 (Caron Butler)
3.89 (Asik)
LARAPM 2012
3.01 (Taj Gibson)
2.87
LARAPM 2013
3.93 (Garnett)
3.14 (Sanders)
2.61
2.59
LARAPM 2014
4.11 (Splitter)
4.09 (Kemba!?)
3.95 (Cp3)
LARAPM 2015
2.47 (Tony Allen)
2.21 (Bogut)
LARAPM 2016
2.33 (Jokic!?)
2.19 (Kawhi)
2.1 Tim Duncan)
LARAPM 2017
1.82 (Gilchrist)
1.81 (Covington)
1.76 (Dray)
LARAPM 2018
2.04 (Gobert)
1.8 (Dejountay)
LARAPM 2019
2.18 (Giannis)
1.71 (Bledsoe)
1.71 (Lopez)
1.69 (Turner)
1.61 (Gobert)
LARAPM 2020
3.19 (Giannis)
2.07 (Matthews)
2.04 (Middleton)
1.93 (Lopez)
1.8 (Marc)
LARAPM 2021
2.11 (BaldEagleOfTruthCaruso)
1.87 (Gobert)
1.66 (Conley)
LARAPM 2022
1.98 (Horford)
1.41 (Draymond)
1.38 (Lonzo)

Added more for giannis since I think a collinearnity issue is something talked about with RAPM stuff, so that’s something worth mentioning here with it being maybe similar to the Warriors RAPM stuff on offense being too dominant during the Curry era to properly assess impact

In any case, the only other high minutes guy in the 2020 squad with a def net rtg of more than -3 is Matthews at -6.2 (99.9 on court def rtg). Then it’s DiVincenzo at -2.7 (101.7) and lopez at -2.3 (102.1). Meanwhile the entire starting lineup outside of giannis is a near neutral or has a positive (bad) def net rtg, George hill has a -6.4 net rtg with an on court rtg of 101.6, but played less than a quarter of the minutes (and it was a trade). Others that ranked well basically played less than 509 minutes, and the starters were all essentially neutrals.

LEBRON data ranks 2020 Giannis as 6th and 2019 Giannis as 30th over the past 15 years, caveat that I don’t think it’s adjusted for standard deviations per season (I think it’s the raw values) and more importantly it tends to overrate bigs, and Giannis doesn’t block as many shots as some others do.

Beyond that, the bucks defense despite Giannis playing limited minutes was genuinely ATG, both first place defence a, 2020 in particular in the games Giannis played was a -8.1 rel DRTG defense, which I think might be the best non Celtics mark ever (slightly worse than 08) although I might be mistake I think it outdoes any of the Spurs marks

(Caveat that a -8 defense wi a 110 avg off rtg isn’t a higher percentage drop relative to the league than a -7 vs a 70 average or something which makes more sense to use honestly, at the same time the current era is one where players rest guys and Bud REALLY rests giannis a lot to be safe so maybe it evens out in terms of pure level of play)

Now if Giannis had a problem defending in the playoffs I get it, but their playoff defense in 2019, 2021, and 2022 was the best in the nba

2019 -7.1 playoff league avg def rtg
2020 -2.8 playoff league avg def rtg
2021 -6.7 playoff league avg def rtg
2022 -7.4 playoff league avg def rtg

They had a problem with dropping too much esp in 2020 iirc (I think they adjusted after giannis got hurt lol) I don’t really blame giannis for coaching incompetence tho, they actually varied their pick and roll coverage more


More importantly to me though, this does make it seem like they were coasting in the RS, I mean at the end of the day 2021 and 2022 bucks were far from a decent defense despite their RS numbers

(From here onward I’m using NBA.com data, just because it didn’t have league averages before but that’s not that important here)

As for his RS defense vs playoff defense

2021 RS
Giannis def net rtg -3.4 (107.4 on court)

2021 playoffs
Giannis def net rtg -5.6 (103.7 on court)

(Second best high minutes guy is Lopez, -0.4 and 105.4, I don’t know if I’m tripping but EVERY rotation player outside of that is a negative in defense in raw impact lol).

Checking it more so, it looks like some of it comes from the heat series, which they just blew them tf out and munched on them in garbage time, altho even taking that out, giannis is now has a def net rtg of -7.5 and an on court def rtg of 105.6, and PJ is next best at -3.2 with an on court of 105.8. Unless I’m tripping everyone other rotation guy is still a negative in defense though

Looking at the teams results they played against a first ranked offense in the nets (before someone says they Kyrie got hurt or harden missed the first part of the series, they were the first ranked offense witth harden and Durant missing more than half the season and Kyrie missing a third), the 18th offense in the heat, the 9th ranked offense in the hawks and the 7th ranked offense in the Suns).

2021

Vs the heat (110.6)
95.4 def rtg
Giannis 95.4 def rtg on-court (+5.4)

Vs the nets (117.3)
107.3 def rtg
Giannis 103.2 def rtg on-court (-11.7)

Vs hawks (114.3)
109.1 def rtg
(107.7 in the games giannis played)
(111.7 in the games giannis missed)
Giannis 106.2 def rtg on-court (-3.6)

Vs Suns (116.3)
112.1 def rtg
Giannis 108.0 def rtg on court (-12.4)

2022
Vs bulls (112.7)
94.4 def rtg
Giannis 91.3 def rtg on court (-4.3)

Vs Celtics (113.6)
108.8 def rtg
Giannis 104.2 def rtg on court (-15.1)

Some of this is mildly misleading, the Suns finished the season strong on offense as did the heat, and the hawks. The nets actually stayed like that consistently, the Celtics had the best offense over the second half of the year while the bulls were pretty poor as the season ended, but let’s just take it at face value

But viewing it as where teams were in terms of their level of play going into the playoffs would make the defense look even more favorable

Nevertheless, the bucks defense over these 6 series was very consistently elite, and as a whole on average probably on the ATG scale, so with giannis impact data looking like it’s the one that looks different I do think it’s fair to say the change was at least partially from him. His tracking data doesn’t change all too much but it’s still similar to his 2019 data if not better I think, although I’d have to check again but it definately wasn’t substantially worse

It’s hard to get definitive proof that he’s a better playoff defender than RS defender. I DONT think he’s quite as good as he was in the 2020 RS at least on a per minute basis (other than the finals lol) but at the same time by all metrics relative to era on a per minute basis that might’ve been one of the most dominant defensive regular seasons since play by play data has been announced, in fact impact stuff it does probably come out to first relative to his peers from the 1999-2021 span, so that’s not saying much

Otoh, I do think that the bucks being a decent RS defense while pretty obviously being a super elite defense in the playoffs, with the main person whose impact data gets better both years is giannis, is pretty significant.

