RealGM

How many Curry years would you take over Peak James Harden?

I'll excerpt what I posted in the last Top 100 project. Noting that since then Doctor MJ just did a cumulative RAPM/VORP spreadsheet and guess who ended up right next to each other on the list? (hint: it was Harden and Steph).



James Harden is either way more like Steph Curry than you think or Steph Curry is way more like James Harden than you think

These guys end up next to each other a lot in different measures. And Harden doesn't always lose.

Normalized 10 Year Box Score (my calculation, nothing fancy)
22. Harden 0.593
24. Steph 0.576

2 peas in a pod. Only 2 spots apart.

Harden is terrible at playoff resiliency. But guess who else is:
Resiliency (my calculation, nothing fancy)
34th out of 41. Steph -0.1613
39th out of 41. Harden -0.1982

So small advantage for Steph, but once again right there in the same range (Harden would actually be ahead if it included 2011).

RAPM 97-22?
13. Steph 6.5
22. Harden 5.1

Okay, an advantage for Steph, but probably not as excessive as people would guess. But what if we just do the playoffs:
Playoff RAPM - Cheema
6. Steph 4.12
7. Harden 4.11

Well damn, that's about as close as it gets.

What about plain ol' playoff plus/minus for these BFF's
Steph 2013-23, (11 years, 9 playoffs): +12.0 on/off (all prime years)
Harden 2011-22 (12 years, 12 playoffs): +11.0 on/off (not all prime years)

So really close, even in the area where Steph dominates. But we included a little non-prime for Harden. What if we just do 2011-2021, still as many years and more playoffs than Steph:
Harden 2011-21 (11 years, 11 playoffs): +11.4 on/off

Even closer. What if we just do 2011-2020? Still more playoffs than Steph. +11.9. Practically a tie.

And just to show how disastrous the Milwaukee hamstring series was, what if we just do 2011 up until the end of the 1st round in 2021:
Harden 2011-21 1st Round: +12.4

So Harden spent a decade having every bit the playoff on/off impact that Steph did.

But f4p, they played 3 head to head series and Steph won them all, checkmate.

Stats from 2015/18/19 Series
Harden: 30.7 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 5.9 apg, 58.0 TS% (-3.4% from regular season), 21.9 Game Score
Steph: 26.3 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 5.4 apg, 59.5 TS% (-5.9% from regular season), 19.2 Game Score

But those are box score numbers, we know Steph is all about impact:

Harden On/Off: +16.2 per 48 (Harden with a hilarious +48.8 in 2015)
Steph On/Off: +5.3 per 48

But this isn't about how much better Harden is than Steph and how he seems to have definitely outplayed him in these series, it's about how similar they are. So let's try a little magic. I'll get rid of those garbage time minutes I always talk about in Game 2 and Game 3 in 2018. While they do make the series look a lot further apart than it was, they also seriously inflated Harden's plus/minus because they were disastrous "off" minutes. So now it's:

Harden +11.7
Steph +10.4

Wow, still not that different once again. And Harden still ahead. Of course, I'm a vengeful god, and I can't help but notice how well Steph did in Games 6 and 7 in 2018, after the talent advantage became overwhelming. Kind of like how 2017 was coincidentally his best playoffs ever. So what if we remove those (while still removing the garbage time):

Harden +13.0
Steph +5.5

Wow. So the guy who lost all 3 series had better box numbers and on/off numbers. I'm sure people are taking that into account in these rankings (feel free to check the on/off numbers in case I somehow botched them).

by regular seasons, i would say:

Steph 2016 is the only season i would take over peak Harden, which would be his 2019 season probably. 2015 is nice but not better than that and nothing else has an argument. hard to say anything would even go over 2018 if you want to say a season surpasses 2019.

