70sFan wrote:MyUniBroDavis wrote:Seasons like jokic’s are either him basically taking a bad supporting cast and not having nearly the same level of success
Lebron took a potentially sub 20 win team and brought them to 60 wins, most of these are bringing 30-40 win teams to that level if even.
Do you have any evidences that Cavs were sub 20 wins team without James in 2010? I find it very hard to believe, no player in NBA hisotry had the value of 40 wins. Cavs without James on the floor played at -5.3 level, which is bad but better than sub 20 wins pace or Nuggets without Jokic (-8.0).
If you base that on 2011 Cavs success, then keep in mind that among 10 players with biggest role in 2010, only Anthony Parker and JJ Hickson played full season in 2011:
James: 76 games -> 0 games
Williams: 68 games -> 36 games
Varejao: 76 games -> 31 games
Parker: 81 games -> 72 games
West: 61 games -> 0 games
Shaq: 53 games -> 0 games
Hickson: 81 games -> 80 games
Ilgauskas: 64 games -> 0 games
Jamison: 25 games -> 56 games
2011 Cavs team wasn't just 2010 Cavs without LeBron, they lost most of their key rotation players.
So they lost delonte west/shaq/ilgauskas
Per backpicks, pre injuries
While most teams fall off after losing a superstar, none imploded like the Lebron-less Cavs; in 21 games with a similar group of players, they played at an anemic 18-win pace (-8.9 SRS) before injuries ravaged their lineup.
The individual records for mo and varejao don’t show a pattern either
Varejao
8-23
Mo
8-28
With both
6-21
On offs can’t be used like that because rotations and stuff, and can’t be compared to whole team lineups.
Delonte west in 2010 had his worst 3 point shooting year with the cavs, ilgauskas retired a year later, and this was Shaqs second last year. It’s hard to see any of them as difference makers by this point, and the cavs record was identical in the time each of them missed
(with west they won at a 70 win pace without him, without ilgauskas they won at a 64 win pace, without shaq they were at a 59 win pace, a caveat for shaq specifically that 6 of the games lebron missed were games shaq missed too, take those out and they win at a 68 win pace without shaq)
Samples are 22, 18, and 29 (23 if we take out bron games) respectively
I think we have a fairly decent sample of the team without lebron with a similar spine, and in the 30 or so games Parker/varejao/hickson/Jamison/Williams played together, we have a 23 game sample, where they went
4-19
Varejao is the only person where they have a higher than 20 win pace (21), and even then it should be noted they won on average by 5.6 points (and all of them were less than 10 point wins) whereas their losses were on average by 13.7 points (so they lost by 8.7ppg) which does fit a sub 20 win pace
I don’t really see how they can be seen as anything more than a 20 win team based off of that, the players they lost outside of lebron weren’t really contributors, and while healthy we have more than a 20 game sample of them playing like a 20 win team (and in itself that sample should be compared to the cavs team when they were healthy, and when lebron played they won at a 65 win pace).
Evaluating supporting casts in general is hard, both are heinous on paper, I think Malone is probably one of the best offensive coaches in the league at least in the RS, on off makes Jokic look insane whereas the RAPM data we have is really good but nothing different than a typical mvp guy, altho I think there are collinearity issues there
Both strike me as 20 win type casts off of a glance, I could see more variance for jokic’s both ways probably