Even this year, only the Warriors did better against the Celtics, and that’s with Tatum forgetting how to play basketball (and this is pretty much entirely due to their defense in the non-giannis minutes, they were a 104.2 offense with giannis in the court which should coincide with their starters, a 119.3 offense with him off the court. For comparison the offense with dray or Wiggins was 103.2 and 103.4).

As a whole, the bucks with giannis on the floor have been a hyper elite defense in 6 series in a row now, and taking the series as a whole (also keep in mind the Celtics and Suns had great second halves of the year and were the best offenses in the league those years from the midway point onwards after a sluggish start, although the Celtics playoff offense was a bit weird to me with Tatum being so inconsistent)

I don’t think it’s outlandish to say Giannis is as good as his 2020 RS in the playoffs, although maybe I wouldn’t go that far, tracking data isn’t full proof at all but it was utterly absurd in 2020 (and as a small note it was suuuper similar to 2016 playoff bron! :D )

In terms of like, his defensive attributes I don’t understand why this would be an outlandish take either

Giannis is a high IQ defender, rarely makes mistakes, has an absurd motor, and is a guy that can legitimately guard 1-5, 6ft11 with a freakishly long wingspan (that 7ft3 was measured when he was 6ft8.5, hes now at the point that he can casually grab the rim tiptoing now, 7ft6 is probably a safe bet)

Can cover stupid ground, like his max vert might not be absurd but I’ve never seen someone jump as far as he does, which might be more important for his defensive role in 2020 and 2021 where he was breaking up actions as a helpside defender (he’s probably the only guy ever other than wilt that dunks from the ft line because it’s comfortable that way lmao)

We tend to either underestimate the defensive IQ of current defenders or overestimate past defenders, sure Garnett and Duncan have a higher defensive Iq than giannis and guys like AD or Embiid but it’s not as if it’s comparing Magnus Carlson to like a kid playing chess for the first time lol, and draymonds smarter than all of them anyway.

Like generally the elite defenders are elite mentally as well, guys like giannis despite being freakishly athletic aren’t an exception to that, even if he’s not as cerebral as let’s say a draymond green is


https://www.reddit.com/r/MkeBucks/comments/9pq5vv/giannis_casually_grabbing_the_rim_with_his_feet/)

Overall, I think he’s an elite DPOY type defender. He’s shown the ability as a very deserved DPOY and especially 2020 he’s shown ATG defensive ability. His physical profile and motor and overall defensive IQ are in line with that as are his results, and I believe his playoff defense shows that

Like the Gap between him and garnett to me for example is probably mainly that Garnett is better at pick and roll coverages

I can fully understand not being as high on him defensively as I am but him being top 2 in player of the year voting only once and falling out of the top 3 is wild to me. At the very least he’s an ATG defender

I feel offensively there’s not really much to say, his impact data looks a bit worse because of the Miami series (the offense wasn’t bad or anything, but they killed them in garbage time and it’s hard to take much negative in a series that was such an utter sweep like that)

Beyond that if we’re evaluating him as a player by virtue of being a Greek Freak Giannis is kind of an amazing off ball big, from the virtue of setting good screens being stupidly athletic and being an incredible finisher, so he’s highly portable in an off ball role, although jrue isn’t the type that maximizes him in that role so it’s hard even though jrue is great.

Beyond that, imagining Giannis’s defensive impact in a role where he doesn’t have to do as much offensively would be insane considering his defensive impact already is where it’s at when he puts his mind to it, and he’s a good passer off the short roll too

Giannis honestly works REALLY well as a pick and roll partner, and it would probably give him the energy to be a historic level defender as well

On a side note: holding 2021 giannis’s injury against him when he then had potentially one of the absolute greatest finals performances ever on one leg on an injury that took him out of the first few days of training camp 3 months later is MAD corny lmao, that made it 10x more legendary and the fact that they might not win if someone hit the reset button doesn’t matter much to me since 1. He came back stupidly early and killed the city of Phoenix 2. In real life they actually won which really is all that matters vs whatever hypothetical scenario we draw up where him getting hurt leads to them losing.

I’m not 100% on him here, but I do think that his defense seems to be viewed as “oh it’s quite good” sometimes, he’s a legitimate DPOY type player that has shown the ability at least to match absolutely top of the line ATG defensive peaks, and may do so in the playoffs.

Giannis had one of the absolute best two way playoff performances ever

Admittedly, it’s a bit lame that I don’t have like much video watching for this cuz I just don’t have any time, so that’s a bit annoying, either way though giannis for me on defense is a guy that doesn’t play a role that impacts every shot or anything but his motor makes him impact the shots he can to the point that the defense actively does things so he can’t help because he’s such an absurd deterrent


04 KG

- extremely portable, absurd impact data, would be utterly dominant today, but his playoff scoring is an issue for me
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#13 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Jul 17, 2022 5:47 pm

With Larry Legend in, Dr. J moves into my Top 3:

1. Steph Curry '16-17 (or '15-16 or '20-21 or '21-22)

As I've said, I think it's a really big deal that Curry effectively represents the cutting edge of the game we currently see.

We're no longer in a league where things are mostly pretty static like were arguably for about 40 years from somewhere in the '60s to the mid-00s. We've reached a new hockey stick in the sigmoid function.

Image

We don't know where it will end, or what will come next. All we really know is that the game is more strategically optimized today because of greater use of the 3-point shot with a massively improved skill at this shot and complementary/oppositional skills.

And so the best teams today would beat the best teams of the past so long as the 3-point line is on the court.

And Curry's teams keep coming out as the best teams of today.

I respect folks' philosophy who are trying to be more era-neutral than this, but regardless of how it factors into your rankings, I think it's something to really chew on, because it's certainly not how most of us expected the game to go.

