Swap current Luka/Kyrie with 2015 Steph/Klay

[Laimbeer]

Does each team get better or worse?

[dygaction]

Current Mavs don't have a Draymond as a hub to maximize splash brothers' off ball skills.

[ShotCreator]

Current Mavs don't have a Draymond as a hub to maximize splash brothers' off ball skills.

Draymond helps with resilience across schemes, but peak Curry is killing you off the dribble just fine. People forget this guy gave the greatest offensive year to date just by virtue of hunting bigs on switches.

I really want to lean Curry/KLay here. Klay put together his best offensive and defensive seasons of his career simultaneously here and Curry is just better than Doncic on both ends.

[Saints14]

I think both teams get worse. The secret sauce of the 2015 Warriors wasn't just with Curry being the MVP, but with the synergy of Curry/Green/Klay (particularly Curry and Green). I might have 2024 Luka over 2015 Steph in a vacuum but he requires specific role players to thrive with and he'd make Draymond way less valuable. The 2024 Mavs though need Luka's ball dominance

[hagredionis]

Current Mavs don't have a Draymond as a hub to maximize splash brothers' off ball skills.

Draymond helps with resilience across schemes, but peak Curry is killing you off the dribble just fine. People forget this guy gave the greatest offensive year to date just by virtue of hunting bigs on switches.

I really want to lean Curry/KLay here. Klay put together his best offensive and defensive seasons of his career simultaneously here and Curry is just better than Doncic on both ends.

Is that some sort of a joke? Luka is a much better defender than Curry. Just look at this playoffs, the players Luka guards have the lowest FG%. Luka also has most steals and most defensive rebounds in the entire league, where has Curry ever done anything like that? And Luka is of course a better playermaker than Curry.

[ShotCreator]

Current Mavs don't have a Draymond as a hub to maximize splash brothers' off ball skills.

Draymond helps with resilience across schemes, but peak Curry is killing you off the dribble just fine. People forget this guy gave the greatest offensive year to date just by virtue of hunting bigs on switches.

I really want to lean Curry/KLay here. Klay put together his best offensive and defensive seasons of his career simultaneously here and Curry is just better than Doncic on both ends.

Is that some sort of a joke? Luka is a much better defender than Curry. Just look at this playoffs, the players Luka guards have the lowest FG%. Luka also has most steals and most defensive rebounds in the entire league, where has Curry ever done anything like that? And Luka is of course a better playermaker than Curry.

Even if I cared about steals totals, or had an actual reason to care actually, Curry is still much better there.

Curry had way faster, more accurate hands than Luka defensively. It's not even somewhat close. Curry could pickpocket elite ballhandlers without losing positioning. Especially at this time. This was his athletic peak.

As far as defensive rebounding, Luka's good but it's a marginally impactful thing. He's always been a natural at rebounding. As was Westbrook, and like Luka he was a mediocre defender.

I actually like Luka when he actually is good on defense, when he's in a rhythm and is anticipating ballhandlers and ball movement on rotations. Because he'll never have the footspeed of Curry, a quicker guard. But his mind is so fast he can beat guys before they even start their dribble moves and then he's like a brick wall.

He had an amazing defensive game in the 2020 series against LAC doing this, and actually had a few more moments these playoffs but defense is clearly nothing he has worked on to the level of Curry up to this point. Luka's much stronger than Curry but somehow much less physical.

Curry's stamina and gas tank advantage is something really easy to overlook. But Curry's defensive motor just slams his in a way that is not even close. Curry was a physical, high activity defender in his prime with very good hands and anticipation. Again, this isn't all that close.

But Luka has shown signs, I don't consider him a disaster or even a true negative. He just does not thrive at defense like Curry did. He hasn't put in the work to be defensive-minded. I think Curry actually was defensive-minded. Highly motivated on D.

To me he's barely improved from his sophomore year. Probably less lazy, but that's still not high motor and aggressive on D. He will probably get something going on defense later in his prime. And I'm sure you'll be around to let people know.

[TheGOATRises007]

^That post seems like a huge and giant revision of Curry's defense earlier in his career.

[ShotCreator]

^That post seems like a huge and giant revision of Curry's defense earlier in his career.

....I'm not even gonna get into the concept of believing the more people believe something the truer it is. I will say I'm being very specific. Much more specific than this post is right now.

If you want to volunteer how you saw Curry being a lazy defender(especially compared to the likes of Luka Doncic) with slow hands, slow feet and no instincts go ahead.

[Cavsfansince84]

^That post seems like a huge and giant revision of Curry's defense earlier in his career.

....I'm not even gonna get into the concept of believing the more people believe something the truer it is. I will say I'm being very specific. Much more specific than this post is right now.

If you want to volunteer how you saw Curry being a lazy defender(especially compared to the likes of Luka Doncic) with slow hands, slow feet and no instincts go ahead.

I think the issue is that Curry was way smaller and weaker in 2015 compared to 2018 or 2022. He got targeted a lot on defense.

[Special_Puppy]

What is this question lol. Steph/Klay in 2015 were a clear cut above Kyrie and Luka (mostly due to the gap between Curry and Luka)

[Pelly24]

It's an interesting question. First off I'd say that if Luka were 100% from the jump, the Mavs-OKC series goes no more than 5 games, and it almost went only 5 games anyway, so I think Curry and Klay might win. But the thing to consider is this: There's no Draymond here to playmake, and the Mavs don't actually have reliable playmakers outside of Luka and Kyrie, unless you want to consider Lively a real playmaker. So, the question is, what happens when OKC doubles and blitzes Klay the way they did Kyrie? There won't be other reliable playmakers to get him the ball back, and I think that would hurt a lot of Curry's relocation catch and shoot attempts. He can cook off the dribble, but I'm more worried about Klay. We saw Klay get rendered kind of a moot point in the 2016 Finals, and that was with a whole team of playmakers and shooters. They would need Klay to beat the blitzes with speed and passing like Kyrie did, because that's what enabled PJ Washington to average like 18 ppg. I just don't think Klay is capable of that and I think the chances are he has a bad series. And Luka and Kyrie were absolutely locking up against OKC and throughout most of the postseason up to this point, so it's not like Klay has some enormous advantage.