The 2019 rockets, who gave up their bench for luxury tax savings (luxury tax savings ended up having a terrible year), were 11-14 before Harden just decided to score all the team's points. and then the rockets finished 42-15, a 60 win pace, and then actually had a better PSRS against the jazz (+14 or +15) than they had in either of their first two rounds with the much stronger 2018 team. and then played the warriors with 5 of 6 games from KD and all games from iggy to a -1.7 net rating. no other team ever played the KD warriors within 2 points. or 3. or 4. or 5. or 6. or 7. or 8.

and that was with a bench where the 9th man (nene) never played in the nba again, the 8th man (gerald green) never played in the nba again, the 7th man (shumpert) played less than 100 minutes (2 Thibodeuax's) in the rest of his career, and the 6th man was austin rivers, who spent the next 4 years putting up sub-replacement playoff stats.

so a pretty crazy playoff lift against the warriors. that alone makes 2019 tough to surpass in the playoffs for steph. 2020 harden went up against a #7 thunder defense that played lu dort like 8 extra mpg even though he couldn't shoot (something crazy like 31/14/44 shooting splits in the first 6 gamse) and the 2020 lakers with their very good defense. and his 2020 numbers, with westbrook out in round 1 and basically being the reason the lakers could double harden 30 feet from the basket in the round 2, are basically the same as steph's 2017 numbers, which are propped up with some guy named durant.

Harden: 27.5 PER, 0.253 WS48, 9.4 BPM
Steph: 27.1 PER, 0.272 WS48, 9.7 BPM

and as noted in the post above, no real plus/minus advantage for steph in the playoffs until we start getting to 2023-2025 harden, which obviously isn't peak harden. or in the Cheema playoff RAPM, though I'm sure there's some database that will say Harden sucked.

can't take 2016 playoffs because of the finals. 2015 shows every bit the fall off of any harden playoffs. 2018 even worse fall off than 2015 and should have lost to harden with the best roster ever. tried to lose in 2019 with maybe his worst series ever in the series against the rockets and 2022 is a nice finals but seemingly no better than either 2020 harden series or almost beating the KD warriors. certainly harden isn't making the finals with any of his teams if he plays like steph in the first 3 rounds of 2022.

like 2016 harden and whatever happended against the spurs in game 6 are worse moments than steph has had, but this is about being better than the peak, not less worse than the valley.

3, tops.

15, 16, 17 over 2020 Harden because of Curry’s clearly good D in this period.

Every other season is out of the question to me..

ShotCreator wrote:3, tops.

15, 16, 17 over 2020 Harden because of Curry’s clearly good D in this period.

Every other season is out of the question to me..

You have 15 Steph over 18 Steph? Is it just a games played thing?

I think 15 16 17 18 and 21 personally

Don't see a huge difference between the best Steph years, and I just think is style of play is more conducive to winning at the highest level (as has been borne out repeatedly )

I will say 2015 2016 and 2017.

parsnips33 wrote:I think 15 16 17 18 and 21 personally

Don't see a huge difference between the best Steph years, and I just think is style of play is more conducive to winning at the highest level (as has been borne out repeatedly )

The year steph missed half the season and then...checks notes...was losing to Harden+Chris Paul with Kevin Durant and Draymond?

Matt15 wrote:How many Curry years would you take over Peak James Harden?

These questions are always under-defined: what does it mean to "take" one player over another?

If "take" means I have skin in the game and I would have to endure even one second of James Harden on my roster, then there are probably thousands of basketball players he'd rank behind. I do not like or appreciate him, and I would not want to achieve basketball or business success via employing him.

On the other hand, if it merely means declaring, retrospectively and disinterestedly, that one player had a better year than another, then it's potentially easier to evaluate only what actually happened between one date and another within a real context and make a measured calculation of what baggage, actually carried, I'm willing to accept along with the good.

If it's the latter, then Harden definitely had a few seasons where he was nearly as effective as Curry's best, and even his downsides were not substantially more offensive, if at all, than Curry's worst moments (i.e., enabling Draymond Green).

I'd "take" any version of Curry over any version of Harden if it's my basketball team, but I'd grade Harden's actual best as it actually happened over any Curry except 2015-2017.

Maybe none

parsnips33 wrote:

ShotCreator wrote:3, tops.

15, 16, 17 over 2020 Harden because of Curry’s clearly good D in this period.

Every other season is out of the question to me..

You have 15 Steph over 18 Steph? Is it just a games played thing?

Steph was noticeably better defensively in 2015