2. Magic Johnson '86-87 (pretty accepted I think)

As with Bird, I certainly see the case for Magic over Curry and lots of guys already voted in. As I said before, I felt like Magic solved the game like no one else, and I think that's basically still true with the caveat of the emergence of 3-point shooting...which I think would help him be even more effective. Just a question of whether it helps an outlier 3-point shooter even more than it helps Magic (and yeah, I think it does).

3. Julius Erving '75-76

A GOAT Peak candidate season without question. I don't think anyone has ever won a title in a league as strong as that ABA with as little talent around him as Erving had. He was the offense, and the design and fit of the defense allowed Erving to be extraordinarily valuable on defense as well.

What holds me back with Erving is that I don't think he showed the same knack for impact that perimeter players like Bird & Magic had. Throw him on a random team and I don't think he gives you as much, but in terms of sheer impact in one year, Erving's up there with anyone.

Honorable Mention:

Have two main thrusts on my mind -

Kevin Garnett. Only reason he's not much higher on the list is because I don't think he was properly utilized in his own prime. Entirely possible he'd be the best player in the game today given that he was arguably the most impactful player of his own time anyway.

Oscar & West. Massive respect for these guys and I'm particularly bullish about West's prospects in the modern game. Still haven't been able to put Oscar & West ahead of Magic & Bird, but frankly could definitely see voting for them over Erving considering I think with them also they had more of a knack for impact than Erving. I suppose I'm shaped by the feeling that '75-76 Erving saw Erving surpass the best of Oscar & West.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#14 » by No-more-rings » Sun Jul 17, 2022 6:17 pm

I honestly thought Curry was going to run away with that last one. I got to say though I'm still surprised he's getting so much push for a top 5-9 peak, and had votes as high as 3rd by some here. I don't get it. I get that his impact his insanely high, and that he was a part in "changing the game" so to speak, but I'll also maintain that point is sort of overstated. Kerr I think deserves a lot of credit for the shift, although the small ball high volume 3 type style was well under way before Curry even hit his peak.

Just to name a few things here, that I think has kept Curry from getting in so far.

Limited size/defense: The only 2 non-bigs to get in prior to #9 were Lebron and Jordan. Everyone is in agreement those 2 are better, but when we look at Bird and Magic next, you're talking guys who are 6'9. Bird was quite a bit better on defense than Curry and was almost as good on offense in his peak playoff runs. I think many have the tendency to just assume that Curry and Magic are equal on defense, or that it's unimportant. Some say Curry had his best defensive season this year, I don't know if that's true or not but there's still a limit to who Curry can guard, Magic's bigger size offers a bit more flexibility. Magic wasn't getting burned on the perimeter, and he's not going to be pushed around my most big players either in the post. Maybe it's not something that is a big deal, but if I was trying to build a great defense and I had to pick between Magic and Curry in a vacuum I'd probably take Magic. Then on the other end, Magic arguably creates more of a mismatch than Curry, Curry's gravity and warping this is real but I still feel like he's been less resilient on average than Magic. I don't know if size is so much the reason, but teams weren't going to trap Magic like has been done to Curry because being a goat level passer with point guard handles at 6'9 makes that impossible. I feel many believe Curry's shooting/gravity/scoring>Magic's playmaking and solid scoring. I just wonder if that's more in theory than reality. Like it definitely sounds like it should be the case, and it probably is for the regular season but I'm not so sure it translates to better in the postseason. The Warriors in 2016(arguably peak Curry), were 4th in ortg in the playoffs with being below the Cavs by a pretty good margin. Their defense was arguably more important in those playoffs. They faced the 21st, 20th, 13th and 10th rated defenses. Their offense should've performed better than it did.

Curry's best regular season and postseason didn't occur together: 2016 and 2017 are the popular picks, 2016 Curry had arguably the best regular season ever...postseason not as much even if you think his injury played a role that still can't just be ignored. For me I still just can't take this 2017 playoffs at face value. The competition was super weak outside of the Cavs, and here's one thing I want to point out.

KD playoff numbers 2016: 28.4 ppg 54.2 ts% 20.3 PER
KD playoff numbers 2017: 28.5 ppg 68.3 ts% 27.5 PER

Curry playoff numbers 2016: 25.1 ppg 60.1 ts% 22.3 PER
Curry playoff numbers 2017: 28.1 ppg 65.9 ts% 27.1 PER

I mean you're fooling yourself to say, that kind of increase wasn't at least partly due to each guy having a goat supporting cast along with weak competition.

If we're looking at say 2019 or 2022 as more of Curry's real level, I don't see those as top 10 caliber playoff runs.

Frankly we've just never seen so much talent on one team like that. KD's run seems to get more asterisks put on it than Curry's which isn't really fair. I do see Curry as the better player, but not significantly so.

It would be like if back in 2006, Wade and Dirk wound up on the same team, and they recruited Andre Kirelenko to be their defensive anchor and you gave them Ray Allen for good measure. And oh yeah, let's say Ron Artest is their 6th man. I mean regardless of how well you think that would fit, would that team with average role players not win give or take 70 games and breeze through the playoffs?

Questions about Curry's floor raising: Curry had one of his best individual regular season in 2021, the Warriors missed the playoffs and had a 20/30 ranked ortg. I get all the injuries, fine but I just want to point out the hypocrisy here. That's a kind of offensive cast that Wade had in 2009 and 2010, and people go "look at those crappy offenses that Wade led!". But since it's Curry, he gets a pass. Again, I don't knock him just pointing out the double standard. I do think it's completely fair though to look at Curry, and not put him in the top tier of floor raisers. I think that's a big reason he's below Lebron, Duncan and Hakeem if no one else. Some put more value in being able to take so-so casts to a title. Curry only won titles when his supporting casts were best in the league level. If you want to say that about Magic and Bird, we can have that discussion sure. Not sure we can say that for anyone in the top 8 though.

So I just ask, is floor raising something that gives Curry an advantage over others or did he just have the best supporting cast every time he's won?