Meanwhile, if you put Luka and Kyrie on the Warriors, they curb stomp the Cavs in 4 games instead of 6 and easily win the championship. 2015 Steph was incredible, but Luka is a far superior passer, and because of his size and elite midrange game and ability to get to the free throw line, there is no slowing him down the way you kind of can with Curry. He's simply going to get to his spots and shoot over you no matter what and he's going to pick you apart with his passes. Sure the gravity isn't the same, but because Kyrie is so good off ball, everyone else still gets to touch the ball and the offense will still be fluid. He's an upgrade over Curry. Kyrie is simply a better player than Kyrie every year they've both played. IF you try to take out Luka, Kyrie will kill you, whether it's catch and shoots, ISO, transition, semi-transition, etc. Even if you can slow his scoring, you have to sell out to do it, and then he'll make the right pass most of the time. Kyrie and Luka is an elite duo. Imagine if they had a third player as good as Draymond that fit their skillsets.

[OhayoKD]

Does each team get better or worse?

Steph/Dray makes more sense. Those were the two true stars of the team.

[OhayoKD]

What is this question lol. Steph/Klay in 2015 were a clear cut above Kyrie and Luka (mostly due to the gap between Curry and Luka)

What gap?

[OhayoKD]

I think both teams get worse. The secret sauce of the 2015 Warriors wasn't just with Curry being the MVP, but with the synergy of Curry/Green/Klay (particularly Curry and Green). I might have 2024 Luka over 2015 Steph in a vacuum but he requires specific role players to thrive with and he'd make Draymond way less valuable. The 2024 Mavs though need Luka's ball dominance

Draymond being way more valuable is a stretch. Almost all of his impact comes from defense and I'm not seeing Steph or Luka making much of a difference there.

[Special_Puppy]

What is this question lol. Steph/Klay in 2015 were a clear cut above Kyrie and Luka (mostly due to the gap between Curry and Luka)

What gap?

I don't think this is a hot take, but I think that 2015-2017 Steph Curry was a materially better player than current Luka Doncic on both sides of the ball. This is based on a lot of statistics and impact metrics

[STTGLDRILL]

What is this question lol. Steph/Klay in 2015 were a clear cut above Kyrie and Luka (mostly due to the gap between Curry and Luka)

What gap?

I don't think this is a hot take, but I think that 2015-2017 Steph Curry was a materially better player than current Luka Doncic on both sides of the ball. This is based on a lot of statistics and impact metrics

If you seriously think that they get better by replacing luka and Kyrie with Steph and klay because of impact metrics then you don’t understand basketball beyond a spreadsheet unfortunately

People that don’t understand basketball and rely on impact metrics without the ability to explain context like this, is what really is the reason analytics get so much pushback in the basketball community in the first place, very unfortunate

Something about these kinds of messages really grinds my gears as it really is a representation of why analytics aren’t accepted in the basketball world, as many individuals who use them use them as a crutch without actually understanding basketball in general and often lack understanding of the data in the first place and attempt to throw things at a wall till they stick…

[TheGOATRises007]

The Mavs clearly get worse.

I'm not sure they get past OKC honestly.

[Special_Puppy]

What gap?

I don't think this is a hot take, but I think that 2015-2017 Steph Curry was a materially better player than current Luka Doncic on both sides of the ball. This is based on a lot of statistics and impact metrics

If you seriously think that they get better by replacing luka and Kyrie with Steph and klay because of impact metrics then you don’t understand basketball beyond a spreadsheet unfortunately

People that don’t understand basketball and rely on impact metrics without the ability to explain context like this, is what really is the reason analytics get so much pushback in the basketball community in the first place, very unfortunate

Something about these kinds of messages really grinds my gears as it really is a representation of why analytics aren’t accepted in the basketball world, as many individuals who use them use them as a crutch without actually understanding basketball in general and often lack understanding of the data in the first place and attempt to throw things at a wall till they stick…

I don’t understand your objection. Do you think that Luka is better than 2015-2017 Curry or do you just think that the in the context of the Mavericks team construction, Luka is more valuable?

[AdagioPace]

both teams get worse. Draymond would be a bit underutilized next to Doncic and Curry/klay would need to do more heavy lifting with the current Mavs roster.

[STTGLDRILL]

I don't think this is a hot take, but I think that 2015-2017 Steph Curry was a materially better player than current Luka Doncic on both sides of the ball. This is based on a lot of statistics and impact metrics

If you seriously think that they get better by replacing luka and Kyrie with Steph and klay because of impact metrics then you don’t understand basketball beyond a spreadsheet unfortunately

People that don’t understand basketball and rely on impact metrics without the ability to explain context like this, is what really is the reason analytics get so much pushback in the basketball community in the first place, very unfortunate

Something about these kinds of messages really grinds my gears as it really is a representation of why analytics aren’t accepted in the basketball world, as many individuals who use them use them as a crutch without actually understanding basketball in general and often lack understanding of the data in the first place and attempt to throw things at a wall till they stick…

I don’t understand your objection. Do you think that Luka is better than 2015-2017 Curry or do you just think that the in the context of the Mavericks team construction, Luka is more valuable?

It’s very unfortunate after reading this you don’t understand how silly it is to say that the mavs get better replacing luka and Kyrie with curry and klay…