Greatest Peaks Project (2022): #9 - 1985-86 Larry Bird

[LukaTheGOAT]

Further Skill Comparison: Magic vs Curry

We can look at other years though, to conclude that Magic was consistently great against elite defensive competition. That was my point, we shouldn't stick to one year in such comparisions. The bigger sample, the better.

Let me address this first, since this might be a somewhat fundamental disagreement.

Question: What do we mean by peak? A 1 year sample? 2-3 year sample? or a 4-5+ year sample? To me, a peak is anywhere between 1-3 years, while a prime is 4-5+ years. To you, it sounds like a peak might be 4-5+ years (87-91 is 5 years... including 86 makes it 6). Which is perfectly okay! But we're discussing different things if I only look at 1-3 year samples and you only do 4-5 year samples.

If we take 5+ year samples, I'm more amenable to your suggestion that Prime Magic beats Prime Curry on offense (e.g including a comparison of 90/91 Magic offense vs 22 Curry offense)... But If we stick to samples of 3 years or less, I think the data supports Peak Curry when healthy over Peak Magic, at least to me.

As a reminder, this project is supposedly a '1 year' sample. That's not to say we can't ever look at years that are further out -- like you say, they provide more context and give us insight into different situations (e.g. healthy prime Curry without Durant in 2022 might give us more info about Curry's resilience). But the further out we go, the more cautious I am of taking averages (of impact metrics, team performance, opponents faced, etc.), because then we're more likely to be conflating prime comparisons with peak comparisons.

1. Scoring / Shooting: Curry >> Magic.

Maybe I didn't specify well what I meant by that, because I never argued that Curry is "just a better shooter" than Magic. He's significantly better, tiers ahead. Everybody knows that The question is how much of a value it has in comparison to Magic's advantages.

Haha, glad I figured you didn't really mean "just a better shooter" But yeah I'm glad you clarified the point. And agreed, the question then becomes who has more value.

It's true that Magic does have the passing advantage, like y'all suggest. But Curry's more of an outlier with shooting than Magic is with passing. Curry's still an all-star level passer in his own right -- I'd argue he's a better passer than 87 Magic's 21% 3 point shooting (though to be clear this comparison doesn't apply era context).

I think Magic was all-star level shooter in 1987. You just can't look at three point shooting from that era as an indicator of shooting ability. Magic didn't take threes, it's pointless to provide three point efficiency to draw conclusion of his shooting ability. He was already excellet FT shooter that later became all-time great one at very high volume. I remember one tracking numbers from Magic's prime games (can't find it now) suggesting that his midrange shooting efficiency is top tier as well, which resonates well with my impression from watching his games.

Good points! I agree Magic's 3 Point volume is low, and we need to apply league context. So 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

This offball skill also helps Curry close the creation gap. Curry's the GOAT off-ball movement creator, the GOAT perimeter gravity player, an all-time playmaker with hockey assists, an all-time screen setter among guards.

It certainly helps, but the question is - does it close the creation gap? I'm not sure we can say that certainly.

As much as I love subtle skills in basketball, I don't think Curry's screen setting ability is important in this discussion

Does Curry's superior screening single-handedly close the creation gap? Of course not But it's not about Curry's individual off-ball skills... it's about the culmination of his off-ball creation closing the creation gap far more than Magic can close the scoring 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?

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 constantly near the top of the league in guards' Screening Assists, at just under 1 per game. He's constantly near the top of the league in Secondary/Hockey Assists, at just over 1 per game. And 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]

Watch on YouTube

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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. For example 2017 Curry improved his teammates' scoring efficiency by almost twice as much as the next best playmaking star in the league in LeBron.

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 is Tier 1 All Time in terms of playmaking efficiency, and I think these advanced stats/film analysis support that the playmaking gap is smaller than the scoring gap, at least to me.
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/

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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 Impact: Curry > Magic

I also have problems comparing specific skills regarded separately from themselves. Magic's offense wasn't so impressive strictly because of his passing game. You have to combine all of his size, ball-handling, foul drawing ability, post game, agressiveness to get an idea why he's so special. The same thing applies to Curry actually - his shooting alone wouldn't turn him into GOAT-level offensive player either. I just think Magic's overall package proved to be more dangerous, while being extremely portable as well.

Magic's passing isn't strictly attached to him being ball-dominant though. As I said, Magic played with ball-dominant players in his career and it didn't stop him from giving his team massive boost. Magic was a capable off-ball player, of course not in Curry's league but his passing brings enormous value even without dominating the ball.

I also don't agree that passing doesn't fit well next to other creators. Having more creators is always extremely beneficial for a team. I don't think it's proven that two shooters are necessarily more impacful than two creators.

Good point that we have to look at the whole package, not just individual skills! To me, that's what I'm doing when I'm looking at the metrics. For example, if we look at their ScoreVal + PlayVal (to approximate combined scoring and playmaking value):
3-year Regular Season: 15-17 Curry's 4.2 >87-89 Magic's 3.3.
Peak Playoffs: 17 Playoff Curry's +4.3 > 87 Playoff Magic's +3.7.
And like I've mentioned, the other 1-3 year metrics favor Curry (see below or my Ballot on page 1). I also still feel confident about this after the film study, though we do seem to disagree here. Would you recommend a different way to look at their wholistic value?

Quite a lot of people recently believe that Curry's shooting is enough to put him ahead of any player, but I want strong evidences for that. Curry didn't anchor better offensive teams than Magic. He looks top tier in imapct metrics, but the little we have from Magic shows him just as spectacular.

A) The point that "Curry didn't anchor better offensive teams than Magic" isn't quite true. The 2017 Warriors were a better relative offensive team than any Magic-led offense ever. And they faced better playoff defenses than peak 1987 Magic. And remember: this world-beating offense is only present with Curry, and tracks far more closely with Curry's minutes than with any other star's. They were better than the 86 Celtics with just Curry on and all 3 stars off, while they were worse than the 2022 Cavs for the reverse situation. But you're right, in larger 5-year samples, Magic's non-peak Lakers are a better relative offense than Curry's non-peak Warriors.

B) When you say "Magic... [is] just as spectacular" by the data... are we sure that's true?

Pure Impact Metrics: Curry >= Magic, though we're missing some of Magic's data. Curry's playoff-only PIPM is higher, and this applies for a 3-year playoff sample (17-19 Curry's 8th all time > 15-17 Curry (with injury) 17th all time > 87-89 Magic's 18th). Curry's estimated prime WOWY is higher (1st all time > 5th all time). 85 Magic's 41-game sample regular season RAPM edges out 2017 Curry's regular season, though 88 Magic's 54-game sample regular season RAPM falls behind 2017 Curry's regular season, and many people argue Curry's 2016 regular season was better.

Box-metrics: Curry >> Magic. What about box models of plus minus data? Curry again has the advantage, and the stronger advantage in the playoffs. 2017 Curry's higher than 1987 Magic in postseason Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48. (I can't seem to convince people that PER is a bad stat... so if you can't beat em, join em: 2017 Curry's PER is higher than 1987 Magic's PER too). Magic never beat Curry's 2017 playoff numbers in Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48, or PER.

And remember, Curry is Top 2 All Time in regular season AuPM, postseason AuPM, on/off, ESPN’s RPM, and RAPOR +/-. I think your point that Magic's non-peak Prime years may surpass Curry statistically certainly has a case. But peak for peak, in 1/2/3 year samples, I'm not sure the data supports the idea that Magic is just as spectacular as Curry.

Anyway, that's why I have Curry > Magic on offense. And since the film study shows they're similar on defense, I think this explains why Curry has the overall higher impact metrics. Let me know where y'all disagree!

Excellent post.

I understand you are really high on portability. Are you concerned at all, that by many of the impact metrics we have, that Curry never approached his 16 impact when Durant joined?

RAPTOR, ESPN RPM, BPM, LEBRON, Total Wins (link might be broken) and other stuff consider 16 his best year by far.

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[capfan33]

Re: Doctor MJ and 70s Fan's discussion of positions and centers, I don't have too much to add, but I thought I'd mention a fun fact that might be relevant:

Thinking Basketball did a study that found Big Men overall have declined in plus minus value and have also lost resilience in the playoffs. There's a clear trend from the dead-ball era (97-04) to the start of the 3 point revolution (05-15) to today (16-20+), where Centers lose average value and drop more in the playoffs in each era. Guards and wings on the other hand have been increasing in both overall value and playoff resilience.

Now if we're to hypothesize...
On offense: people have obviously realized shooting is valuable, especially if paired with playmaking (and this combination tends to be found in non-bigs, though of course this is a trend and not an absolute rule).
On defense: there's an increasing strategy of aggressively picking on defensive liabilities in the playoffs, and more often than not, these players with liabilities are big men who can't guard the perimeter more often than the small player who can't guard the big when there's help defense (the mismatch that generates the open 3 is usually better offense than the mismatch that generates the post-up shot, though again this is a trend and not an absolute rule)
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4. Portability: Magic vs Curry

So some questions right off the bat

RE: magic vs lebron

Unrelated but i am unsure why you think magic is much more "scalable" than lebron here

If your definition of scalable is related to how much they dominate the ball then both of them are primarily ballhandlers with solid but not huge spacing/spot up shooting value, but lebron adds more value in the defensive end

That is the most portable of all skills even if sometiems portability is only talked about with regards to shooting and offense movement and some small but additive with thinghs like being a lob threat or a stronger cutting threath

Hi! Perhaps I should have clarified, but I meant to say I was talking about offensive scalability rather than overall scalability -- you're right that LeBron's defense would remain with better teammates, so I'm glad you pointed that out!

And I'm not married to the idea that Magic's must be much more scalable than LeBron. I do think there are times when LeBron is less scalable (2009/2010 for instance), but there are times when LeBron is slightly more scalable, and Magic's advantage isn't huge there. I just haven't looked into the data or the film specifically on Relative Shooting and off-ball play (vs LeBron) to reject 70sFan's argument that Magic was better in those two areas. Magic might not be, but I hadn't looked closely enough or seen enough counter-evidence yet to doubt 70sFan's summary.

RE: On-ball creators losing value next to other ones

You mention that if there are multiple isolation scorers their value will be reduced but that feels a bit like saying that a center loses offensive value ifhe shares the paint with other 2 centers. Is the truth but no decently built team should worry about having more than 3 iso scorers at most in their team construction.

A smart team will realize they dont need 4 on-ball creators for 1 ball and will look to have 2 main ballhandler options as a goal, a 3rd one when possible is nice to have but not a huge priority

We have seen how effective having more than one creator is. both when they share the court (stamina preservation, one being doubled) and by staggering them with bench units so having more than 1 creator or more than 1 scorer who can create his scoring is a great thingh to have.

Good points! And I'm glad you brought this up. To my eye, the data supports that we even start getting diminishing returns with just 2 on-ball / ball-dominant players. And there's absolutely teams that have 2 ball-dominant players.

Let's take LeBron and Wade as an example. From 2012-2014:
Team SRS without wade: 57-win pace. --> Team SRS with wade: 59-win pace by
Team relative Offense without wade: +8.5. --> Team relative Offense with wade: +7.9.
LeBron's Pts/75 without Wade: ~32.7 --> LeBron's Pts/75 with Wade: ~ 24.5 (by-eye estimate from looking at graph)
LeBron's rTS% without Wade: +8.8%. --> LeBron's rTS% with Wade: +7%
LeBron's APM also dips when playing with Wade and the Heat. [Sources: Thinking Basketball's Greatest Peaks LeBron video, and Backpicks Goat #3 LeBron article]
So: in all these metrics, the only one that improved by adding Wade to LeBron was the team's win, and they only improved by a 2-win pace.... Meanwhile, the offense got slightly worse, LeBron's scoring took a massive dip that remained in the playoffs, LeBron's efficiency actually got worse despite the lower volume, and LeBron's plus-minus estimates got worse. That's a pretty bad case of diminishing returns for a team that was touted as saying they'd win "Not one, not two not three..." but 8 championships! And it's not like it was all talk -- plenty of fans and media people thought the same thing.

The question is... why? Why are there these diminishing returns? Sure, credit to LeBron for being so good without Wade, but why weren't they world-beaters when they added Wade? Sure, Wade got older and more injury prone, but still... was he so old that the offense should get worse with him and LeBron on the court?

The answer that makes the most sense to me is my interpretation of scalability. This suggests that some skillsets retain more value next to better teammates. To be clear, creation is more scalable than iso scoring, but off-ball skills, spacing, shooting, and defense tend to be most scalable. We can find similar cases of diminishing returns in the statistics when we look at other ball-dominant players and ball-dominant scorers being paired up.

RE: magic losing more value next to better teammates

You think magic and curry have comparable defense so is clear you are talking about offensive value

Does the fact magic led the greatest offensive dinasty of all time not make us question this? He has stronger offenses when playing with talented teanmates than curry does. If magic with talent has better offenses than curry with talent is curry really the better ceiling raiser here?

. Ah, here we come back to the sample size issue. Because Magic actually didn't lead the greatest offensive team of all time, in either 1-year or 2-year samples. Curry's best regular season offense beats any regular season offense Magic ever led, even relative to league. And Curry's best postseason offense beats any postseason offense Magic ever led, even relative to league. Where Magic's teams catch up to Curry and pass them (in relative offense) is once we stop looking at 1/2/3 year peaks and start looking at 4/5/6 year primes.

For those larger samples, if you want to blame Curry, fine. If you're swayed by the contextual arguments I made (A B and C in one of my replies to 70sFan), also fine. But for peaks, Curry led a greater relative offense than Magic, which I think supports the portability point.

You have mebtioned how much better warriors were with curry alone than with durant alone or how the warriors with curry are almost as godd as the warriors with curry and durant.

Is not that the evidence always used to diminish lebron portability? That offenses with him and wade were not much better off than with lebron alone? Why does curry not get the same treatment here? (I wouldnt agree but for consistency sake)

. Love this question. Seriously! I appreciate the call for consistency. Let me explain how I see it, and let me know if you think I'm being inconsistent. Here's how I think about it:

Curry and LeBron's teams are both great with just them on the court as the lone star, especially on offense. Cool, so I'm guessing these LeBron and Curry guys are pretty good!