There may be few things I'm forgetting to mention, but this may be partly why there's a resistance to Curry. I don't think 10th would be insanely high or anything, but I do think top 5 would've been pretty insane I can't lie. There's just too many concerns I have with him that would allow me to put him top 10. I do think once you get out of the top 12 or so it gets harder and harder to argue against him. I personally would probably put Jokic ahead although, I can see there being some hesitation for some since he doesn't have hardware or that type of playoff run that would put him this high.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#15 » by falcolombardi » Sun Jul 17, 2022 6:22 pm

I think i am considering some order of garnett/curry/magic/giannis/wade next

But not sure yet
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#16 » by Proxy » Sun Jul 17, 2022 6:38 pm

No-more-rings wrote:
Questions about Curry's floor raising: Curry had one of his best individual regular season in 2021, the Warriors missed the playoffs and had a 20/30 ranked ortg. I get all the injuries, fine but I just want to point out the hypocrisy here. That's a kind of offensive cast that Wade had in 2009 and 2010, and people go "look at those crappy offenses that Wade led!". But since it's Curry, he gets a pass. Again, I don't knock him just pointing out the double standard. I do think it's completely fair though to look at Curry, and not put him in the top tier of floor raisers. I think that's a big reason he's below Lebron, Duncan and Hakeem if no one else. Some put more value in being able to take so-so casts to a title. Curry only won titles when his supporting casts were best in the league level. If you want to say that about Magic and Bird, we can have that discussion sure. Not sure we can say that for anyone in the top 8 though.

So I just ask, is floor raising something that gives Curry an advantage over others or did he just have the best supporting cast every time he's won?



Just to touch on this because I feel other people will mention it, I used to believe the same thing, but with further inspection that result was ONLY because of the Warriors trying to incorporate Wiseman too much very early in the season and in a smaller sample size(yes, not even Oubre was as much of a problem), and when they moved off of him and started actually optimizing Steph again they were extremely strong, and this was when Draymond was a negative offensive player.

Via pbpstats.com
Steph+Draymond on court, Wiseman off court(I am not touching any other players):
+10.65 Net Rating, 121.17 ORTG in 1400 minutes


Steph+Draymond+Wiseman on court:
-8.13 Net Rating. 104.22 ORTG in 424 minutes

If you want to knock him for not fitting well with a terrible rookie early on in the season despite his portability praise, go ahead but i'd find it weird. Though when they stopped doing that they were looking like a legit championship level team and clearly great results and that supporting cast was not even close to world breaking or anything

Also as DraymondGold and I have argued, even during the Warriors 17-19 years in the RS+PS:

Steph+Draymond on court, KD+Klay off court(so the next two best offensive players by far)
+11.58 Net Rating, 116.41 ORTG in 919 minutes

Now if you want to take it to a completely ridiculous extreme, and even include Draymond for some reason despite all the evidence that Steph is benefitting him to not remotely comparable degrees to how much Dray benefits him, i'll remove all three during that stretch, in 292(very bad sample size) minutes with Steph on and all 3 off:

+9.36 Net Rating, 115.05 ORTG, and i'd like someone to describe the lineups they were running without them if they think they are still significantly better than that of other praised "floor raising" seasons



He may not be in the VERY upper echelon of floor raisers, but these results are still extremely strong and I think the concerns are overblown, still probably much better looking than someone like Wade or McGrady or Kobe. Steph enables these teams too slant VERY heavily defensively in roster construction, and while he is on the court they are still playing with pretty strong offenses even with very bad offensive supporting casts.

EDIT: Forgot to mention but like stated multiple times in these threads, the 17-19 Warriors with Dray+Klay+KD without Steph were a +3.66 Net Rating team, with a 112 ORTG(927 Minutes)
Steph w/o the big 3 at all had a higher offense than this albeit a smaller sample
Steph+Draymond w/o those two had a better offense than this and were significantly better overall in a comparable sample size


It does not matter how you arrange lineups, their success revolved mostly around Steph and they were not playing at a level all that close to championship level without him on the court. In a sense you could even call him the "floor" of that team, as everything worked around him, he was the "head of the snake".
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#17 » by capfan33 » Sun Jul 17, 2022 6:41 pm

ShotCreator wrote:8/9 of the greatest peak years came from title winners, apparently.

What are the actual odds of that being true?


Probably not especially high if you ran a simluation 1000 times, also interesting to me that Kareem is the 1 exception and I think in his case it's quite clear his 2 best years were non-title years. But it also has to do a lot with criteria, winning is a big criteria for people and moreover will often serve as a tiebreaker all other things being equal.

For example in MJs case I think his CORP levels are virtually indistinguishable from 89-91 but most people just go with 91 as his peak because of the title run which is what I did. In Lebron's case his title is definitely a factor for 2013 vs 2017 and 2009. Same with Wilt with 67 vs 64 or 68. Duncan in 2002 and 2003 is probably a virtual tie in a vacuum. I definitely think Olajuwon actually peaked in 93 but the title in 94 put it over the top. Could argue the same with Bird in 86 vs 87. So yea, definitely some winning bias here but honestly most of the years I chose were title years with the few exceptions above and I don't factor in titles when evaluating.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#18 » by DraymondGold » Sun Jul 17, 2022 6:45 pm

1. 2017 Steph Curry
1b. 2016 Curry
2. 2004 Garnett.
3. 1987 Magic

At this point I may want to start examining the next tier of peaks, including Kobe, KD, Robinson, Walton, West, Oscar, possibly Jokic, probably not Giannis. I suppose it's possible one of them could usurp one of the 2 above, but I haven't been convinced yet.

1. Reasoning for Curry (now updated with new WOWY stats):
In short, I think by the data, Curry clearly outperforms Hakeem.

1a. Curry >> Hakeem (even though he's been voted in):
Spoiler:
Plus-minus based stats:
Ai. AuPM: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem
Aii. Postseason AuPM: (no data for peak Hakeem. 2017 Curry 2nd all time)
Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: (no data for peak 93-95 Hakeem. Partial data in 85/88/91/96 and full data in 97 are far below Curry, who’s 7th all time).
Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2017 Curry (8th all time) > 1994 Hakeem
Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: (no data available for Hakeem. Curry 1st all time)
Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Prime Curry > Prime Hakeem (new WOWY numbers for Curry: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100487575#p100487575).
Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: (no data for Hakeem. 16 Curry 2nd all time)
Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem (healthy 2016 Steph Curry and 1993 Hakeem tied 4th all time)

Box score-based data
Gi. Backpicks BPM: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem (and healthy 2016 Curry is 2nd all time)
Gii. Postseason Backpicks BPM: 2017 Curry (4th all time) > 1994 Hakeem
Additional box score stats: Hi. BR’s BPM: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem (but healthy 2016 Curry (4th all time) > 2003 Duncan)
Additional box score stats: Hii. BR’s Postseason BPM: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem
Additional box score stats: Ii. WS/48: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem (but healthy 2016 Curry (3rd all time) > 2003 Duncan)
Additional box score stats: Iii. Postseason WS/48: 2017 Curry > 1994 Hakeem
2017 Curry beats 1994 Hakeem 4/4 of our most trusted stats, 4/4 playoff-only stats, and by 10/10 stats total. If we add 2016 Curry and either 1993 or 1994 Hakeem (whichever helps Hakeem more), Curry beats Hakeem in 9/10 stats with 1 tie. The only stat Hakeem ties in is CORP (which is Ben Taylor's personal evaluation). In the four of the stats that aren’t old enough for Hakeem, Curry is at least 2nd all time in three of them. In short: I don't think there's any statistical argument for Hakeem > Curry. :o

1b. Curry > Magic
Spoiler:
Plus-minus based stats:
A. AuPM (no data available for magic)
Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: 1985 Magic (4th all time) > 2017 Steph Curry (7th) (But only a 41 game sample for Magic.)
Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2017 Curry (8th all time) > 1987 Magic
Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: (no data available for magic)
Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Prime Curry > Prime Magic (new WOWY numbers for Curry: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100487575#p100487575).
Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: (no data available for magic)
Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: 2017 Curry > 1987 Magic (and healthy 2016 Steph Curry is 4th all time)

Box score-based data
Gi. Backpicks BPM: 1987 Magic > 2017 Curry (but healthy 2016 Curry (2nd all time) > 1985 Magic)
Gii. Postseason Backpicks BPM: 2017 Curry (4th all time) > 1987 Magic
Hi. BR’s BPM: 1987 Magic > 2017 Curry (but healthy 2016 Curry (4th all time) > 1987 Magic)
Hii. BR’s Postseason BPM: 2017 Curve > 1987 Magic
Additional box score stats: Ii. WS/48: 1987 Magic > 2017 Curry (but healthy 2016 Curry (5th all time) > 1987 Magic)
Additional box score stats: Iii. Postseason WS/48: 2017 Curry > 1987 Magic
So Curry beats Magic in 6/10 of these total stats, and in 4/4 of the playoff-only stats. If we add 2016 Curry and either 87 Magic or 88 Magic (whichever helps Magic more), Curry wins even more in 7/10 Stats. 16/17 Curry is top 2 all time in all 4 stats that don’t have data for Magic. Magic also faced the weakest playoff competition of any player at this level: 87 Magic's average opponent overall SRS was +1.53 to 17 Curry's +4.59, so if you value playoff difficulty, this makes the playoff gap look even larger.

Does context help either Magic or Bird? 1) Scalability: Curry is clearly the most scalable of the three, and is probably the most scalable player of all time. 2) Resilience: None are bastions of resilience, but the playoff metrics do not have either Bird or Magic over Curry (Magic's clearly below), which is not nearly enough of a difference to make up for Curry's strong regular season advantage. 3) Health: none of these players had particularly healthy careers, but all 3 are healthy in their peak year. 4) Is defensive value missed by the metrics? Unlikely to change anything. Bird's the best defender, but he's far from his defensive peak in 86. Magic has just as many arguments to be a worse defender than Curry as he does to be a better defender, with Magic having worse lateral speed, worse footwork, worse hands, worse off-ball awareness, and no better rim protection despite his size (see here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100448248#p100448248). 5) Does team fit bias the metrics> Curry might have benefited from the best fit, but Magic and Bird also had Dynasty-level teams at their peak, and both Magic and Bird had easier playoff opponents even when counting injury. 6) What about the time machine argument? Bird and Magic are far from dominant enough here to make up for the gap by the data. Bird might improve offensively, but he'd clearly get worse defensively. Magic would also get worse defensively in this era.

1c. A Statistical Case for Curry > Jokic, Giannis, Chris Paul, Durant, Kawhi, and Harden can be found here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100432654#p100432654. Curry's favorable statistical comparison to Duncan, and Shaq are also in previous threads.

---

Counter to Curry 1: Did better fit allow Curry to put up better stats than other players? Not enough to matter.
The team around Steph did have an optimal fit, and the team was dominant. But the data seems to suggest the team's dominance was primarily driven by Curry. The other all stars obviously helped the team win, but superstars' individual stats usually decline when they have better teammates, because the better teammates take on-ball time away from the superstar. Instead, Curry's numbers seem as dominant as ever. This indicates Curry's GOAT-level ceiling raising ability.

From 2017–2019 (larger sample to give more stable values), here's the net rating with each of the stars on or off:
-All 4 stars on: +17. (that's 20% better than the 1996 Chicago Bulls across 3 seasons!)
-Only Klay off: +15.64.
-Only KD off: +13.54 (still better than the 96 Chicago Bulls even with KD off)
-Only Draymond off: +12.77
-Only Steph on, all 3 other stars off: +10.81
-Only Steph off: +1.94
With all 3 other all stars off, and just Steph on, the 17-19 Warriors have a better net rating than the 16 Warriors, 13 Heat, 2000 Lakers, 91 Bulls, 87 Lakers, or 86 Celtics. With all 3 all stars on, and just Steph off, the 17-19 Warriors are worse than this season's 2022 Cavs. This pattern remains in the playoffs (more info below).