When LeBron's fellow stars come on, many of LeBron's individual metrics drop quite a bit. The scoring and efficiency both drop, with a particularly large scoring drop. There's also a drop in wholistic metrics (e.g. APM).
When Curry's fellow stars come on, Curry's individual metrics are far less clear. The scoring drops, but it's over 40% less of a drop than LeBron, and the efficiency actually improves with the smaller volume. There's also less of a clear drop in wholistic metrics.
Hmm... this Curry guy seems to fit better next to good teammates than LeBron's. At least, his individual stats suggest that. What about team performance?

When LeBron's fellow stars come on, his team improves by 2 wins. Wait... 2 wins?? That's it?!?
When Curry's fellow stars come on, his team improves from +10.81 (still better than the 86 Boston Celtics) to +17 (significantly% better than the 1996 Bulls!)
That's crazy! I didn't think any team would even get close to +15 in my lifetime, much less +17. How do they keep getting so good?

So yeah, since Curry's teams are only good when he's on the court, I tend to think Curry's the "special sauce" that makes it work (which is why I give him such credit for his team's performances). But we still see far fewer diminishing returns next to great teammates compared to other stars in his era, I tend to credit him for his portability too. Let me know if this seems inconsistent!

RE: lebron scoring volume vs magic

So lebron and jordan score way more than magic or nash, yet when we look at offensive impact metrics and team offense results is actually not clear at all the former are the clearly better offensive players

While is a good indicator i dont thin raw scoring + creation production is a 1:1 indicator of offensive impact. Not all creation is captured by assists nor is all creation worth the same

. So true!

RE: TLDR

i dont think we can really say magic is less portable with offensive talent or less of a ceiling raiser than curry based only on theory when we have saw both play with talented offensive teammates and magic did it better relative to era

The whole analysis seems to prioritize theory over data to a strong degree when the player who created better offenses when playing with talent is assumed by default to be the worse ceiling raiser amd less scalable players.

I also find it a bit odd (not so much for magic case as lebron one) that defense is rarely considered as part of ceiking raising but that is a different discussion

I think I've explained why I disagree. It's not just theory -- there's plenty of evidence to support it. As to whether you're convinced by the evidence, that's up to you. Let me know if you disagree with anything!

There was another thread where this was explored a bit more in-depth. I don't feel like finding the exact numbers right now, but essentially Lebron+Wade's 2012 and 2013 regular season numbers and 2012 postseason +- numbers were fantastic, but their 2013 playoff and 2014 numbers were pretty bad. And moreover, Lebron's individual +- didn't change appreciably but Wade's fell off a cliff. So Wade's injury was in fact the reason their combined numbers look bad it wasn't due to scalability/portability. Even with the fact that Wade is obviously not an ideal fit next to Lebron. I think their 2011 numbers were also pretty solid, outside the finals ofc.

[falcolombardi]

On defense: there's an increasing strategy of aggressively picking on defensive liabilities in the playoffs, and more often than not, these players with liabilities are big men who can't guard the perimeter more often than the small player who can't guard the big when there's help defense (the mismatch that generates the open 3 is usually better offense than the mismatch that generates the post-up shot, though again this is a trend and not an absolute rule)
____________

4. Portability: Magic vs Curry

So some questions right off the bat

RE: magic vs lebron

Unrelated but i am unsure why you think magic is much more "scalable" than lebron here

RE: On-ball creators losing value next to other ones


We have seen how effective having more than one creator is. both when they share the court (stamina preservation, one being doubled) and by staggering them with bench units so having more than 1 creator or more than 1 scorer who can create his scoring is a great thingh to have.

Good points! And I'm glad you brought this up. To my eye, the data supports that we even start getting diminishing returns with just 2 on-ball / ball-dominant players. And there's absolutely teams that have 2 ball-dominant players.

Let's take LeBron and Wade as an example. From 2012-2014:
Team SRS without wade: 57-win pace. --> Team SRS with wade: 59-win pace by
Team relative Offense without wade: +8.5. --> Team relative Offense with wade: +7.9.
LeBron's Pts/75 without Wade: ~32.7 --> LeBron's Pts/75 with Wade: ~ 24.5 (by-eye estimate from looking at graph)
LeBron's rTS% without Wade: +8.8%. --> LeBron's rTS% with Wade: +7%

The answer that makes the most sense to me is my interpretation of scalability.

RE: magic losing more value next to better teammates

. Ah, here we come back to the sample size issue. Because Magic actually didn't lead the greatest offensive team of all time, in either 1-year or 2-year samples. Curry's best regular season offense beats any regular season offense Magic ever led, even relative to league. And Curry's best postseason offense beats any postseason offense Magic ever led, even relative to league.

But for peaks, Curry led a greater relative offense than Magic, which I think supports the portability point.

.

When LeBron's fellow stars come on, many of LeBron's individual metrics drop quite a bit. The scoring and efficiency both drop, with a particularly large scoring drop. There's also a drop in wholistic metrics (e.g. APM).
When Curry's fellow stars come on, Curry's individual metrics are far less clear. The scoring drops, but it's over 40% less of a drop than LeBron, and the efficiency actually improves with the smaller volume. There's also less of a clear drop in wholistic metrics.
Hmm... this Curry guy seems to fit better next to good teammates than LeBron's.

When LeBron's fellow stars come on, his team improves by 2 wins. Wait... 2 wins?? That's it?!?
When Curry's fellow stars come on, his team improves from +10.81 (still better than the 86 Boston Celtics) to +17 (significantly% better than the 1996 Bulls!)

So yeah, since Curry's teams are only good when he's on the court, I tend to think Curry's the "special sauce" that makes it work

RE: lebron scoring volume vs magic

. So true!

RE: TLDR

I think I've explained why I disagree. It's not just theory -- there's plenty of evidence to support it. As to whether you're convinced by the evidence, that's up to you. Let me know if you disagree with anything!

RE: Big men defense

Do you consider perimeter defense for centers a bigger weakness than a perimeter player who gets picked on for being a bad individual defender, is too small or messes the rotations off ball? Cause a lot of offensive perimeter guys have one or many of those limiations (lillard, nash and westbrook come to mind respectively) and teams still played them

A center who is bad on the perimeter but solid in the paint (the more important part of a center job) can be "hid" by playing a scheme that avoids him switching on guards and teams that go with multiple big (like, lets say boston, milwaukee) manage incresible defense by going big even when guys like lopez and horford are not "perimeter centers" un defense by any definition

RE:ON-BALL overlap

While it is theorically true, you are taking a case like 2012-2014 heat, a team where halfway through that run wade started to decline with injuries, as evidence

If you look at their offense 2012-2013 before the pkayoffs vs after that, the splits are night and day

You are taking a worse case scenario for on ball overlap here because lebron already can create elite offense with shooters/finishers and without another star so the margin to improve is smaller and then combining him with an athletic slasher/cutter without the athletism (wade post injuries) who is a weaker spot up shooter so he can be ignored off ball and is not a big positive on ball either

If wade played with curry instead i am sure you would see a similar split post injury for wade/curry, is the equivalent of durant playing with a broken hand that doesnt let him jumpshot with the defense knowing it and blaming curry/durant fit for the bad results

RE magic vs curry results

I would point out magic didnt have anyone on the offensive level of durant (worthty is great but not quite as much) in 87, and kareem offense in 87 is good but not the kind of monster he was before that you could rely on. In sone ways he was offensively a bit like klay in that he played a smaller than the main star but still importan offensive role and could go off in a whim still

But even if we consider 87 and 2017 rosters comparable (they are close-ish regardless) curry has exactly 1 run at that level and didnt come even close to repeat it in 2018 or in the non durant years, and his 2016-2017 regular season offense was not ever close to being repeated in 2015,2018, 2019, 2021 or 2022

This gets into a philosophical question here, magic has more ultra elite offenses in both playoffs and reg season than curry so if we think a greater scope look and use multiple years to get a idea of what the "real" magic or curry offensive impact was, magic peak cones ahead

If we are more strict with the question and look at the peak years in a vacuum (which is also perfectly valid and can be done when there is somethingh unusual about that year that "explains" the outlier result) curry comes ahead

So my question is....what do you think was curry doing difgerently in 2017 than every other year even with durant where he didnt come close to those results?

Was the 2017 result really because curry was worth like 5 points more than in 2018? Or is it more likely that the whole team clicked and peaked together in a way that us hard to replicate (kinda like the 2001 lakers) and their real level is more like what they showed in 18 and 19?.

Cause here is the think, we have seen players like nash or lebron lead even better offense results than 17 warriors without as much ceiling raising praise

If in the same era lebron who some consider a weaker and less portable offensive player than magic can lead a 16-17 cavs offense which was slightly more dominant than the peak curry 17-18 warriors which had more talent .... are we sure magic couldnt replicate sonethingh close to it?

I wouldnt think lebron in 16-17 was multiple points more valuable offensively than 2018 lebron in a vacuum, but the talent and fit of the team was such that the result was much greater and o honestly see sonethingh sinilar with the 17 warriors vs other durant versions of the team and with 16 curry vs other durant less versions of regular season curry

Curry was not a less talented shooter or less smart player in 2021 than 2016 but he never replicated that regular season impact and outlier result

[Djoker]

Kobe's peak is a bit underrated on this forum. IIRC his +/- metrics are quite strong in 2009 including in the playoffs. I'm not sure when I'm going to vote him in but it's soon. Qualitatively Kobe is a greater player than what the stats show because he's just so well rounded on offense.

1. 1986 Larry Bird (1984 Bird, 1987 Bird)

Bird over Magic wasn't an easy choice for me because Magic was the better offensive engine because of his ability to handle the ball and actually lead the offense whereas Bird was more of a secondary playmaker although I do think Bird had just as good of a vision in terms of finding impossible angles as Magic (the two passing vision GOAT's IMO) and Bird elevated offenses almost as much and he never had a player of Kareem's caliber.

At the end Bird was a definitely positive/borderline great defender at his peak compared to peak Magic who was plain average on that end. Neither is a big man but at 6'9'' Bird could and did provide post defense so that side of the ball raises his overall impact above Magic's in my eyes.

2. 1987 Magic Johnson (1988 Magic, 1989 Magic, 1990 Magic)

I may be willing to vote for Curry somewhere but I'm not quite convinced thus far. The thing that most gives me pause about Curry is that when a player fits so seamlessly into a system, one wonders how he would do without it. That and the fact that he doesn't bring a whole lot to the game when his shot isn't falling (his gravity isn't insignificant but still..) compared to someone like Magic who can still dish out for 15 assists and get his team a blowout win while having a terrible shooting night. And people sometimes forget that 1987 Magic was giving you mid-20's in PPG on blistering efficiency too so Curry's scoring edge isn't that large. I honestly think the two of them are both on the same tier (GOAT-tier offensive players behind only MJ IMO and neutral defenders) but I think Magic's offensive impact is a tad less dependent on defensive quality/own shooting performance.

3. 2017 Stephen Curry (2015 Curry, 2016 Curry, 2018 Curry, 2019 Curry, 2022 Curry)

[Lou Fan]

1. 17 Curry

This is a guy I think should already be in over multiple guys already voted so I'm casting my vote for him here. Curry pairs outlier plus minus impact with possibly the most portable play style of any superstar to have ever played the game. High volume scoring on GOAT efficiency combined with all time playmaking from a combination of his GOAT gravity with underrated passing. Then there's all the intangibles that I love with Curry in the unselfishness and leadership that I think can be a real needle mover when you're (hypothetically) deciding which player will give me the best chance to win a championship in this team context. And that's where Curry really shines for me because when I'm thinking about all the different scenarios where I have to pick one guy or another I almost always come to the conclusion that I want Curry and that's why he would be in my top 5 for a 1 season peak.

2. 04 Garnett

A lot of the same things that are great about Curry are great about Garnett but the thing that's so special about 04 Garnett is that he put up the greatest season on record from a plus minus perspective on a team context that did not suit him at all. On the 04 Wolves KG was doing young LeBron levels of floor raising which is not at all how he's optimized but he's so great he did it anyway. I think you should never judge a person in his worst situation (or his best) but even looking at KG in a bad situation he comes out looking like the best season in the databall era. Now I'm quite that high on him for a couple of reasons but I do absolutely think he has a top 5 or even top 3 case. Curry and KG are my clear top 2 here.

3. 86 Bird

I feel less good about this one than the other two but his ability do everything on offense and scale up his workload while taking basically no dips in efficiency in scoring or playmaking is what puts him here.

[Lou Fan]

Maybe I'm not that brilliant

In reality, I do consider it - that's why Mikan didn't fight for top 3 spot to me. I don't think there was any point in league's history when NBA was "weak" though, it was always by far the best basketball league in the world.

I think everyone considers the league quality here between Mikan and, say, Kareem, but, nobody considers Kareem's league depth/strength vs. the drastically deeper NBA of today.

I think the reasons for this are threefold:
1. Recency Bias (MASSIVE here)
2. Confirmation Bias
3. Nostalgia

George Mikan peaked in 1950 or so. Kareem peaked about 50 years ago, Mikan, about 70 years ago. BOTH are ancient history.

Once again, how much can a player dominate when they're facing the all the greatest from all around the globe, relative to only Americans?





To wit: Jokic is already overdue in this polling.

Deepest, toughest NBA ever. 5 or 6 of the top 10 players wouldn't even be playing if this was 1977 or 1991.

Didn't you vote Wilt number 1?

[ceoofkobefans]

Erving just doesn’t compare to those 2 offensively which really makes the difference.

Offensively, peak Erving is pretty close to Magic (3-3) & beats Bird (5-1)...

75-76 Erving
RS: 11.7 OWS | 8.1 OBPM | 116 ORtg
PS: 2.8 OWS | 11.8 OBPM | 128 ORtg

86-87 Magic
RS: 12.1 OWS | 7.5 OBPM | 124 ORtg
PS: 2.6 OWS | 7.3 OBPM | 129 ORtg

85-85 Bird
RS: 9.6 OWS | 6.6 OBPM | 117 ORtg
PS: 2.7 OWS | 7.2 OBPM | 117 ORtg

Defensively, peak Erving is about even with Bird (2-3-1) & beats Magic (5-1)....