Counter to Curry 2: Did other players have better resilience to justify them over Curry? No.
Bird, Magic, and KG are all not major playoff improvers over the course of their career. Curry's playoff decline almost entirely correlates with postseason health. Per Per BPM and AUPM, Curry actually improves in the playoffs when he's healthy. Even if the others improve more in the playoffs, the difference isn't significant enough for them to catch up to Curry (e.g. Shaq's career +0.67% improvement vs Curry's career +0.57% improvement), particularly when 2017 Curry outperforms his opponents per the above statistics.
More in depth discussion of Curry's Resilience here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100017661#p100017661

Counter to Curry 3: Did Curry face sufficiently weak playoff opponents to allow his postseason success?
Here are the average playoff opponents' Overall SRS (playoff + regular season SRS) or SRS for relevant teams:
2004 Mavs' opponents: +5.09 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +7.6)
2017 Warriors' opponents: +4.59 (hardest opponent: Cavs at +9.5)
2003 Spurs' opponents: +4.45 (hardest opponent: Mavs at +7.5)
1964 Celtics' opponents: +4.42 (hardest opponent: Royals at +4.43)
1991 Bulls' opponents: +4.10 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +8.1)
1986 Celtics' opponents: +2.77 (hardest opponent: Rockets at +7.4)
1962 Celtics' opponents: +2.22 (hardest opponent: Warriors at +2.22)
1963 Celtics' opponents: +1.90 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +2.67)
1965 Celtics' opponents: +1.76 (hardest opponent: Lakers at +4.41)
1987 Lakers' opponents: +1.53 (hardest opponent: Celtics at +5.3)

2017 Curry's average playoff opponents were better the opponents of 2003 Tim Duncan, 1991 Jordan, 1986 Larry Bird, 1987 Magic Johnson, and 1962-1965 Bill Russell. Accounting for opponent injury, Curry still faced harder competition than Magic, Bird, or Russell. 1962-1965 Russell's best opponent was statistically worse than Curry's average opponent. The 2017 Cavs were statistically a better opponent than any opponent faced by 1994-95 Hakeem, 2004 Garnett, 2003 Duncan, 1991 Jordan, 1986 Bird, 1987 Magic, or 1962-1965 Bill Russell. Source for opponent SRS: Basketball Reference, Sansterre's Top 100 Teams: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=2012241.

This overall opponent difficulty does not account for the disproportionate defensive attention that Curry faced. For example, in the 2018 Finals, Curry faced double teams more than 20x more (that's 2000% more) than Durant (Source: Nbalogix and Clutch Points). Per my personal film analysis, this GOAT-level defensive attention persists in the 2017 Finals, even when playing next to KD. It's also worth noting that in my film analysis, Curry had a good rate of good defensive plays to defensive mistakes, and the Cavs did not produce good offense by putting LeBron against Curry in isolation.
Film study of a 2017 Curry here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100386706#p100386706.

Counter to Curry 4: Does health matter? Maybe.
Curry was healthy throughout the entire 2017 season, which is one of the reasons I take 2017 over 2016. However, if you want to dock Curry for being a health risk (even though he stayed healthy this season), that's understandable.

Counter to Curry 5: Should we have 2016 Curry > 2017 Curry?
I certainly see the arguments for 2016 Curry. If he had a healthy playoffs (or if you only care about players' chances of getting injured in a season, rather than whether they actually got injured or not), I could see 2016 Curry > 2017 Curry.
Still, Doctor Mj and I have argued before that Curry actually was a better player in 2017. Specifically, I see him improving in his health, resilience (e.g. better strength, decision making, and handle), and scalability. I'm not concerned by that his decline in metrics from 2016 to 2017 show a decline in skill -- Curry openly admitted in interviews that mentally, he took too much of a step back and and got into a small slump when trying to accommodate KD. This shows good leadership and chemistry. Once he figured out how to play alongside KD, metrics / the eye test / player interviews all say 2017 Curry returned to 2016 form by the end of the 2017 regular seasons.
More discussion that 2017 Curry > 2016 found here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100017661#p100017661.
Discussion that 2017 Regular season was just as good as 2016 Regular Season (just with his value brought down by a slump) here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100321960#p100321960 and here https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100359184#p100359184

2. Thoughts KG
Spoiler:
Plus-minus based stats:
x Ai. AuPM: 2004 KG (3rd all time) [No older players]
x Aii. Postseason AuPM: 2004 Garnett (12th all time) [No older players]
x Bi. Goldstein RAPM / Historical Square2020 RAPM: 2004 Garnett (1st all time) [No older players]
x Bii. Goldstein Playoff PIPM (3 years for sample size): 2004 Garnett (20th all time) [No older players]
x Additional plus minus stats: C. on/off: 2004 Garnett [no older players]
Additional plus minus stats: D. WOWY: Russell > Garnett
x Additional plus minus stats: E. ESPN’s RPM: 2004 Garnett (7th all time) [no older players]
Additional plus minus stats: F. Backpicks’ CORP evaluation: 2004 Garnett (5th all time) > 1962-1964 Russell (10th all time) > (1965 Russell)

Box score-based data
Gi. Backpicks BPM: 2004 Garnett (15th all time) > (65 Russell) > (62-64 Bill Russell)
Gii. Postseason Backpicks BPM: (1965 Bill Russell) > 1962/64 Russell (not top 20) > 2003/04 Garnett
x Additional box score stats: Hi. BR’s BPM: 2004 Garnett (13th all time) [no older players]
x Additional box score stats: Hii. BR’s Postseason BPM: 2004 Garnett [no older players]
Additional box score stats: Ii. WS/48: 2004 Garnett > 1964 Russell > 1965 Russell > 1962 Russell
Total WS: 2004 Garnett > 1964 Russell > 1965 Russell > 1962 Russell
Additional box score stats: Iii. Postseason WS/48: (1965 Russell) > (1962 Russell) > 1964 Russell > 2004 Garnett
Comparing Russell (who's been voted in already) and KG, they're tied 1-1 in trusted stats and 3-3 in total stats. Russell wins in 2/2 postseason only stats. KG is top 3 all-time in 2 of the more trusted stats which we don’t have for Russell.

Does context help? 1. Scalability: KG > Russell. KG is clearly more scalable. His offensive spacing, better passing, and off-ball ability all fit perfectly on a good offense.
2, Resilience: Russell > KG. Russell is clearly more resilient at his peak, winning both playoff-only stats. Russell's team had a 10-0 record in Game 7s and a 22-0 record in elimination games (https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/l81hr6/its_pretty_well_known_that_bill_russell_was_210/). That's just crazy!
3. Health: KG = Russell. Both are healthy.
4. Defense not captured in impact metrics: Both players are defense-oriented, and Russell is missing many of the impact metrics. It's possible WinShares is underrating Russell more, but WOWY is likely accurate to Russell's defensive value.
so I'm not too concerned that there's a bias against one over the other based on defense being missed in the stats.
5. Fit: KG > Russell. KG had a much worse fit at his peak, which may limit his impact metrics more than Russell's.
6. Time Machine: KG > Russell. KG would perform better if they both took a time machine to the modern era.

Overall, both are close statistically, with lots of stats missing for Russell. The argument for Russell relies on his playoff resilience. The argument for KG relies on portability and the time machine argument, while arguing that his poor postseason performance was caused by atrocious fitting team, rather than an inherent lack of skill on his part. There’s some evidence for this, since 2001 and 2008 both have better postseason metrics than 2004, but it’s hard to know just how much better the 2004 postseason would be with better fit. All in all, there’s high uncertainty for both players, and I’m not sure who to go with. But since Russell's been voted in now, I'm going with KG.

3. Thoughts for Magic: Magic seems like the next obvious candidate given standard peak lists. The arguments for him haven't been as compelling as Curry's, but they're still better than the next. I'll try to add in statistical comparisons between him and the next tier if I have time.

Next tier includes: Kobe, KD, Robinson, Walton, West, Oscar, possibly Jokic. Players like Giannis, Erving, Wade, Dirk are just a bit below for me.
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#19 » by DraymondGold » Sun Jul 17, 2022 7:23 pm

Another day, another Curry debate :lol: Just bumping some of the previous arguments since they'll be relevant again this thread. In short: Curry >> Magic in scoring, Curry's not as far back in playmaking as Magic is in scoring, and Magic's not ahead of Curry defensively. And again, 17 Curry has the small advantage in (limited sample of) pure plus-minus stats, the clear advantage in the Box-plus minus stats, and the universal advantage in the postseason stats.

1. Scoring: Curry >> Magic
Quoting my conversation with 70sFan, let's look at their relative shooting percentages:

87 Magic
rTS% +6.4% (playoff +6.9%)
rFT% +8.5%
r3P% -9.6%

17 Curry:
rTS% +7.2% (playoff +11.8%)
rFT% +12.6%
r3P% +5.3 (with immense volume and difficulty advantage over league average)

87-89 Magic:
rTS% +7.4% (playoff +7.4)
rFT% +10.6%
r3P% -3.9%
Inflation Adjusted Pts/75: 21.8

15-17 Curry:
rTS% +10.1% (playoff +8.7 with playoff injury)
rFT% +14.7%
r3P% +8.2%
Inflation Adjusted Pts/75: 29.5

Over a 3 year sample, Curry beats Magic by: 3.5 rTS%, 4.1 rFT%, 12.1 r3P%, and 7.7 Pts/75 relative to their league, and these advantages remain in their peak playoff performances. Magic's a good shooter and a good scorer. But Curry's the GOAT shooter and an all-time scorer. Curry >> Magic in shooting and scoring, even relative to era.


2. Creation: Magic > Curry, but Curry closes much of the Gap

I think we have to ask ourselves: Why does Curry consistently create better shots for his teammates and improve his teammates' efficiency more than older LeBron, Harden, Jokic, Luka, Westbrook, and older Chris Paul, whether we're looking at a 1-year peak or a 5 Year prime? Where does this playmaking come from?
1 Year Peak: Curry +7.3% (1st in league) >> older LeBron +3.9% (2nd in league) > peak Westbrook +2.5% (3rd in league)
[Metric: teammates' shooting percentage improvement when a star is on court vs when they're off. Sample: among top players in 2017]
5 Year Peak: Curry +0.07 (1st in league) > Trae Young +0.06 (2nd in league) > Nikola Jokic +0.06 (3rd in league) > LeBron James +0.05 (4th in league)
[Metric: teammates' increased pts/shot when a star is on vs off, aided by tracking data. Sample: 2018-2022]

Curry's an all-star level passer, but it's clearly not passing. So that's where the culmination of all the little forms of creation come into play, where Curry is consistently all-time to GOAT level in these skills. He's an all-time guard screener, and is always near the top of the league in guards' Screening Assists. He's GOAT level in Secondary/Hockey Assists, averaging over 1 per game throughout his prime. He's GOAY-level off-ball creator and GOAT-level win gravity. Per manal tracking, he has multiple off-ball movement assists and gravity-dragging assists per game. This says nothing about the subtler cases where Curry's presence makes it harder for opponents to double, help on, or close out on Curry's teammates.

Per my film study earlier in this project: in the 2017 Finals, Curry drew the primary attention of at least 2 defenders on 62% of possessions where he was involved (34/55), and his teammates' points were made easier by this 89% of the time (34/38 points benefited from the attention Curry drew).
Per NBA Tracking Data: In the 2018 Finals, Curry received double teams 2000% more (that's two-thousand times more) than KD.
Additional Film Study here:
Spoiler:
KD pre-Curry goes until 1:45. Skip to 1:45 to see Curry's impact.
[url][/url]
And remember: None of these examples are captured by the traditional box score, so people who just look at assist numbers or box-score only metrics are likely underrating Curry's playmaking. But they would show up in more advanced stats.

I think if people aren't considering Curry a possible top 5 playmaking offensive engine of all time, they're seriously underrating Curry. To be clear, I still have Magic as the superior playmaker, largely from his volume advantage as a playmaker. But Curry playmaking efficiency is seriously GOAT-level, and I think these advanced stats/film analysis support that the playmaking gap is smaller than the scoring gap.
Sources:
Spoiler:
1. 1-Year peak Teammate shot improvement: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-case-for-stephen-curry-mvp/
2. 5 Year Prime teammate shot quality improvement: https://synergysports.com/explaining-synergy-shot-quality/
Read on Twitter

3. My 2017 Finals film study: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100386706#p100386706
4. 2018 Finals Tracking Data: NBAlogix (paywall) / Clutchpoints
5. Curry vs LeBron efficiency stats are in source 1


3. Overall Metrics, Playoff Opponents: Curry > Magic
Overall Metrics: Curry > Magic [see my ballot above]
Playoff Opponent: 17 Curry > 87 Magic (in defensive rating faced, hardest opponent faced, and in hardest opponent relative to your team]

1 Year Peak Average Opponent: 2017 Curry > 2017 Curry (adjusting for opponent injuries) >> 1987 Magic > 1987 Magic (adjusting for opponent injuries)
1 Year Peak Hardest Opponent beaten: 2017 Curry >> 1987 Magic > 1987 Magic (adjusting for opponent injuries)
1 Year Peak Opponent Defense: 2017 Curry > 1987 Magic (not sure about adjusting for opponent injuries)