75-76 Erving
RS: 6.0 DWS | 2.5 DBPM | 97 DRtg
PS: 0.8 DWS | 2.2 DBPM | 103 DRtg

85-86 Bird
RS: 6.2 DWS | 2.1 DBPM | 99 DRtg
PS: 1.5 DWS | 2.6 DBPM | 103 DRtg

86-87 Magic
RS: 3.8 DWS | 1.3 DBPM | 106 DRtg
PS: 1.1 DWS | 2.1 DBPM | 107 DRtg

Add it all up & Dr. J is 8-4 vs Magic and 7-4-1 vs Bird.

Box metrics aren’t very accurate ESPECIALLY for defense lol Magic has lead some of the best offenses ever and Julius’ best offense lead in the ABA was a +1.5 and it was a +.5 in 1976 lmao. It’s very clear on film Dr J doesn’t touch Magic or bird on O even if he’s better on D the gap isn’t big enough

[falcolombardi]

I am considering curry,magic, bird and garnett for the next vote

Robinson and walton are options too although even at his peak year i am handicapping walton for missed games and fragility

Robinson is a great choice for peak too although i am leaning on giving garnett the tiebreaker over him as his offense results in playoffs as a offense engine (2004) or co star (2008) seem a bit better than robinson (95 and 99) and i see both as all time defenders

Curry and magic i lean magic for a bit more impressive team offense results, bird is arguably a superior defender to both but on tape i dont notice a big enough gap and his team offense consistency impresses me a bit less than magic

My current leaning may honestly be 1-magic, 2-garnett, 3-curry/bird 4-robinson?

I am also looking into wade too for top 3 as well as west oscar and west

Right now i see it this way

Tier 1- garnett, magic, bird, curry
Tier 2- robinson, walton,wade, west, oscar, julius, kobe

[70sFan]

I just ask you to be consistent - do not put Wilt in the highest tier if you think he played against weak competition.

I don't think Wilt played against relatively weak competition. All his best years came in a league with 9 teams, and no ABA. That's probably not a weak league.

Can you imagine a drawing pool of the entire US putting all their best players onto only 9 teams (not 23 or 30, as in later eras)? How strong would the competition be, then?

WIlt's % of games played against HOFers, his % of games against ATG defenses in the playoffs, and his % of games against ATG teams speaks to the fact that he had brutal competition.

You don't get my point - Wilt played against players that were 99% Americans, with no international pool. Sure, smaller league helps but it doesn't change your point about 25% of the league, all-stars and top 10 players being international.

HoF doesn't taken into account scalability acroess eras, only accomplishments within era. I truly don't understand why you don't see that your points are contradicting.

Either you should strongly consider talent pool size and have Wilt lower than you do, or you should admit that league strength isn't nearly as important to you.

[70sFan]

Let me address this first, since this might be a somewhat fundamental disagreement.

Question: What do we mean by peak? A 1 year sample? 2-3 year sample? or a 4-5+ year sample? To me, a peak is anywhere between 1-3 years, while a prime is 4-5+ years. To you, it sounds like a peak might be 4-5+ years (87-91 is 5 years... including 86 makes it 6). Which is perfectly okay! But we're discussing different things if I only look at 1-3 year samples and you only do 4-5 year samples.

If we take 5+ year samples, I'm more amenable to your suggestion that Prime Magic beats Prime Curry on offense (e.g including a comparison of 90/91 Magic offense vs 22 Curry offense)... But If we stick to samples of 3 years or less, I think the data supports Peak Curry when healthy over Peak Magic, at least to me.

As a reminder, this project is supposedly a '1 year' sample. That's not to say we can't ever look at years that are further out -- like you say, they provide more context and give us insight into different situations (e.g. healthy prime Curry without Durant in 2022 might give us more info about Curry's resilience). But the further out we go, the more cautious I am of taking averages (of impact metrics, team performance, opponents faced, etc.), because then we're more likely to be conflating prime comparisons with peak comparisons.

Usually, I use 3 years as "peak" sample, unless we have very specific reasons to exclude some seasons (injuries etc.). I know that this project is about 1 year sample, but I can't evaluate players without taking into account the rest of their top seasons. If I learnt one thing after all these years of discussion, it's that we shouldn't focus too much on outlier seasons (both in good and bad way). I think we should consider as big of a sample as possible before we finish the evaluation.

In Curry's case, it's tough because he struggled with injuries a lot of times. I try not to put too much weight into 2016 postseason, as we all know he was injured. Instead, I look at 2017-19, with 2015/2022 as a bonus. For Magic, I mostly look at 1987-90, with 1991 as a bonus.

I think it depends on how you view this project. If it's strictly "who had the better season", then I guess my approach is wrong. I try to do something different here - I want to look at the player at his best and try to quantify (even if not strictly) his abilities and impact. In this case, I think looking at Curry's 2017 postseason as the indicator of his real value might be misleading, considering how he played in other years (note that he was usually brilliant in postseason, but he never reached such level again).

1. Scoring / Shooting: Curry >> Magic.
Good points! I agree Magic's 3 Point volume is low, and we need to apply league context. So 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.

I'm not going to argue with this, Curry is clearly a better scorer than Magic. Johnson is underrated as a scorer compared to most volume shooters, but Curry is the rare exception that his scoring has immense value even outside of his efficiency.

I'm glad you showed the difference in their scoring profile though, it's refreshing at times to look at the numbers you already know again

2. Creation: Magic > Curry, but Curry closes much of the Gap
Does Curry's superior screening single-handedly close the creation gap? Of course not But it's not about Curry's individual off-ball skills... it's about the culmination of his off-ball creation closing the creation gap far more than Magic can close the scoring gap.

Yeah, just to be clear - I didn't want to say that Curry's off-ball creation doesn't matter here, only that his screen setting isn't that important in this discussion

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?

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 constantly near the top of the league in guards' Screening Assists, at just under 1 per game. He's constantly near the top of the league in Secondary/Hockey Assists, at just over 1 per game. And 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.

Thanks for the numbers, such a shame that we don't have similar ones for Magic. I'd guess that Johnson is the kind of player that would thrive by these criteria, he turned limited roleplayers into gold.

I won't deny, in recent years I got a huge appreciation for Curry's off-ball game. It's really a game changer in a lot of games.

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).

That's really cool data and these numbers are absurd I know that not all teams defended Curry in similar way (Cavs were extremely agressive at doubling Curry), but it's still ridiculous number. I'm pretty sure Magic wasn't doubled nearly as often, so it should be taken in consideration.

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]

Watch on YouTube

[/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. For example 2017 Curry improved his teammates' scoring efficiency by almost twice as much as the next best playmaking star in the league in LeBron.

Not trying to take away any credit from Curry, but Cavs strategy was ridiculous

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 is Tier 1 All Time in terms of playmaking efficiency, and I think these advanced stats/film analysis support that the playmaking gap is smaller than the scoring gap, at least to me.
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

I'm not sure about top 5, but he's definitely a very strong candidate. The only ones I'm confident taking over him are Magic, Nash and LeBron. I'd consider others like Oscar, but without more film studies I'd give Curry the edge.

3. Overall Impact: Curry > Magic
Good point that we have to look at the whole package, not just individual skills! To me, that's what I'm doing when I'm looking at the metrics. For example, if we look at their ScoreVal + PlayVal (to approximate combined scoring and playmaking value):
3-year Regular Season: 15-17 Curry's 4.2 >87-89 Magic's 3.3.
Peak Playoffs: 17 Playoff Curry's +4.3 > 87 Playoff Magic's +3.7.
And like I've mentioned, the other 1-3 year metrics favor Curry (see below or my Ballot on page 1). I also still feel confident about this after the film study, though we do seem to disagree here. Would you recommend a different way to look at their wholistic value?

That's interesting idea, I decided to play with the numbers:

2015 Curry: 4.0 in RS, 3.0 in PS
2016 Curry: 5.2 in RS, 2.1 in PS
2017 Curry: 3.3 in RS, 4.3 in PS
2018 Curry: 3.8 in RS, 3.3 in PS
2019 Curry: 2.5 in RS, 2.4 in PS

Average: 3.8 in RS, 3.0 in PS

1987 Magic: 3.4 in RS, 3.7 in PS
1988 Magic: 2.6 in RS, 3.4 in PS
1989 Magic: 3.9 in RS, 3.2 in PS
1990 Magic: 3.8 in RS, 4.0 in PS
1991 Magic: 3.5 in RS, 3.3 in PS

Average: 3.5 in RS, 3.5 in PS

As you can see, Curry has the edge in RS, but Magic's advantage is quite notable in the PS. You compared 3-year RS samples, but only 1-year playoffs, which gave the impression that Curry has the advantage in both categories. The truth is that this is by far the best Curry postseason run (without counting 2022, as I don't have numbers for it) and every other Curry's run is lower than Magic's top 3 runs. It's also important to note that Curry's 2017 RS is notably worse than Magic's best ones.

Maybe it has something to do with injuries, but Curry didn't have any notable ones in 2015 or 2019 and he still didn't look on prime Magic level.

I think that some people think that without the injury, Curry would have had 2017 level run in 2016, so they give him the benefit of doubts, but I'm not sure we can say that for sure.

A) The point that "Curry didn't anchor better offensive teams than Magic" isn't quite true. The 2017 Warriors were a better relative offensive team than any Magic-led offense ever. And they faced better playoff defenses than peak 1987 Magic. And remember: this world-beating offense is only present with Curry, and tracks far more closely with Curry's minutes than with any other star's. They were better than the 86 Celtics with just Curry on and all 3 stars off, while they were worse than the 2022 Cavs for the reverse situation. But you're right, in larger 5-year samples, Magic's non-peak Lakers are a better relative offense than Curry's non-peak Warriors.

Sure, but as I said 2017 playoffs looks like an extreme outlier in Curry's career. Magic has been consistently amazing in the playoffs. If you don't have any concerns about extremely small sample and gigantic talent he played with in that season, then I understand that you view him as clearly better. I have more concerns with that though.

B) When you say "Magic... [is] just as spectacular" by the data... are we sure that's true?

Pure Impact Metrics: Curry >= Magic, though we're missing some of Magic's data. Curry's playoff-only PIPM is higher, and this applies for a 3-year playoff sample (17-19 Curry's 8th all time > 15-17 Curry (with injury) 17th all time > 87-89 Magic's 18th). Curry's estimated prime WOWY is higher (1st all time > 5th all time). 85 Magic's 41-game sample regular season RAPM edges out 2017 Curry's regular season, though 88 Magic's 54-game sample regular season RAPM falls behind 2017 Curry's regular season, and many people argue Curry's 2016 regular season was better.

I think WOWY is way too noisy to compare exact values. Curry and Magic both looks like the GOAT-level impact players from WOWY studies and I don't think we can conclude much more from that.

I don't think we can compare RAPM across seasons, isn't that incorrect way to use it?

Box-metrics: Curry >> Magic. What about box models of plus minus data? Curry again has the advantage, and the stronger advantage in the playoffs. 2017 Curry's higher than 1987 Magic in postseason Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48. (I can't seem to convince people that PER is a bad stat... so if you can't beat em, join em: 2017 Curry's PER is higher than 1987 Magic's PER too). Magic never beat Curry's 2017 playoff numbers in Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48, or PER.

And remember, Curry is Top 2 All Time in regular season AuPM, postseason AuPM, on/off, ESPN’s RPM, and RAPOR +/-. I think your point that Magic's non-peak Prime years may surpass Curry statistically certainly has a case. But peak for peak, in 1/2/3 year samples, I'm not sure the data supports the idea that Magic is just as spectacular as Curry.

Yeah, I guess I still have the problem with how massive outlier Curry's 2017 postseason is compared to the other surrounding years (even excluding 2016).

Anyway, that's why I have Curry > Magic on offense. And since the film study shows they're similar on defense, I think this explains why Curry has the overall higher impact metrics. Let me know where y'all disagree!

I want to thank you for this very interesting conversation, they are far more important than the results of voting. I am still on Magic's side here, but you gave me another look at Curry's seasons in retrospect and I found more appreciation for what he did.

[70sFan]

4. Portability: Magic vs Curry
I tend to agree that Magic might be more scalable than LeBron, but I want to be careful here. I think we may be using the same words to talk about different things.

(My definition of) Value: How much they help the team win (either their team or some 'average team)
(My definition of) Resilience: How that value changes with better opponents
(My definition of) Scalability/Portability: How that value changes with better teammates [i.e. how value changes for ceiling raising > floor raising]
(Perhaps your definition of?) Scalability/Portability: How that value changes with different teammates

I prefer to try to rate how much a player helps a team win a championship. Other considerations are absolutely valid, this is just what I personally care about. You'll probably face good opponents and probably need good teammates to win a championship, so this context (which I'm calling resilience and scalability respectively) is important to consider, rather than just flat value.

I don't have a clear definition for it, but I think I'm somewhere in between these two. I will use your definition for the rest of this discussion.

It's possible in your definition of scalability/portability (e.g. how players value changes fitting on any other team), Magic fairs just as well as Curry. But as teammates get better, certain skills are going to slightly decrease in value.

For example, if we have lots of ball-dominant iso scorer on a team, there won't be as much time or opportunities for these ball dominant scorers vs if each iso scorer had their own offense they could lead alone. Someone's scoring value is going to have to decrease. But not all skills decrease as much as ball-dominant iso scoring when surrounded by better teammates. This skill analysis is how I tend to evaluate portability/scalability.

So what skills retain the most value with good teammates?
Scalability tier: Spacing ~ Finishing ~ Passing > (non spacing/passing) Creation > Iso Scoring
Scalability tier (other skills): Off ball > on ball. Defense is also very scalable (though off-ball defense > on-ball defense).
*Qualifier: this is not to say high portability skills are inherently more valuable on a good team... it's just that they lose less value when in a ceiling-raising role vs a floor-raising role. For example, it's possible that spacing is worth +0.25 on a bad team and+ 0.5 on a good team vs iso scoring which might be +1 on a bad team and +.75 on a good team.

That's interesting, do we have any evidences that passing is less scalable than spacing, or is it strictly philosophical approach? I don't question it with bad intentions, I find philosophical view very important in such discussions.

I've argued Curry's skills lose less value next to star teammates than Magic's do. Thinking Basketball's given a similar argument. That doesn't necessarily mean Curry's better (for example, Curry could go from +6.0 on a bad team to +6.25 on a good one, while Magic could go from 6.5 on a bad team to +6.26 on a good one)... but it's at least important to consider.

4a. So who's more Scalable? In my definition of scalability, I'd argue Curry > Magic. I'm not sure using your definition, but I'd be open to arguments favoring Magic.

Most Scalable Skill 1: Spacing. Curry >> Magic in absolute terms, and relative to era.
I shouldn't need to the defend this much, haha, but you can see my previous post for details if you'd like.

Most Scalable Skill 2: Finishing. I'd argue Curry > Magic.

Why do you think Curry is a better finisher?

To me, the ability to finish a play on offense relies a lot on scoring (preferably scoring that benefits from other teammates / other creators).

I think Curry's scoring advantage speaks for itself haha Curry's an astronomically superior 3 point shooter (including in finishing roles like off-ball relocation or catch and shoot 3s). He's also a superior cutter and scorer at the rim: in Thinking Basketball's Greatest Peaks episode on Curry (see 18:50), Curry has a good argument as a Tier 1/Tier 2 rim scorer all time among point guards, which is better than Magic. These are better finishing skills.

Where did you find any data about Magic's inside finishing efficiency?

In sum: You're right that Magic might be underrated off-ball and show good portability with his clear passing advantage, but Curry as a huge advantage in Spacing, a sizable advantage Finishing and off-bal, and a clear advantage in (non passing/spacing) creation. To me, if scalability is fitting next to better and better star teammates, Curry wins out.

Though if we take your definition instead, Magic may have an argument.

I think breaking down skillset is very important, but we should also look at the actual results throughout players careers. As I said, Magic played with a lot of different types of players and he usually played with elite teams. He didn't lose his value in post-centric offense around Kareem, even though some could argue that he didn't fit that well. He thrived in fast paced teams as a non-ball dominant playmaker. He thrived next to finishers in slow paced HC teams as well.

I think Magic had such an absurdly high BBIQ that he could not only find a place in any system, but thrive within it without diminishing results. I don't know, from what I've seen Magic's offensive game can be stacked up to any player in NBA history in terms of scalability.

Addressing a few of your Scalability Counters:
Counter 1: LeBron as a case study.

I mean, we have seen another player who isn't close to Curry shooting-wise surpassing Curry's value in the very same era. LeBron isn't really a better shooter than Magic and a lot of advanatges he has over Steph are identical to the ones Magic possesses.

Good point! LeBron does beat Curry in raw value. But then again, Jordan beats Magic. Just because LeBron beats Curry doesn't mean Curry isn't over other Magic at his peak in either raw value or scalability.

Good point.

Your point about LeBron being stylistically similar to Magic is interesting. It's true that there's some similarities as more heliocentric (or photo-heliocentric) stars and with their on-ball passing. And it's possible that Magic may the scalability edge over LeBron.

But there's problems with taking the LeBron comparison as reason for Magic being over Curry from raw value or scalability. From Raw Value: LeBron's scoring advantage over Magic is massive, and the Defensive advantage over Magic is astronomical, so LeBron's raw value beats Magic too. From scalability: LeBron is clearly less scalable than Curry (not to say he's worse... just that he's less scalable), so the fact that Magic might be LeBron in scalability doesn't mean he's necessarily over Curry.

It's true, of course I only meant offensive side of the court here, because James crushes both Curry and Magic on defensive end.

My point was more about James having more absolute value than Curry, while being clearly inferior in scalability to Magic (on offensive end, to me at least). I think Magic was slightly more impactful offensive player than James in absolute terms as well, but I don't want to open this bag of worms now...

Counter 2: Who cares about Scalability, what about their actual value?
I've argued Curry's skills lose less value next to star teammates than Magic's do. Thinking Basketball's given a similar argument, and while you've pointed out those rankings are arbitrary, they're based on a similar skill analysis to the one above.

You're right that this doesn't necessarily mean Curry's better on good teams (for example, Curry could go from +6.0 on a bad team to +6.25 on a good one, while Magic could go from 6.5 on a bad team to +6.26 on a good one)... but this analysis suggests Curry at least loses less value next to better teammates than Magic, which is at least 1 contextual factor to consider. For an analysis on what their actual value is (not how it changes with teammates), we'd have to go back to my previous post for a more wholistic impact assessment.

If you prefer a different definition for scalability (e.g. value floor raising > ceiling raising), that would be valid. Or if you don't care about how value changes with different teammates, and just care about who has more value in the context they had, that would also be valid! But those would be different discussions, at least from the one I was having.

My problem with Ben's scalability rate is that we have very little situations to prove it right or wrong. Ben assumes (in most cases rightfully) that some types of players are more scalable than the other ones. In most cases, I think I'd agree with him, but we're talking about gigantic outliers here. As I said, someone like Magic had enormous BBIQ. I get that Ben might not love on-ball creators, but Magic was so smart that I can't imagine him creating diminishing results on any team. Some may question it, but I don't think Magic would struggle even next to someone like LeBron.

I understand if you disagree with me though, it's not an easy topic.

[SickMother]

Box metrics aren’t very accurate ESPECIALLY for defense lol Magic has lead some of the best offenses ever and Julius’ best offense lead in the ABA was a +1.5 and it was a +.5 in 1976 lmao. It’s very clear on film Dr J doesn’t touch Magic or bird on O even if he’s better on D the gap isn’t big enough

What metrics do you have to compare their defense which are more accurate? I am always open to changing my mind if persuasive enough information is presented.

Right, Magic lead some of the best offenses ever with HOFers like Kareem & Worthy by his side. The 2nd best player on the 1976 Nets was who? Kim Hughes? Al Skinner? Brian Taylor?

Dr. J was carrying a much heavier load than either Magic or Bird had to on all time stacked dynasty squads with multiple HOF teammates.

[70sFan]

5. Opponents Faced: Magic vs Curry

I think I touched most of your points here, so I won't make my reply too long if you don't mind

6. Time Machine Argument
I do indeed! And that's perfectly valid, to each their own. Perhaps I should take a closer look at Mikan's metrics/film to make sure I'm not missing something...

I can post some Mikan games footage if you wish, though not a lot exists to be honest.

In some ways, I sort of find this project similar to the MVP discussion. Everyone has slightly different criteria! What I appreciate about this discussion is that most people are willing to discuss their criteria and consider alternatives, quite unlike the media's MVP discussion.

Indeed, as long as we can discuss in a friendly manner here and share our views I'm happy I'm well aware that my criteria are not shared by most posters here, so I don't mind finding out that many people disagree with me. You already changed my mind in some instances and I saw some people being convinced by my Kareem argumentation.

On a different note, I hope I haven't been harping on Curry too much. When you start voting for the same player for numerous ballots in a row, you're faced with a conundrum... do you just copy-paste the same arguments without further discussion? Try to offer additional evidence/discuss more with people in the hopes of convincing some? Or just give up, assume people can't change their minds on said player, and focus on discussing the other people? I've tried to go the 2nd route (I tend to hope everyone here is willing to consider a different perspective, me included!) -- I just hope I didn't do this at the cost of too much discussion of other players like Russell/Duncan, etc.

Your post bring a lot of value to this discussion and Curry will be voted in very soon. I'm waiting for you focusing on your next choices in future threads

[70sFan]

Oh I was trying to make clear that I understood that college would have helped a great deal, but let's be real here:

When was the last time a white player got drafted first?

Answer: Andrea Bargnani. And the effect of Bargnani, along with Darko, was to severely damage both white prospects and European prospects going forward...which had everything to do with why Luka slid to the #3 slot despite largely playing like an American helio and dominating Europe at an early age.

When you add in that Jokic was not visibly athletic, and excelled at the game in such an unusual way, I think you're fooling yourself if you think him playing in college was going to be the thing that made him be a Shaq/Duncan level prospect. More realistically, nothing was going to convince NBA people of this other than him doing it in the NBA.

And to the extent we're agreeing - because you're saying this stuff - just remember the central point here is this:

If all these other guys were able to be acknowledged as a #1 level prospect, then that means they weren't that different from the scout's wet dream of the time was, which means they weren't all utterly unique snowflakes.

Jokic is almost certainly the least likely prospect to become an MVP in NBA history, and that's not just some fluke thing. It had to do with how different his outlier gifts are compared to the outlier gifts of these other players.

I think we went too far from my point. I didn't try to argue that Jokic's talent were less unique or subtle for scouts, I just meant that all ATG players bring some capabilities to the table that were never seen before. That's all, I don't think we should focus too much on this point.

I didn't say he originated it. I've been pretty explicit about the roots in the 1920s that first let to this style of play.

The point is that no NBA team wanted to play this way in 2014 when Jokic was drafted. This wasn't a thing where they asked him to play like Bill Walton. It was a thing where he just started doing his thing, and the coach adapted the scheme around Jokic. I'd hope the coach was thinking about Walton (would be great if he was thinking about Dehnert too, but who knows), but none of that changes the fact that this was something the Nuggets did in reaction to having Jokic on their team playing and impressing.

I should take the opportunity though to pick your brain on the '70s 70sFan.

I'm certainly aware that there were centers back then more known for their passing than centers came to be known in the '80s & '90s, but I've always had the impression that philosophically Jack Ramsay's Blazer offense was pretty distinct from the rest. I'm getting the impression now that you would not agree with this.

What are you thoughts?

All teams played a bit differently during the 1970s, but some teams really prioritized high post passing offense, Ramsay wasn't the first to do that. Dick Motta's Bulls run a lot of actions in similar way. They focused on off-ball cutting and running around screens, while their center (either Ray or Boerwinkle) run the offense in the high post. Late 1970s Kings teams also tried their version of that. Some other teams didn't abuse it to the same degree, but they used it in a very big part of their offense:

- Bullets with Unseld,
- Suns with Adams,
- Celtics with Cowens.

Of course, there was also one pretty well-known team that did it before the 1970s - 1967-68 Philadelphia 76ers. They relied more on isolation scoring from their perimeter stars, but it was also an offense run through the post from playmaking-first center.

The scale of Shaq's talent maybe as much of an outlier or more than Jokic, but he did what he did by taking the basic stuff that was done before, and doing it with a combination of power and agility that was unmatched, rather than doing something that people weren't looking for him to do.

That's not true, the things Shaq did on basketball court were not "the basic stuff that was done before". We've never seen a player playing Shaq's style and dominating the game, even in a fraction of what Shaq did.

And the same would have been true if he were born in earlier eras. He immediately stuck everybody as "Fitting the mold, but possibly with more talent than ever before", and that's a very different thing than Jokic.

He was seen as someone who broke the rules, not someone who fit the mold. Nobody wanted their stars to be massive guys with no shooting touch.

Re: Divac & Gasol Brothers, Jokic different by "shooting and scoring repertoire". So, I have 2 thoughts here.

1. Do you not see a difference in Jokic's speed and creativity in action selection? Were Jokic simply this good of a shooter and scorer, teams may build around him, but they wouldn't build around him in the style that they have. It's a style built around his decision making more so than his scoring capacity, and to me it seemed to just bubble up whenever Jokic was on the court right from the start of his career. When a guy makes decisions so quickly once he gets the ball, his presence cannot help but shape your style.

Yes, Jokic is much quicker thinker on the court than Divac or Gasol Brothers. Tom Boerwinkle was also a quicker thinker than them, but he had no scoring game which limited his role significantly.

Do I compare Jokic to Boerwinkle as a decision maker? No, not at all, but my point is that teams wouldn't build offenses around Jokic without his scoring game, which is so much better than these three Euro bigs.

2. However, even I were to grant comparable rapid/ingenious playmaking capacity with these European bigs, it then raises the question:

So why didn't they develop into a scheme that looks like the Jokic Nuggets around them? Pau Gasol was the focal point of the Grizzlies. Those Grizzlies didn't look like these Nuggets. Should they have? If they should have, then what we're talking about here with Jokic is him being a spearhead for the (re)emergence type of big that - however much you and I might point to past examples of it - was not being viewed as a viable option until Jokic came in and did his thing.

I think Jokic is such an outlier in terms of talent that he forced it, this is where we agree. I think that someone like Divac would be used much differently in modern game though, today's game is much more focused on off-ball movement and centers passing than the 1990s in general. Players like Sabonis or Adebayo are shaped much differently than they'd be in the 1990s. Divac is probably the closest center I've seen in the last 25 years to Jokic, in terms of his ability to create and think on the fly. He still wouldn't reach Jokic's heights within Nuggets system, but I could see it work.

My friend, I don't think I focused too much on those words, because everything you're doing here is still refraining from taking a stand. Humility when projecting from one era to the next is a virtue, but actually refusing to project from one era to the next when you're in a situation where it's an obvious thing to try to do, is effectively punting on a subject you're not always punting on, which leads us to ask why, when doing ranking, you're not applying everything you bring to the table. Is it because you seeing being proactively wrong as something of a great analytic sin while being passively wrong is not? Is it because you love the styles played in earlier eras and are not interested in contributing to the perception of their obsolescence?

Then there's the whole that most folks here are not going to rank George Mikan like a candidate for #1 or anywhere close to it. How can that be justified without some use of era projection? I realize many will point to the idea of increasing talent pool, but I think realistically the reason why we're so sure of the increasing talent pool, is because of the superstar talent we've witnessed come of age in the eras after, and the certainty that these players would get the better of Mikan if they played in the same league. If this can be done with Mikan? Why shouldn't it be done as a matter of course?

Again, you're bringing plenty to the table 70sFan and I love reading your posts. But even if you bringing 90% of your game to the table on a thing is more than 100% for most of us, you're still not bringing your whole bag.

I never refused to project, I just said that it shouldn't be the end of discussion. I think we didn't understand each other in this part... Maybe it's because my English isn't nearly as good as I thought it is

To your initial questions here:

Leaving aside the hyperbole of the "scrub" comment, what constitutes "evidence" for you in this project? What are you relying upon when you have to compare guys who never played against each other?

Re: only a projection of our philosophical view on the game. Let me tweak that:

It's only a projection of our schema of what we know and how we think about the game.

My last question to you would be: What makes you say your approach here is something different?

Of course everything we do here is our projection. I think looking at the work certain player did in his era requires less of that than time machine argument though.

[DraymondGold]

Not too much to add on your comments about Peak length or scoring -- everything sounds reasonable there!

2. Creation: Magic > Curry, but Curry closes much of the Gap
Does Curry's superior screening single-handedly close the creation gap? Of course not But it's not about Curry's individual off-ball skills... it's about the culmination of his off-ball creation closing the creation gap far more than Magic can close the scoring gap.