3 Year Peak Average Opponent: Curry > Magic (this holds for either 15-17 or 17-19 Curry even when accounting for opponent injury)
3 Year Peak Hardest Opponent beaten: Curry > Magic
3 Year Peak Opponent Defense: Magic > Curry (Curry had harder average if we take 17-19, Magic had harder average if we take Curry 15-17, Magic faced the harder defensive opposition in 1989 regardless).
70sFan provided good evidence that Magic's 5-year opposing defense is ahead, so check out their post if you're interested.
______
4. More Counters for Curry: Best Regular Season and Postseason in separate years
No-more-rings wrote:Curry's best regular season and postseason didn't occur together: 2016 and 2017 are the popular picks, 2016 Curry had arguably the best regular season ever...postseason not as much even if you think his injury played a role that still can't just be ignored. For me I still just can't take this 2017 playoffs at face value. The competition was super weak outside of the Cavs, and here's one thing I want to point out.

KD playoff numbers 2016: 28.4 ppg 54.2 ts% 20.3 PER
KD playoff numbers 2017: 28.5 ppg 68.3 ts% 27.5 PER

Curry playoff numbers 2016: 25.1 ppg 60.1 ts% 22.3 PER
Curry playoff numbers 2017: 28.1 ppg 65.9 ts% 27.1 PER

I mean you're fooling yourself to say, that kind of increase wasn't at least partly due to each guy having a goat supporting cast along with weak competition.

If we're looking at say 2019 or 2022 as more of Curry's real level, I don't see those as top 10 caliber playoff runs.

Frankly we've just never seen so much talent on one team like that. KD's run seems to get more asterisks put on it than Curry's which isn't really fair. I do see Curry as the better player, but not significantly so.

It would be like if back in 2006, Wade and Dirk wound up on the same team, and they recruited Andre Kirelenko to be their defensive anchor and you gave them Ray Allen for good measure. And oh yeah, let's say Ron Artest is their 6th man. I mean regardless of how well you think that would fit, would that team with average role players not win give or take 70 games and breeze through the playoffs?
Good question! This hasn't stopped anyone for voting for other players. LeBron, Kareem, Russell, and Hakeem inarguably did Not have their best regular season and postseason in the same year we voted for. That's 2 out of the top 4, and 4 out of the top 9. You could also argue others like Shaq had this trend. So why do we care so much for Curry?

Peak Length: To me, Curry had a medium-short 2-3 year peak. Is this too short to vote in Curry? Not according to this project. Shaq had a 2 year peak, and he was voted 3rd. Nobody cared about Shaq's worse performance in 1999 or 2002 when rating 2000/2001. Duncan had a 2 year peak and he was voted in already. Heck, if you're saying peak years need to be 3+ years in-a-row, people might need to be lower on Lebron's peak (12-13 is good, but 11/14 << 09), Wilt's peak (67/64 >> 65/66/68), Kareem (77/74 >> 75/76/78), Bird (86 >> 85/87), and 04 KG (04 >> 03/05).

Peak Context:
Why was he worse in the 2016 Postseason? Unlike any other player at this level, Curry got injured during the playoffs of one of his 2-year peaks (Walton and Kawhi share this pattern but their peak is lower). Using your quip (good quip btw!) as inspiration, I think you're fooling yourself if you think Curry's 2016 postseason decline wasn't from injury. :wink:

Why was he worse in the 2017 Regular Season? Unlike any other player in the top... 20 peaks? 30 peaks?... Curry had an all-time player join his team during his 2ish-year peak. Do people really not expect there to be an adjustment period? I've provided in-depth statistical evidence and film evidence that showed that Curry was just as good a player in 2017 Regular season. He just lost value. Why? He intentionally took a step back to prioritize making KD comfortable. This is the kind of Cultural Leadership advantage that also puts Curry >> Kawhi, Moses Malone, Julius Erving, KG, David Robinson, Giannis, and Oscar, to name other players who have been voted in this thread.
Evidence that 2017 Regular Season Curry was just as good of a player as 2016 Regular Season Curry (just with a slump from taking a step back to help KD) here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100321960#p100321960, here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100359184#p100359184, and here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=100017661#p100017661.
Evidence that the 2017 Postseason success was much more drive by Curry than KD can be found in my ballot / past posts, so I won't repeat.

5. Discussion of Curry's GOAT-level portability and his advantage against the competition in time-machine arguments are also in the previous threads. Let me know if y'all have any questions! :D
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Re: Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #10 

Post#20 » by falcolombardi » Sun Jul 17, 2022 7:40 pm

capfan33 wrote:
ShotCreator wrote:8/9 of the greatest peak years came from title winners, apparently.

What are the actual odds of that being true?


Probably not especially high if you ran a simluation 1000 times, also interesting to me that Kareem is the 1 exception and I think in his case it's quite clear his 2 best years were non-title years. But it also has to do a lot with criteria, winning is a big criteria for people and moreover will often serve as a tiebreaker all other things being equal.

For example in MJs case I think his CORP levels are virtually indistinguishable from 89-91 but most people just go with 91 as his peak because of the title run which is what I did. In Lebron's case his title is definitely a factor for 2013 vs 2017 and 2009. Same with Wilt with 67 vs 64 or 68. Duncan in 2002 and 2003 is probably a virtual tie in a vacuum. I definitely think Olajuwon actually peaked in 93 but the title in 94 put it over the top. Could argue the same with Bird in 86 vs 87. So yea, definitely some winning bias here but honestly most of the years I chose were title years with the few exceptions above and I don't factor in titles when evaluating.


Lebron is arguably an example case against ring bias tho

His 2009 season arguably outperformed 2013 in regular season (not by a huge margin admiteddly) and in playoffs (by a more clear margin imo although lebron + shooters without the injured wade on court were outright murderous destroying a elite spurs team when they played)

And 2013 still won even when most value signals go to 2009 and the argument was supported by theory about portability or better skillset to overcomr thr toughest defenses even when 2009 lebron did better overall, no theory needed, against that exact kind of defense

Somethingh odd that happens at times with "floor raisers" is that they almost get punished for having too much impact in so-so teams cause that gives them the backhanded compliment of "a floor raiser more than a ceiling raiser"

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