Yeah, just to be clear - I didn't want to say that Curry's off-ball creation doesn't matter here, only that his screen setting isn't that important in this discussion

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?

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 constantly near the top of the league in guards' Screening Assists, at just under 1 per game. He's constantly near the top of the league in Secondary/Hockey Assists, at just over 1 per game. And 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.

Thanks for the numbers, such a shame that we don't have similar ones for Magic. I'd guess that Johnson is the kind of player that would thrive by these criteria, he turned limited roleplayers into gold.

I won't deny, in recent years I got a huge appreciation for Curry's off-ball game. It's really a game changer in a lot of games.

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).

That's really cool data and these numbers are absurd I know that not all teams defended Curry in similar way (Cavs were extremely agressive at doubling Curry), but it's still ridiculous number. I'm pretty sure Magic wasn't doubled nearly as often, so it should be taken in consideration.

Agreed, I'd love to get these numbers for other players like Magic. And I'm glad you like my film data! I agree, the Cavs were extremely aggressive at doubling Curry, probably more so than other teams. But those are also the series that people quote when saying KD > Curry in those years, so it's worth considering context at least so we can better understand the public narratives. I can't help but think people quoting the finals stats are missing this subtler context. To me, the impact still remains when you double him -- it just turns into off-ball creation instead of scoring, which is far harder to pick up with the "untrained eye-test" or with traditional box stats. That's part of the reason why I think the plus-minus numbers for Curry are capturing something real.

It's also worth noting, Curry's traditional box-score numbers when you don't double him shoot up. Curry faced as much single-coverage in the 2022 Finals as he did against any other major team (at least to my eye/memory), and despite the help defense being all-decade level and despite going against the supposed DPOY in man coverage, his scoring shot up and suddenly the public/media are saying "hey this Curry guy's impact is pretty big"

To me, this the fundamental conundrum opposing defenses face against Curry. Put your best man defender on him and double him, and Klay/KD/Wiggins/Poole are getting easy poorly-contested/open shots against worse man defenders. Don't double him, and Curry goes on massive scoring tears that break the game.

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]

Watch on YouTube

[/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. For example 2017 Curry improved his teammates' scoring efficiency by almost twice as much as the next best playmaking star in the league in LeBron.

Not trying to take away any credit from Curry, but Cavs strategy was ridiculous

Just to clarify (sorry if my post was ambiguous!), Curry improved his teammates' scoring efficiency by almost twice as much as the next best playmaking star throughout the entire 2017 regular season. So this applies even when Curry's not facing the Cavs' somewhat-ridiculous level of defensive attention. Just to make it more explicit, here were the numbers I meant (same stats I showed after homecourtloss' question):

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]

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 is Tier 1 All Time in terms of playmaking efficiency, and I think these advanced stats/film analysis support that the playmaking gap is smaller than the scoring gap, at least to me.
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

I'm not sure about top 5, but he's definitely a very strong candidate. The only ones I'm confident taking over him are Magic, Nash and LeBron. I'd consider others like Oscar, but without more film studies I'd give Curry the edge.

Yep, he might not be consensus top 5 (Magic, Nash, and LeBron are the usual suspects at the top), but I definitely think he should be in at least in contention for top 5.

3. Overall Impact: Curry > Magic
Good point that we have to look at the whole package, not just individual skills! To me, that's what I'm doing when I'm looking at the metrics. For example, if we look at their ScoreVal + PlayVal (to approximate combined scoring and playmaking value):
3-year Regular Season: 15-17 Curry's 4.2 >87-89 Magic's 3.3.
Peak Playoffs: 17 Playoff Curry's +4.3 > 87 Playoff Magic's +3.7.
And like I've mentioned, the other 1-3 year metrics favor Curry (see below or my Ballot on page 1). I also still feel confident about this after the film study, though we do seem to disagree here. Would you recommend a different way to look at their wholistic value?

That's interesting idea, I decided to play with the numbers:

2015 Curry: 4.0 in RS, 3.0 in PS
2016 Curry: 5.2 in RS, 2.1 in PS
2017 Curry: 3.3 in RS, 4.3 in PS
2018 Curry: 3.8 in RS, 3.3 in PS
2019 Curry: 2.5 in RS, 2.4 in PS

Average: 3.8 in RS, 3.0 in PS

1987 Magic: 3.4 in RS, 3.7 in PS
1988 Magic: 2.6 in RS, 3.4 in PS
1989 Magic: 3.9 in RS, 3.2 in PS
1990 Magic: 3.8 in RS, 4.0 in PS
1991 Magic: 3.5 in RS, 3.3 in PS

Average: 3.5 in RS, 3.5 in PS

As you can see, Curry has the edge in RS, but Magic's advantage is quite notable in the PS. You compared 3-year RS samples, but only 1-year playoffs, which gave the impression that Curry has the advantage in both categories. The truth is that this is by far the best Curry postseason run (without counting 2022, as I don't have numbers for it) and every other Curry's run is lower than Magic's top 3 runs. It's also important to note that Curry's 2017 RS is notably worse than Magic's best ones.

Maybe it has something to do with injuries, but Curry didn't have any notable ones in 2015 or 2019 and he still didn't look on prime Magic level.

I think that some people think that without the injury, Curry would have had 2017 level run in 2016, so they give him the benefit of doubts, but I'm not sure we can say that for sure.

Glad you brought this up! And you're right, I only included 1-year sample for playoffs.

Injuries: Here's the problem of course, which you mention: in both surrounding years to his playoff peak, Curry was injured enough to miss 6 games! So his playoff numbers will seem lower if he isn't healthy by the time he's playing (2016), if he doesn't have time to get back up to playoff speed / playoff rhythm (both 2016 and 2018), and if he doesn't get to boost his numbers in the weaker first/second round (both 2016 and 2018).

Injury affects on numbers: KD's on/off data in the 2018 playoffs look a lot closer to Curry's, but there's a problem -- KD gets a huge boost from the first round matchup, which Curry didn't get. The reverse is in 2019, where KD misses the harder matchup while Curry gets the harder matchup. Looking at just games where they both played, we get back to the normal pattern of Curry clearly outperforming KD. I wonder whether something similar might be happening here, where most people get to boost their scoring/playmaking in the first round, while 2018 Curry only faced harder teams. I wonder if something

Defensive attention: it's also worth noting that PlayVal uses box-score stats, so it wouldn't capture the off-ball creation we discussed previously. Who knows how much playmaking value isn't captured by PlayVal due to it being off-ball (for either Curry or Magic), but that may be a factor.

Year sample: Here's the problem with 3-year playoff samples for Curry. Any way you slice it, either 33% or 67% of his 3-year "peak playoffs" are limited by injury. Most players true "peaks" are somewhere around 1-4 years, with the amount of decline on either side varying. Going by CORP (a consistent estimate for goodness, though obviously not perfect), here's a few examples
Type 1) Long Peak and prime not far off: Bill Russell has a consistent 3-year peak with almost no drop off on either side.
Type 2) Long Peak but less good prime: Jordan has a consistent 3-year peak and a larger (but still not massive) drop off on either side.
Type 3) Medium peak less good prime: Duncan has a consistent 2-year peak with a large drop off on either side.
Type 4) Short peak less good prime: Shaq had an inconsistent 2 year peak (where 1 year was better than the other), with a large drop off on either side.
You might disagree with the example players or the stat, but you get what I'm going for. Under your argument, Magic falls into type 1: long peak and his prime is fairly close. Which is great!

But what do we do with shorter 2-3 year peaks that have a drop-off? This group didn't dock Shaq at all for having a short peak -- he was voted in third! Nobody used Shaq's 1999 playoffs or his 2002 playoffs to say that 2000 wasn't as good. This group also didn't dock Duncan for having a short 2-year peak and a clear drop off after. He was voted in over Hakeem!

Where does that leave us with Curry? What if he falls into Type 3 or Type 4? Well, if he had a 2-3 year peak with a drop off after, then ~2/3 of his best years were limited by a playoff injury! So if we take a 3-year playoff-only average to estimate 2017, then we're docking him in a year that he's healthy for the fact that he wasn't healthy in other years. If we do a 5-year playoff-only average for 2017, we're not only docking him for injuries when he was healthy in 2017, but we're also docking him for his worse prime years vs someone who had a better prime (but not necessarily a better peak).

Now I understand if people are concerned that 2017 Curry's a health risk, even if he stayed healthy. I uncertainty if there's concern for projecting what a healthy 2016 playoffs or a healthy 2018 playoffs might look like. But it's not like he never reached 2017-playoff impact levels ever... he reached them when healthy in 2016 and at times in 2015. And it's not like there isn't uncertainty for other players... every other player we're considering today has far fewer impact measures (and performs worse than Curry in the 1/2-year samples we do have). That's at least how I see it, but like I said, I can understand people's concerns.

B) When you say "Magic... [is] just as spectacular" by the data... are we sure that's true?

Pure Impact Metrics: Curry >= Magic, though we're missing some of Magic's data. Curry's playoff-only PIPM is higher, and this applies for a 3-year playoff sample (17-19 Curry's 8th all time > 15-17 Curry (with injury) 17th all time > 87-89 Magic's 18th). Curry's estimated prime WOWY is higher (1st all time > 5th all time). 85 Magic's 41-game sample regular season RAPM edges out 2017 Curry's regular season, though 88 Magic's 54-game sample regular season RAPM falls behind 2017 Curry's regular season, and many people argue Curry's 2016 regular season was better.

I think WOWY is way too noisy to compare exact values. Curry and Magic both looks like the GOAT-level impact players from WOWY studies and I don't think we can conclude much more from that.

I don't think we can compare RAPM across seasons, isn't that incorrect way to use it?

Re: WOWY, it's definitely noisy, but it is stabilized in that I used full 10-year samples for Curry and Magic.

For RAPM, good question! We can look at how dominant people were relative to their league, which are the numbers I gave (and have been using for these playoffs). With these in-era numbers, both Magic (in limited sample) and Curry outperform basically everyone else people are considering. Or, we can normalize across history, to get some sort of cross-era time machine numbers, which we can do until 1998, but we can't do for pre-97 Historic RAPM data (at least as I understand Squared2020's excellent RAPM research -- happy to be corrected here if I'm wrong!).

Box-metrics: Curry >> Magic. What about box models of plus minus data? Curry again has the advantage, and the stronger advantage in the playoffs. 2017 Curry's higher than 1987 Magic in postseason Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48. (I can't seem to convince people that PER is a bad stat... so if you can't beat em, join em: 2017 Curry's PER is higher than 1987 Magic's PER too). Magic never beat Curry's 2017 playoff numbers in Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48, or PER.

And remember, Curry is Top 2 All Time in regular season AuPM, postseason AuPM, on/off, ESPN’s RPM, and RAPOR +/-. I think your point that Magic's non-peak Prime years may surpass Curry statistically certainly has a case. But peak for peak, in 1/2/3 year samples, I'm not sure the data supports the idea that Magic is just as spectacular as Curry.

Yeah, I guess I still have the problem with how massive outlier Curry's 2017 postseason is compared to the other surrounding years (even excluding 2016).

Anyway, that's why I have Curry > Magic on offense. And since the film study shows they're similar on defense, I think this explains why Curry has the overall higher impact metrics. Let me know where y'all disagree!

I want to thank you for this very interesting conversation, they are far more important than the results of voting. I am still on Magic's side here, but you gave me another look at Curry's seasons in retrospect and I found more appreciation for what he did.

I've enjoyed it too! Your work on Kareem definitely gave me more appreciation for him, so thanks for the great discussions!

[MyUniBroDavis]

Not too much to add on your comments about Peak length or scoring -- everything sounds reasonable there!

2. Creation: Magic > Curry, but Curry closes much of the Gap
Does Curry's superior screening single-handedly close the creation gap? Of course not But it's not about Curry's individual off-ball skills... it's about the culmination of his off-ball creation closing the creation gap far more than Magic can close the scoring gap.

Yeah, just to be clear - I didn't want to say that Curry's off-ball creation doesn't matter here, only that his screen setting isn't that important in this discussion

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?

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 constantly near the top of the league in guards' Screening Assists, at just under 1 per game. He's constantly near the top of the league in Secondary/Hockey Assists, at just over 1 per game. And 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.

Thanks for the numbers, such a shame that we don't have similar ones for Magic. I'd guess that Johnson is the kind of player that would thrive by these criteria, he turned limited roleplayers into gold.

I won't deny, in recent years I got a huge appreciation for Curry's off-ball game. It's really a game changer in a lot of games.

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).

That's really cool data and these numbers are absurd I know that not all teams defended Curry in similar way (Cavs were extremely agressive at doubling Curry), but it's still ridiculous number. I'm pretty sure Magic wasn't doubled nearly as often, so it should be taken in consideration.

Agreed, I'd love to get these numbers for other players like Magic. And I'm glad you like my film data! I agree, the Cavs were extremely aggressive at doubling Curry, probably more so than other teams. But those are also the series that people quote when saying KD > Curry in those years, so it's worth considering context at least so we can better understand the public narratives. I can't help but think people quoting the finals stats are missing this subtler context. To me, the impact still remains when you double him -- it just turns into off-ball creation instead of scoring, which is far harder to pick up with the "untrained eye-test" or with traditional box stats. That's part of the reason why I think the plus-minus numbers for Curry are capturing something real.

It's also worth noting, Curry's traditional box-score numbers when you don't double him shoot up. Curry faced as much single-coverage in the 2022 Finals as he did against any other major team (at least to my eye/memory), and despite the help defense being all-decade level and despite going against the supposed DPOY in man coverage, his scoring shot up and suddenly the public/media are saying "hey this Curry guy's impact is pretty big"

To me, this the fundamental conundrum opposing defenses face against Curry. Put your best man defender on him and double him, and Klay/KD/Wiggins/Poole are getting easy poorly-contested/open shots against worse man defenders. Don't double him, and Curry goes on massive scoring tears that break the game.

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]

Watch on YouTube

[/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. For example 2017 Curry improved his teammates' scoring efficiency by almost twice as much as the next best playmaking star in the league in LeBron.

Not trying to take away any credit from Curry, but Cavs strategy was ridiculous

Just to clarify (sorry if my post was ambiguous!), Curry improved his teammates' scoring efficiency by almost twice as much as the next best playmaking star throughout the entire 2017 regular season. So this applies even when Curry's not facing the Cavs' somewhat-ridiculous level of defensive attention. Just to make it more explicit, here were the numbers I meant (same stats I showed after homecourtloss' question):

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]

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 is Tier 1 All Time in terms of playmaking efficiency, and I think these advanced stats/film analysis support that the playmaking gap is smaller than the scoring gap, at least to me.
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

I'm not sure about top 5, but he's definitely a very strong candidate. The only ones I'm confident taking over him are Magic, Nash and LeBron. I'd consider others like Oscar, but without more film studies I'd give Curry the edge.

Yep, he might not be consensus top 5 (Magic, Nash, and LeBron are the usual suspects at the top), but I definitely think he should be in at least in contention for top 5.

3. Overall Impact: Curry > Magic
Good point that we have to look at the whole package, not just individual skills! To me, that's what I'm doing when I'm looking at the metrics. For example, if we look at their ScoreVal + PlayVal (to approximate combined scoring and playmaking value):
3-year Regular Season: 15-17 Curry's 4.2 >87-89 Magic's 3.3.
Peak Playoffs: 17 Playoff Curry's +4.3 > 87 Playoff Magic's +3.7.
And like I've mentioned, the other 1-3 year metrics favor Curry (see below or my Ballot on page 1). I also still feel confident about this after the film study, though we do seem to disagree here. Would you recommend a different way to look at their wholistic value?

That's interesting idea, I decided to play with the numbers:

2015 Curry: 4.0 in RS, 3.0 in PS
2016 Curry: 5.2 in RS, 2.1 in PS
2017 Curry: 3.3 in RS, 4.3 in PS
2018 Curry: 3.8 in RS, 3.3 in PS
2019 Curry: 2.5 in RS, 2.4 in PS

Average: 3.8 in RS, 3.0 in PS

1987 Magic: 3.4 in RS, 3.7 in PS
1988 Magic: 2.6 in RS, 3.4 in PS
1989 Magic: 3.9 in RS, 3.2 in PS
1990 Magic: 3.8 in RS, 4.0 in PS
1991 Magic: 3.5 in RS, 3.3 in PS

Average: 3.5 in RS, 3.5 in PS

As you can see, Curry has the edge in RS, but Magic's advantage is quite notable in the PS. You compared 3-year RS samples, but only 1-year playoffs, which gave the impression that Curry has the advantage in both categories. The truth is that this is by far the best Curry postseason run (without counting 2022, as I don't have numbers for it) and every other Curry's run is lower than Magic's top 3 runs. It's also important to note that Curry's 2017 RS is notably worse than Magic's best ones.

Maybe it has something to do with injuries, but Curry didn't have any notable ones in 2015 or 2019 and he still didn't look on prime Magic level.

I think that some people think that without the injury, Curry would have had 2017 level run in 2016, so they give him the benefit of doubts, but I'm not sure we can say that for sure.

Glad you brought this up! And you're right, I only included 1-year sample for playoffs.

Injuries: Here's the problem of course, which you mention: in both surrounding years to his playoff peak, Curry was injured enough to miss 6 games! So his playoff numbers will seem lower if he isn't healthy by the time he's playing (2016), if he doesn't have time to get back up to playoff speed / playoff rhythm (both 2016 and 2018), and if he doesn't get to boost his numbers in the weaker first/second round (both 2016 and 2018).

Injury affects on numbers: KD's on/off data in the 2018 playoffs look a lot closer to Curry's, but there's a problem -- KD gets a huge boost from the first round matchup, which Curry didn't get. The reverse is in 2019, where KD misses the harder matchup while Curry gets the harder matchup. Looking at just games where they both played, we get back to the normal pattern of Curry clearly outperforming KD. I wonder whether something similar might be happening here, where most people get to boost their scoring/playmaking in the first round, while 2018 Curry only faced harder teams. I wonder if something

Defensive attention: it's also worth noting that PlayVal uses box-score stats, so it wouldn't capture the off-ball creation we discussed previously. Who knows how much playmaking value isn't captured by PlayVal due to it being off-ball (for either Curry or Magic), but that may be a factor.

Year sample: Here's the problem with 3-year playoff samples for Curry. Any way you slice it, either 33% or 67% of his 3-year "peak playoffs" are limited by injury. Most players true "peaks" are somewhere around 1-4 years, with the amount of decline on either side varying. Going by CORP (a consistent estimate for goodness, though obviously not perfect), here's a few examples
Type 1) Long Peak and prime not far off: Bill Russell has a consistent 3-year peak with almost no drop off on either side.
Type 2) Long Peak but less good prime: Jordan has a consistent 3-year peak and a larger (but still not massive) drop off on either side.
Type 3) Medium peak less good prime: Duncan has a consistent 2-year peak with a large drop off on either side.
Type 4) Short peak less good prime: Shaq had an inconsistent 2 year peak (where 1 year was better than the other), with a large drop off on either side.
You might disagree with the example players or the stat, but you get what I'm going for. Under your argument, Magic falls into type 1: long peak and his prime is fairly close. Which is great!

But what do we do with shorter 2-3 year peaks that have a drop-off? This group didn't dock Shaq at all for having a short peak -- he was voted in third! Nobody used Shaq's 1999 playoffs or his 2002 playoffs to say that 2000 wasn't as good. This group also didn't dock Duncan for having a short 2-year peak and a clear drop off after. He was voted in over Hakeem!

Where does that leave us with Curry? What if he falls into Type 3 or Type 4? Well, if he had a 2-3 year peak with a drop off after, then ~2/3 of his best years were limited by a playoff injury! So if we take a 3-year playoff-only average to estimate 2017, then we're docking him in a year that he's healthy for the fact that he wasn't healthy in other years. If we do a 5-year playoff-only average for 2017, we're not only docking him for injuries when he was healthy in 2017, but we're also docking him for his worse prime years vs someone who had a better prime (but not necessarily a better peak).

Now I understand if people are concerned that 2017 Curry's a health risk, even if he stayed healthy. I uncertainty if there's concern for projecting what a healthy 2016 playoffs or a healthy 2018 playoffs might look like. But it's not like he never reached 2017-playoff impact levels ever... he reached them when healthy in 2016 and at times in 2015. And it's not like there isn't uncertainty for other players... every other player we're considering today has far fewer impact measures (and performs worse than Curry in the 1/2-year samples we do have). That's at least how I see it, but like I said, I can understand people's concerns.

B) When you say "Magic... [is] just as spectacular" by the data... are we sure that's true?

Pure Impact Metrics: Curry >= Magic, though we're missing some of Magic's data. Curry's playoff-only PIPM is higher, and this applies for a 3-year playoff sample (17-19 Curry's 8th all time > 15-17 Curry (with injury) 17th all time > 87-89 Magic's 18th). Curry's estimated prime WOWY is higher (1st all time > 5th all time). 85 Magic's 41-game sample regular season RAPM edges out 2017 Curry's regular season, though 88 Magic's 54-game sample regular season RAPM falls behind 2017 Curry's regular season, and many people argue Curry's 2016 regular season was better.

I think WOWY is way too noisy to compare exact values. Curry and Magic both looks like the GOAT-level impact players from WOWY studies and I don't think we can conclude much more from that.

I don't think we can compare RAPM across seasons, isn't that incorrect way to use it?

Re: WOWY, it's definitely noisy, but it is stabilized in that I used full 10-year samples for Curry and Magic.

For RAPM, good question! We can look at how dominant people were relative to their league, which are the numbers I gave (and have been using for these playoffs). With these in-era numbers, both Magic (in limited sample) and Curry outperform basically everyone else people are considering. Or, we can normalize across history, to get some sort of cross-era time machine numbers, which we can do until 1998, but we can't do for pre-97 Historic RAPM data (at least as I understand Squared2020's excellent RAPM research -- happy to be corrected here if I'm wrong!).

Box-metrics: Curry >> Magic. What about box models of plus minus data? Curry again has the advantage, and the stronger advantage in the playoffs. 2017 Curry's higher than 1987 Magic in postseason Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48. (I can't seem to convince people that PER is a bad stat... so if you can't beat em, join em: 2017 Curry's PER is higher than 1987 Magic's PER too). Magic never beat Curry's 2017 playoff numbers in Backpicks BPM, BR’s Postseason BPM, and WS/48, or PER.

And remember, Curry is Top 2 All Time in regular season AuPM, postseason AuPM, on/off, ESPN’s RPM, and RAPOR +/-. I think your point that Magic's non-peak Prime years may surpass Curry statistically certainly has a case. But peak for peak, in 1/2/3 year samples, I'm not sure the data supports the idea that Magic is just as spectacular as Curry.

Yeah, I guess I still have the problem with how massive outlier Curry's 2017 postseason is compared to the other surrounding years (even excluding 2016).

Anyway, that's why I have Curry > Magic on offense. And since the film study shows they're similar on defense, I think this explains why Curry has the overall higher impact metrics. Let me know where y'all disagree!

I want to thank you for this very interesting conversation, they are far more important than the results of voting. I am still on Magic's side here, but you gave me another look at Curry's seasons in retrospect and I found more appreciation for what he did.

I've enjoyed it too! Your work on Kareem definitely gave me more appreciation for him, so thanks for the great discussions!

I forgot but you mentioned you use the gitlab data for RAPM right? I’ve heard the Gitlab data in general is really weird, I think it was either eminence or ceiling raiser that mentioned it

This doesn’t change the argument for Curry because his whole season looks similarly impressive in other samples, but just worth mentioning

[jalengreen]

A ton of interesting discussion on this thread, I enjoyed reading it all!

1. '04 Kevin Garnett

One of the greatest defenders in NBA history enjoying his peak impact season dragging an unremarkable Timberwolves squad to a 58 win season. On top his historic defensive impact, his offensive impact is advanced as he's able to space the floor to an extent that other all-time great defenders didn't come close to doing and his playmaking ability makes him the type of player that can fit in virtually any team environment - be it the 2004 Timberwolves or 2008 Celtics.

2. '87 Magic Johnson

I view Magic was the greatest playmaker in league history and one of the greatest offensive engines ever. The offenses he led as a Laker speaks for themselves - they performed at a high level in the playoffs against strong defensive competition and did this over the span of multiple seasons. I do look at more than just one season in regards to a peak project like this, especially for the postseason as a sample size of playing against four different teams isn't SUPER meaningful to me - how your game is affected in general in postseason basketball is important, so postseason performances by a similar version of that player in different years is also relevant to me. This increases my confidence in Magic's GOAT level offensive impact in both the regular season and postseason. And I've never been one to be concerned with the scalability of guys like Magic and LeBron to the extent that others are. I believe they've both been incredibly successful in varying roles and/or environments so I try not to put philosophical preferences over what the results have actually shown.

3. '51 George Mikan
('50 George Mikan)

In terms of relative impact in era at their best, Mikan's arguably up there with anyone. And in most cases I don't really care about strength of competition faced (I think the modern era is the most talented by far but I don't place much weight on that in these comparisons) but I do view Mikan as an extreme exception. I debated whether to put him on by ballot at this point. I think it's a fair spot for him, though, and I've always been impressed by his advanced offensive skillset (while also being a dominant defensive presence) in particular when watching the rare footage available from his playing days. It's certainly possible that I'll change my mind and end up putting someone else in (Robinson, Curry, Erving, Bird, etc all have arguments)

[capfan33]

Year sample: Here's the problem with 3-year playoff samples for Curry. Any way you slice it, either 33% or 67% of his 3-year "peak playoffs" are limited by injury. Most players true "peaks" are somewhere around 1-4 years, with the amount of decline on either side varying. Going by CORP (a consistent estimate for goodness, though obviously not perfect), here's a few examples
Type 1) Long Peak and prime not far off: Bill Russell has a consistent 3-year peak with almost no drop off on either side.
Type 2) Long Peak but less good prime: Jordan has a consistent 3-year peak and a larger (but still not massive) drop off on either side.
Type 3) Medium peak less good prime: Duncan has a consistent 2-year peak with a large drop off on either side.
Type 4) Short peak less good prime: Shaq had an inconsistent 2 year peak (where 1 year was better than the other), with a large drop off on either side.
You might disagree with the example players or the stat, but you get what I'm going for. Under your argument, Magic falls into type 1: long peak and his prime is fairly close. Which is great!

But what do we do with shorter 2-3 year peaks that have a drop-off? This group didn't dock Shaq at all for having a short peak -- he was voted in third! Nobody used Shaq's 1999 playoffs or his 2002 playoffs to say that 2000 wasn't as good. This group also didn't dock Duncan for having a short 2-year peak and a clear drop off after. He was voted in over Hakeem!

Where does that leave us with Curry? What if he falls into Type 3 or Type 4? Well, if he had a 2-3 year peak with a drop off after, then ~2/3 of his best years were limited by a playoff injury! So if we take a 3-year playoff-only average to estimate 2017, then we're docking him in a year that he's healthy for the fact that he wasn't healthy in other years. If we do a 5-year playoff-only average for 2017, we're not only docking him for injuries when he was healthy in 2017, but we're also docking him for his worse prime years vs someone who had a better prime (but not necessarily a better peak).

Now I understand if people are concerned that 2017 Curry's a health risk, even if he stayed healthy. I uncertainty if there's concern for projecting what a healthy 2016 playoffs or a healthy 2018 playoffs might look like. But it's not like he never reached 2017-playoff impact levels ever... he reached them when healthy in 2016 and at times in 2015. And it's not like there isn't uncertainty for other players... every other player we're considering today has far fewer impact measures (and performs worse than Curry in the 1/2-year samples we do have). That's at least how I see it, but like I said, I can understand people's concerns.

In this case specifically, and also perhaps Duncan's case, theirs good reason to believe their 1 year peaks are actual legitimate outliers in their career. For Shaq, it was very evident that he stepped up his defensive effort while maintaining his insane offense and took conditioning/training more seriously in 2001 moreso than any other year. He genuinely put his best foot forward and actually gave his all which he readily admitted he didn't do for most of his career. And as such he put together by far the most complete year of his career. From both film and what has been written about 2001 Shaq, everything points to it being a legitimate outlier season for him.

[iggymcfrack]

Mikan is my 1st choice, because I don't see any other player reaching his level of dominance. We have to adjust that for significantly weaker competition, but still - I don't care about time machine argument. He did everything he could against the best competition he faced. Although some might view him as some kind of slow, lumbering oaf who relied heavily on his size, I don't view him that way from what I've seen. He was a very smart passer with soft shooting touch and he seemed to have a very strong defensive impact (although this one likely wouldn't translate to the same degree as his offense).

]You don't think 27.3/13.7/7.9 in 79 games last year (including playoffs) on ridiculous efficiency (all time leader in PER for a single season) is a massive outlier historically? How often has that happened?

How many players have put up a slash line of 27.0/12.3/7.8 (all time lead in PER for two consecutive seasons) for two straight seasons, including the playoffs, on 60.6 eFG%? How often has 27/12/8 happened for two straight years?

Why are you so focused on stats lines? PER might be the worst all-in-one metric available.

Giannis himself posted 29.4/11.7/5.8 for two straight seasons (including playoffs) on 58.2 eFG% and basically as good PER as Jokic. Just the fact that we have one player in the same period posting similar stats shows that Jokic isn't "massive outlier historically".

Probably, yes. Do you disagree, and if so, why?

Yes, I disagree. I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that the best players ever all played in the last 5 years.

What makes PER the "worst all in one metric available? What's a better metric to compare players from 50+ years apart?

Different kind of plus/minus data, tracking data etc. I don't like all-in-one metrics at all, but they could be a start for conversation. I dislike BPM, but it's much better than PER.

I don't think you're being fair to Jokic here. You take a rather unathletic white guy as your top pick and the first things you mention are his "smart passing" and his "soft shooting touch". Jokic is the greatest big man passer of all time. He averaged 8.4 APG making incredible pass after incredible pass that no one had even dreamed of in the '70s, let alone the '40s. Mikan averaged 2.9 APG in the season that you selected. Even ignoring the 3-pointer, Jokic shot an incredible 58% from the field and 81% from the line this year compared to Mikan's 41% and 78% in the season you selected. Jokic's TS% was higher than anyone in history for a 25 PPG season other than Curry, Durant, and Barkley. Jokic had more made FGs per game than Mikan on 6 less attempts per game and yet, Mikan is the top pick on the board against VERY weak competition and Jokic doesn't deserve consideration yet against the top competition ever?

You say that lots of players have put up high PERs in the last 5 years and that BPM would be a better comparison. Well, here are the top 10 seasons of all-time by BPM:

1. 2022 Nikola Jokic- 13.72
2. 2009 LeBron James- 13.24
3. 1988 Michael Jordan- 12.96
4. 2021 Nikola Jokic- 12.09
5. 1991 Michael Jordan- 12.01
6. 2016 Stephen Curry- 11.94
7. 1989 Michael Jordan- 11.88
8. 1994 David Robinson- 11.87
9. 2010 LeBron James- 11.81
10. 2013 LeBron James- 11.71

Jokic's 2022 rates as the best season of all-time and his 2021 rates as the 4th best. No other seasons from the last 5 years are in the top 10. If that's not outlier performance, I don't know what is. The difference between the best Jokic season and the best Magic/Bird season is greater than the difference between the best Magic/Bird season and the #200 season in the sample. That's not a list biased toward a bunch of modern players (other than the cutoff that BPM can only be calculated back to 1974). It's a bunch of all-time greats from different seasons and the only guys listed multiple times are Jordan, LeBron, and Jokic. Honestly, healthy teammates and a deep playoff run are the only things keeping Jokic from being a top 5 all-time peak season last year.

And if you want to say, you still don't like the box score metrics at all, and you're more into impact stats, Jokic completely DOMINATED those as well going up against two incredible box score seasons from DPOY candidates. He did everything you could possibly want this season. Mikan was significantly less dominant against a semi-pro league where merely his 6'10" height made him a physical outlier with a massive advantage against the vast majority of competition he faced.

[Proxy]

-2017 Stephen Curry

● Arguably the GOAT scoring regular season in 2016 - 42.5 points per 75/Lead leading scoring average of 30.1 PPG, on a game-breaking 124 TS+(!), leading the Dubs to a #1 ITW +8.1 rORTG(iirc this ranked t3 ever but they didnt go as much into offense as the 04 Mavs and 05 Suns and their -2.6 rDRTG got them to a >+10 net rating

●Warps defenses like no other with his shooting threat(spacing) and all-time off-ball movement(gravity). - All-time scalability contributed to unmatched team dominance with more talent wasadded. 15.4 box creation estimate in 2016 - arguably still understating his off-ball value(via backpicks.coms)

●Good passer for a PG, though not rly one of his stronger passing seasons - 7.6 passer rating via backpicks.com in 2017, decent turnover economy

●Solid POA defender, and is decent as a chaser which helps contribute to him being a good team defender, though his defense has improved in 2022 with added bulk, I'd still say he's a slight positive in the year chosen. Attacking Steph has also not really been that viable of a strategy generally and teams have mostly gotten bad offenses out of that so idk why people are so bent on that tbh. I think people struggle to understand that he gets attacked because he’s surrounded by a bunch of defenders better than him, not because he’s some bad or really exploitable defender or anything.

●For the stats, I'm sure you'll see Steph pop up at the top of any APM studies, with larger team samples showing that he deserves a significant amount of credit for team dominance(don't find his collinearity with Draymond a strong argument)

●Highest 5-year on/off and on court net rating of all-time: 15 - '19 Stephen Curry(+15.9 on-court net/+17.7 on/off)

●Many would however argue his effectiveness declines in the playoffs, however in the 2017 season into the playoffs when healthy, if there were any doubt about his resilience, I believe he was basically performing around the same level as a player as he was in 2016 - there were no significant change in his skillset, he rly just had a weird start at the start of the season when incorporating KD and when they took off they were arguably the best healthy team ever.

● There are still some indicators that suggest he still has extremely high, top 5 ish level impact in the playoffs - such as his on/off only taking a slight dip when taking only games he played in, and his change in scoring efficiency against stronger defenses in his prime isn't rly abnormal for an all-time standard, really only being dented by the Rockets switching defense and the Memphis Grizzlies in his prime and dismantling other all-time defenses like the 2019 Raptors and 2022 Celtics past his peak(though the physical changes arguably did help him a lot).

●Even without Klay and KD(arguably rly the only strong positive offensive players on some of those teams) - his scoring, and more importantly team dominance were extremely high in the playoffs - from 2016-2019 the Warriors had a 119 ORTG and +10 net rating without those two on the court via pbpstats.com (a very small sample of 287 minutes). Still, again I believe reinforces the idea that he was really the driving force behind the Warriors' dominance(+12 team net rating in the playoffs from 2015 to 2022 iirc).

●I'm not the biggest fan of using postseason one-number metrics at all(especially if they are hybrids because the box prior can underrate/overrate particular abilities, which I will go into on a future player), but even APM approximates like backpicks.com's AuPM/g paint 2017 playoffs Steph as having the 3rd highest peak on record of +7.5/g(!), right behind 2009 and 2017 LeBron and one spot ahead of Timmy in 2003. This makes sense seeing as how they had a staggering +17.2 net rating in those playoffs and still had a 123 ORTG in 127 minutes without Durant that year while they only had a 105 ORTG in an almost insignificant 60-minute sample with Durant and without Curry via pbpstats.com.

●I think of Steph similarly to how I think of Russell, both the driving forces behind two of the arguably top three dynasties to play the game with outlier-ish level value on one end and having a possibly misunderstood, underrated, positive value on the other end.

-2004 Kevin Garnett

●Kevin Garnett IMO contributes more positive value in different aspects than any other player that has ever played the game. I’m running out of time so I’ll link some great breakdowns of his offense and defense and why he was one of the most valuable players on both ends by drza and I will just explain why I regard him so highly.

Offense: https://hoopslab.rotowire.com/post/150868850871/mechanisms-of-greatness-scouting-kevin-garnetts

Defense: https://hoopslab.rotowire.com/post/150844038866/mechanisms-of-greatness-scouting-kevin-garnetts

●Strengthening the argument that Kevin Garnett was one of the most valuable players of his era, arguably being THE most valuable at his peak in the regular season. KG in the 2003-04 season provided the highest single-season APM/g of +9.4 leading a pretty mediocre twolves cast to a +5.9 net rating, 58 wins, and the top of the western conference in the the deadball era, with a shot to make the finals if not for injury(via backpicks.com) and four other seasons in the top forty all-time. KG alongside LeBron stand alone at the top upon the top of any of these type of value measurements and they have an argument for being the top two most valuable players in the league in the 2000s(with Shaq and Timmy being right there too ofc for their peaks but Tim looking slightly behind).
Year by year in his prime:
1997 - +4.5
1998 - +4.8
1999 - +5
2000 - +6 (26th all–time)
2001 - +2.1
2002 - +3.6
2003 - +7.2(11th all-time)
2004 - +9.4(1st all-time)
2005 - +4.5
2006 - +4.6
2007(inj)  - +6.2 (23rd all-time)
2008 - +6.3 (21st all-time)
2009(inj) - +5.3
2010 - +3.5
2011 - +4.8
2012 - +3.2

●I would normally be skeptical of the 2003/2004 Wolves results as it is easier to be more valuable on a weaker team more dependent on his strengths, but the recurring signal in which he posted massive value signals again with an even stronger, less dependent team in Boston(a -8.6 rDRTG in his first season there - a +11.3 net rating in the RS and +8.8 and +8.6 PS team net rating in the '08 and '10 playoff runs respectively) matches the film suggesting that he was possibly the most versatile player of all-time, with his ability as both a floor raiser and ceiling raiser and that his results in Minnesota were not just some outlier that should be ignored.
The reason I am so high on KG is that I believe his game is actually extremely resilient to the playoffs and that people over-fixate on his scoring weaknesses, which leads to his value being understated in box metrics because of his scoring efficiency does drop(normal for an all-timer), the box score is also genuinely pretty bad at gauging defensive value that does have the possibility of increasing in value in the playoffs.  This scouting report  by SideshowBob from a few years ago describes some ways in which many aspects of his game can not be measured traditionally by box metrics, and in a larger sample of raw +/- data we see that his game may have translated well to the playoffs despite the drop in scoring efficiency:

Garnett's offense can be broken down like this:

-Spacing
-PnR (Roll/Pop)
-High-Post
-Low-Post
-Mid-Post
-Screens

Remember, there is overlap between these offensive skills/features; I'm trying to give a broad-strokes perspective here.

Let's talk about his shooting really quick, and then dive in.  What I want to consider is how and which of these traits show up in the box-score, as well as which would be resilient in the face of smarter defenses.


-Has range out to the 3 pt line but practically/effectively speaking, he's going out to ~22 feet.
-From 10-23 feet, shot 47.7% in 03 (9.6 FGA/G), 45.2% in 04 (11.0 FGA/G), 44.6% in 05 (8.3 FGA/G), 48.4% in 06 (8.4 FGA/G)
-16-23 ft range, he's assisted on ~77% over those 4 years
-Shooting at the big-man positions is a conundrum - shooting 4/5s are often associated with weak (breakeven) or bad (negative) defense.  Garnett is one of the few exceptions in that not only is he an elite shooter, there's virtually no defensive opportunity cost to playing him over anyone in history.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When he's on the ball, he can utilize his exceptional ball-handling skills to create separation and knock it down.  When he's off the ball, he's always a threat to convert - the fact that he's assisted so frequently on 16-23 ft shots means they're mostly coming on a Pick and Pop or a drive and kick, which means a lot of them are open.  He's usually shooting around 45% overall from there, so we're looking at high 40s on open shots and low-mid 40s on created ones.  BOTH of those numbers are strong, and that's where the first offensive trait comes; Spacing.  His shooting spaces the floor.  A LOT - despite the fact that he doesn't shoot 3s, he forces bigs out of the paint and opens up the lane.  Because he's not a 3-point shooter though, this effect doesn't really show up in the box-score.  And yet, this effect will always be present; doesn't matter how much a defense slows down his raw production in the playoffs, the spacing effect will always be present - he's going to try and create shots from out there and he's going to pop/spot-up; give him space/leave him open and he'll convert at .95-1.00 PPP (which is very strong in the halfcourt).  Cover him/recover on him with a little guy and he'll just shoot right over.  His man has to come out and try and cover him, and this means that there will always be a marginal improvement for the rest of the team with regards to the lane being open.  The only real way to reduce this?  Have someone at the 1-3 that can cover him (has the size/strength to cope with his shot/inside game for stretches at a time), but even then, you might yield a disadvantage with one of your bigs covering a small ball-handler. 

So next, his PnR game.  Crucially, he's a dual threat, he's deadly popping out (as demonstrated above) but even crazier rolling to the basket (high 60s-70ish finishing, that includes post/isolation, thus baskets on the roll would likely be higher.  The rolls are similar (though not equal) to drives to the basket and aside from finishing offer an opportunity to kick it out.  THIS aspect is captured fairly well by the box-score (rolls into finishes - FG%, finishes - PTS, kick outs - direct assists).  This is also one that good PnR defense teams can slow down.  Close off the PnR by stopping the ball handler (aggressive blitz/trap to force the ball out their hands before the PnR is initiated, or drop center, ice sideline to deny the ball-handler middle), or rely on strong rotations into the lane to close off easy baskets off a roll.  When we talk about his postseason dips (mainly PPG and TS%), this is mostly where they're coming from (and face up game which I'll get to later).

So now, the post options.  The high post probably yields the largest fraction of his offensive impact.  His scoring skills (again, ball-handling to set up midrange game, quickness/explosion to attack the basket straight on, catch&shoot/spotup, etc.) means that he draws a great amount of attention here, again, pulling a big away from the restricted area and up to the free throw line.  This is significant because he can spot and capitalize on any off ball movement, use his passing to force rotations until an opportunity is created, play the give and go with a small.  Essentially, there are a ton of options available here due to his gravity and diversity, yet almost none of this will show up in the box-score.  Unless he hits a cutter with a wide open lane or a shooter with a wide open corner, he's not going to be credited with the assist. 

Imagine - he sucks/turns the attention of the defense to himself, a cutter sees an opening and zips in from the wing, which forces a defender from the corner to come over and protect the basket, leaving a shooter open. Garnett hits the cutter who dishes it out, or he kicks the ball out to the perimeter and it is swung around to the open shooter.  Garnett's pressure created the opening, and his passing/vision got the ball where it needed to go, but he's given no credit in the box-score. 

Give and go is another example - at the top of the key, he gets the ball, his man (a big) is now worried about his shot and starts to close in, the lane has one less protector, the PG who just threw it in to him now curls around him with a quick handoff, his defender now runs into Garnett or his man and the PG gets an open lane to the basket.  If someone has rotated over, a shooter will be open, if not, free layup for the PG, or a kick out for a reset for Garnett in the high/mid-block area.  IF it works out that the PG gets an opening up top on the handoff, then he may get a pullup and Garnett is credited with an assist, but in most scenarios, it will play out that again, Garnett gets no box-score credit.

The effect of this play on the offense is resilient, its going to remain present against strong defenses.  It doesn't matter how strong your rotations are or what kind of personnel you have, the key is that adjustments have to be made to combat a talented high-post hub, and when adjustments are made, there is always a cost (which means the defense must yield somewhere) and therein lies the impact.  This is one of the most defense-resistant AND portable offensive skillsets that one can have (you're almost never going to have issue with fit) and its what made Garnett, Walton, 67 Chamberlain, so valuable.

Mid-Post and face-up game are a little more visible in the box-score (similar to PnR).  Mostly comprised of either blowing by the defender and making quick moves to the basket (and draw a foul) or setting up the close-mid-range shot.  This is his isolation offense, something that will tend to suffer against stronger, well equipped defenses that can close off the lane, which sort of strips away the "attack the basket, draw free throws" part and reduces it to just set up mid-range jumpshots.  Garnett's obviously great at these, but taking away the higher-percentage inside shots will hurt his shooting numbers, volume, and FTA bit.  The key then is, how disciplined is the defense.  Yes they can close the paint off, but can they do so without yielding too much somewhere else - was there a missed rotation/help when someone left his man to help cover the paint.  If yes, then there is impact, as there is anytime opportunities are created, if no then its unlikely any opportunity was created and the best option becomes to just shoot a jumper.  This is the other feature of his game that isn't as resilient in the face of smart defenses.

The low-post game is crucial because it provides both a spacing effect and the additional value of his scoring.  While he lacks the upper body strength to consistently finish inside against larger bigs, he can always just shoot over them at a reliable % instead, and against most matchups he's skilled enough back-to-basket and face-up that he can typically get to the rim and score.  Being able to do this means that he draws attention/doubles, and he's one of the best at his position ever at capitalizing by passing out to an open shooter or kicking it out to swing the ball around the perimeter to the open guy (in case the double comes from the opposite corner/baseline) and all of this action tends force rotations enough that you can get some seams for cuts as well.  Outside of scoring or making a direct pass to the open guy, the hockey assists won't show up in the box-score.  But, more importantly, there is a crucial utility in having a guy diverse enough that he can play inside and out equally effectively - lineup diversity.  He fills so many staples of an offense himself that it allows the team to run more specialized lineups/personnel that might not conventionally work, and this forces defenses to adjust (! that's a key word here).  He doesn't have to do anything here that shows up in the box-score, all he needs to do is be on the floor.  You can argue the low-post ability as a 50/50 box-score/non-box-score, but I'd lean towards giving the latter more weight.

Finally screens.  The effect of Garnett's screens is elite, because of his strong lower body base and because of the diversity of his offensive threat (and he just doesn't get called for moving screens).  Its tough for most players to go through/over a Garnett screen, which makes him ideal for setting up jumpers and cutters off the ball.  When he's screening on the ball, everyone involved has to worry about his dual scoring threat, and when that happens, that gives the ball-handler that much more space to work with.  Marginal on a single possession, significant when added up over the course of ~75 possessions, and extremely resilient - how do you stop good screens?  You don't really, you just stay as disciplined as possible.  And this effect is completely absent in the box-score.

So what's important now is to consider the fact that most of Garnett's offense does not show up in the box-score!  And I wouldn't call what he does on the floor the "little things" (this is just something people have been conditioned to say, most things that aren't covered in the box-score have become atypical/unconventional or associated with grit/hustle, despite the fact that these are pretty fundamental basketball actions/skills).  Something like 75-80% of his offensive value just simply isn't tracked by "conventional" recordkeeping, yet the focus with Garnett is almost always on the dip in scoring and efficiency.  So what if the 20% that is tracked has fallen off.  Even if that aspect of his game fell off by 50% (it hasn't), the rest of his game is so fundamentally resilient that I'm not even sure what degree of defense it would take to neutralize it (at least to an effective degree, I'm welcome to explanations), and that still puts him at 80-90% of his max offensive impact (given the increased loads he was typically carrying in the playoffs, I doubt it even went that low).  The generalized argument against him of course tends to be "where are the results", and quite frankly it needs to be hammered home that his Minnesota casts were actually that bad.  Not mid 2000s Kobe/Lebron bad, like REALLY bad, like worst of any top 10 player bad.

^https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1587761&p=57014420&hilit=KG#p57014420

●So like I said before, I believe the big ticket has an argument that he added positive value in more different ways than any other player ever, this skillset allowed him to both be one of the best floor-raisers, and one of the best ceiling-raisers of all time as well too, and to me his game has shown to be resilient to the playoffs over a larger postseason sample size(one data point is how is on/ off in the RS from '00 to '12 is +12.4, while it is +17.8 in that same stretch)

-1986 Larry Bird

●I don't have the time to go much into breakdown his specific skills rn(I could link footage that could help if anyone has trouble understanding the way he generates value), but I have some value indicators for Bird for anyone interested that I discussed in the last thread with the reason I personally have him edging out Magic slightly - I think this is still more valuable for dicussion than just saying he was very good:

This is not a detailed or organized explanation so there won't be film or anything(apologize for that in advance) and not a direct comparison as neither of them were on my ballot before and neither will be in my top 3 for this round, and I don't have time for a post like that but I think there are alot of indicators showing Bird could stack up well against pretty much anyone p4p and Magic is no exception that i'll touch on.

The main argument for Bird > Magic, however, i'd say depends on how much his defense and scalability are valued. Larry made a probably deserved all-defense team in 1984 and personally I don't think his defensive value changed that much from then by 1986 in the film i've seen(he does fall off in the following years), while I can't see Magic being much better than a neutral defensively.

I also don't think Larry's offensive value was as high as Magic's but the 86-88 Celtics had a +7.26 playoff rORTG -

btw their PS offenses being relatively similar to their RS values despite noone else on the team taking a notable leap maybe hints as Bird's value being similar despite his scoring weaknesses hurting his efficiency similar to how someone like Steph's value looks relatively the same from the RS to PS when healthy even though it dips slightly, the way teams guard you is really what matters

The Cs were also the 2nd best RS offense of the decade in the 1988 behind the 82 Nuggets that went all in on offense(McHale also missed 18 games!). I really don't think that team's depth was that good offensively which is why i'm really impressed by that result though someone could argue that was a better version of Bird offensively.

Otoh the Lakers peaked at a PS rORTG +9.3 for 3 years both 85-87 and 87-89 and never fell below +3.9 rORTG in the playoffs when Magic was healthy lmfao, I won't argue against Magic's value there.

His impact indicators are really great as well.
In this old WOWY study for the first 30 ish years of the league(up until 1983 Larry even ranked #1)
https://backpicks.com/2016/09/28/iii-historical-impact-wowyr-60-years-of-plus-minus/

It's worth noting Magic is actually number 1 in prime WOWYR but it says Reggie Lewis messes up Bird's prime numbers.
https://backpicks.com/2017/11/17/part-iv-historical-impact-multiple-wowyr-studies/

He also has some eye popping results both as a ceiling raiser and floor raiser in his prime. In 87 and 88 they were a +1 ish team(45 win pace) w/o Bird and a +7 team w/ him (61 win pace), it was similar to the result in 1989 where he was injured for the full year basically. Even without McHale they played at a 57 win pace from 86-88, and his results in the 1984 playoffs on a Celtics team that rly only had 6 actual rotation players was impressive as well and highlights strong value as a floor raiser(+6.4 playoff rORTG on neutral ish defense). 

Other little things I could see someone arguing for is how the height of the teams he led(the 1986 Celtics) were probably better than that for Magic(1987 Lakers) and he played consistently more difficult competition in the playoffs iirc. I think the 86 Celtics were something like +12 MOV against +5 SRS teams while being 9-0 against them in the RS, also they absolutely smoked the 8.7 SRS Bucks in the PS but correct me if those numbers were wrong, they also had a +13.1 PS net rating which was a bit higher than any showtime Lakers squad. I could also see how someone might believe Bird's combination of off ball value and defense allow him to scale up better on stronger teams which depending on how much that is valued could be a difference maker.

As far as 1 number metrics go, idrc about them that much personally but for the sake of saying they both have cases over eachother. Bird also peaked higher in the PS according to both bballref BPM and I think backpicks BPM, as well as playoff PIPM, also believe all of these view him as around a t5-10 player ever at his peak but again correct me if i'm wrong. He could be argued to maybe be undersold more by these approaches similar to how someone like Steph is considered because of how his off ball play isn't measured properly.

If Larry is viewed as an near all-defense level ish defender(at least very clear positive), while also being a possibly top 8-ish offensive player ever than I could see how someone gets that combination of player over peak Magic but it's rly just preference tbh. I didn't list all of Magic's value indicators which are very strong in their own right but i'm sure they would conclude that this debate could really go either way cuz they are usually in the same range as Larry's.

Just some food for thought ig

●Some of my quick thoughts when voting and why I haven't put a few of the closest people I think have arguments on my ballot(again I will go into more detail when I have more time/they are more popular picks). I would love to hear other thoughts if people disagree with what I have to say ofc

Mikan: Lack of research/data of the era - ive heard ppl call the mid 50s Lakers a superteam as well so i'm not sure how to isolate his value and would like if someone could touch on that more

Oscar: Kinda feels similar to Magic in value but I feel the offensive gap is bigger than whatever defensive gap there is(if there is any)

Jerry: Might need to do a direct comp between him and Oscar but they seem about the same in overall value and maybe similar level performers(and I don't think Oscar is quite t10 level peak wise) when matched against the same level of comp in the playoffs when factoring situation (I think Oscar  was clearly better offensively and West was better defensively). Oscar looks more impactful to his teams from what i've seen but Jerry likely scales up better and it's possible his playoff elevation takes him into the next tier.

Julius: Not sure how to weight his PS dominance exactly, statistically looks absurd but there are only like 2 games available to watch(where he does looks dominant in). ABA by that point seems similar in quality to the NBA so I don't mind that. Kind've weird impact signals in the NBA where idt he DRASTICALLY changed as a player(knee problems affected him in the late 70s) but also not sure how valuable the on/off stuff is without lineup/rotation data. Looks like a truly all-time floor raiser but maybe scalability concerns. I'll get back to him later but a film comparison might help because maybe i'm just missing some important stuff.

Walton: Mainly durability/sample size related(confidence) - only one playoff run anywhere near his level, maybe his seemingly pretty sizable impact on the Celtics in 1986 could be used for a pro-Walton case

Drob: Not sure about the resilience of his offense, it isn't only the playoffs but against elite defenses in general he struggled alot more than other all-timers, he would look better with an actually decent supporting cast offensively but I also see issues I think arise regardless so idk. I have to think more about him.

Kobe: Yeah he's one of the vert rare PS risers and has faced an absurd amount of tough defensive comp but if you are rising from a player that looks clearly worse than players in this tier does that really put him on this level? Not sure the data supports that and I never saw him as that in the film - if he wasn't playing through injuries constantly and had an extra lung(I think his defensive motor wasn't consistent) I think he'd have a strong argument for being at a t10 level for me maybe. Maybe his portability/scalability makes up for that because I think his high value in the 3 distinct main stages was about the same, which you probably can't say for everyone.

Wade: Mainly scalability concerns(will discuss more probably when he's brought up more frequently for consideration), also not strong passing vision kinda hurts him as a offensive engine in the playoffs even if his scoring is so resilient - not sure how much this affects his ranking though, his 2006 run was so special and his 2009 regular season waa ridiculous

KD: I think he has as slower processing speed and struggles more to immediately recognize the most optimal play than the other offensive players in this tier. He also struggles alot balancing his scoring and playmaking a bit more than others here - part why his impact foorprint in OKC looks very slightly worse than the players here i think. Not sure how to balance how valuable he is as a primary in the playoffs vs how much he excels in other roles, I do find his defense fairly valuable though.

Giannis: Very questionable variability in his offense in the playoffs and i'm not quite how many issues he's solved over the years when other weird issues keep popping up against elite defenses and sometimes not even good defenses like the Nets, some being approach based(strangely actually very underwhelming passing, offensive fouls, early shot clock jumpers to name a few) but i do think he's improved off the ball. His absurd defense may still put him high for me(I think he could be a top 15 defender peak for peak ever) but I think his offense is more inconsistent than other aspects than other players in this tier so i'm not sure

Jokic: Concerns about his defense in a playoff setting. Alot of the metrics favoring his regular seasons turn their backs in the PS, the Nuggets DRTG with him on is porous(like 122 DRTG or something crazy since 2020), and there is reason to believe his impact does not translate 1:1(things like defense, teams selling out to limit his playmaking value albeit allowing him to score more so their offense isn't as effective).

1. 2017 Stephen Curry
(2016)
-When push comes to shove I feel Steph has a slightly more impressive statistical footprint and argument for the playoffs than KG, without the 2021 regular season where I was quite impressed with what Steph did in that circumstance as a floor raiser when they moved off Wiseman I might've went KG over him here
2. 2004 Kevin Garnett
(2003)
-Bird's variability on defense on defense makes me a little hesitant to put him higher over someone i'm this fairly confident in - i've had KG on my ballot since the 3rd thread
3. 1986 Larry Bird
(1984)
-Larry's defense moves the needle for me against Magic when he's already so impressive offensively in his own right, I think both these players came very to close to solving the game on offense in their eras in dominated in so many diverse ways. I think he's possibly a t5 offensive player ever career wise and i still think he's still fairly strong defensively(in general and relative to Magic) by this point in his career. Honestly he has some similar arguments to Steph but wish there was more granular data for the playoffs
4. 1987 Magic Johnson
(1988)

Second time i've had two Celtics on my ballot at the same time and so early too