No-more-rings wrote:AEnigma wrote:Never said they needed to be.
Well it seems that way since you conveniently wave away how great Harden was in those measures.
That is not an argument.
I may as well turn around and say Harden never finished high enough in RAPM so I cannot vote for him, he was obviously not that good. Are you actually trying to understand the point here?
AEnigma wrote:And we talked at length about how Kobe’s is likely being undersold. Feel free to do the same for others.
That said, the source Falco used did have Nash behind Kobe for 2006-10.
For that like 01-13 era or whatever googledocs I thought to be a pretty reliable one.
There is a 2001-14 tableau that uses Engelmann’s data, and like I said, for whatever reason that Google one does not seem to match all too well.
https://public.tableau.com/views/14YearRAPM/14YearRAPM?:embed=y&:showVizHome=noKobe may or may not be undersold but don't you think there would have to be a strong case to why? Maybe it was talked at length as you say, but it's not something I remember seeing.
I would go back and look through the Kobe thread, although it was discussed earlier than that. When lineup data starts attributing strangely high values to players sharing the court with Kobe, it should raise a bit of a red flag.
Kobe's box scores seem to reflect pretty accurately with his RAPM stuff. I do think it'd be a bit tricky to say that both his box scores and RAPM underrate him.
Why? They measure different things. No box score component suggests Lamar Odom was a top impact player when he was on the court.
I mean if you want to say that box scores underrate Nash's impact, pretty much everyone would agree, but if you think Harden underwhelms in RAPM I'd like to know what you think he should've done differently because his production and team results stack up pretty well.
I kind-of went into it last thread, and philosophically when I discussed Moses earlier (I think also last thread? or maybe two threads ago), but my concern is not necessarily, “What more could you have done on your specific roster in the specific year in question.” I explicitly said I do not think Nash would do well in Harden’s place because — as Unibro more thoroughly explained — that team was built to put nearly the entire offensive load (scoring
and creation) on Harden. That team would have more suited someone like Lillard or Iverson more naturally than Nash, even if there would eventually be enough of a drop-off from Harden to SCORING GUARD where Nash would be better.
However, my approach has repeatedly emphasised that I only care about context-specific results to the point that they confirm aspects about building a title roster around you. For example, I know Dirk can circumstantially win a title and consistently contend with good overall defensive support and offensive fit but no true secondary star, whereas I cannot exactly say the same for Durant. The question for me is not whether Harden could do better than anyone else in his position, but whether those results gave us a good degree of confidence that he could contend for titles in edited circumstances.
I talked last thread about why I do not attribute the outlier successes of 2018 primarily to Harden. 2019 is a better argument with a diminished Chris Paul (and I think Harden himself improved that year anyway), but then we end up back at fit issues: Paul and Harden that year were pretty much just as good as either was without the other (with the acknowledgments that the two of them together faced tougher lineups than either did solo and that Harden faced tougher lineups solo than Paul did solo). For me that calls into question whether that team was really competing for a title, considering their Game 6 disappointment and clearly reduced quality relative to the Bucks, Raptors, and possibly even 76ers.
In 2021 and 2022, Harden showed a commitment to being more of a true facilitator, taking a backseat to scoring teammates better than anyone Nash had in his prime but at least might suggest some proof of concept. In a very tiny sample, the Brooklyn trio together were monstrous… but then in any other combination Harden did not seem to stand out. Early returns on the Harden/Embiid combination were encouraging but then their postseason did not amount to much. Maybe this year the 76ers win the title with Harden averaging 18/12 next to Maxey and Embiid and Harris (or whomever is in his spot after the trade deadline) and all of them thriving off his creation, and Harden fans will then say that is obviously what would have happened if he had been blessed with Shawn Marion and Boris Diaw and Amar’e as support. Until then, though, I think Harden’s clearest limitation relative to Nash is adding value to the Tobias Harrises and the old Blake Griffins of the league, which I think is a better path to serious contention.
Harden is an impressive volume scorer and lead playmaker, but I am not sure he is so impressive at either that it actually is easier to put together that type of true contender around him than it would be for Nash. That might sound harsh, because he is probably top ten-ish at both skills, but a lot of volume scorers do not generate the offence you may expect to see (examples here should be obvious…), and as a playmaker Harden is not making full use of varied teammates to the extent as the truly top of the line ones like Nash or Magic.
AEnigma wrote:He absolutely was. The entire reason what Harden fanboys there are go on and gas his post defence is because in any other circumstance he is extraordinarily limited. Now, Nash does not even have that. Point to Harden. Nash does not have Harden’s size, which Harden can use to some effect even outside the post and in fact did as part of Houston’s hyper-switching scheme. Again, point to Harden. But to say he was not being hidden or to suggest the Rockets were not building their entire scheme around minimising what they asked of him on defence? Sheer fanboyism.
Look if you're going to start using attacks like "fanboy" when I'm not that at all with Harden feel free to stop engaging.
You said I was looking at the box score because I said the Rockets schematically keep Harden away from tougher perimetre assignments (and not because he is a Lebron-tier help defender lol). Make an argument to the contrary if you want to, but people know what that defence was designed to do, and it has nothing to do with the box score.
Again, i'm not a voter here i'm just in the discussions because I think it's fun to debate I don't have some agenda here.
I don't fully get this comment though. Are you admitting that Harden can be a positive defender in the right scenarios? Because I don't think anyone is here claiming he's an elite defender or whatever. It's been more a consistency with effort thing with him, which is fair but when Harden needed to he usually played solid defense. Nash wasn't capable of it. We can't ignore physical limitations, that's not how it works.
I mean think we can at least agree defense is an advantage for Harden, perhaps you don't see it as very meaningful though?
Yes, I said Harden is better on that end. In the right scheme he can be hidden, and in the right situation and matchup he can even have positive sequences. I do not see either as good, but if we praise Harden for not always being bad, to some extent the same is true of Nash (or at least was true in his time). He was sometimes solid, perhaps only to the extent that he was not being tested as regularly as weaker guards are today, but he was smart, could position himself well enough… In any case, I stated I do not see Harden’s defence as being enough of an advantage overall to cover the offensive gap, but I understand how someone could see it that way without us being able to test how Nash would fare against modern offences. Where I push back more is on the idea that Harden’s box score (and you are not the one doing this) is evidence of superior
offensive value over Nash.
AEnigma wrote:I do not think you are tracking the discussion well if that is your impression.
Well then tell me what you're saying. To me it just seems to be one side(or mainly one poster rather) bringing up all of Harden's stats and team success, and the responses are waving it away be saying things like "Oh so are you taking Harden over Magic too?" It's these hyperbole comparisons I'm talking about. Harden doesn't even have a playoff box score edge over Magic.
2019-21 Harden has a higher playoff PER and BPM than 1986-88 Magic. He has a higher PER, BPM, and WS/48 than 2008-10 Kobe. He has a higher PER and WS/48 than 1984-86 Bird, and an equal BPM. If someone wants to trumpet those measures and use them to dump on a player whose game is not as reflected in the stat-sheet, they deserve to have that thrown back in their face. It is a lazy approach that does not engage with much other than which number is biggest — and to the extent the analysis has gone beyond that, it has been pure narrative stuff like whether a title was won or whether a title was almost won over a really good team, without any accompanying analysis as to how that team arrived to that position.
You can easily reverse that and say "Oh Nash's team ORTG was much better than Wade's shouldn't he be higher?" Believe it or not some would go with Nash for that reason, even though as the voting showed most will think it's silly to look at that as a major indicator. Like the discussion can probably be a bit better than this from both sides.
Wade was a lot better on defence though and proved the circumstances in which he could win a title (not sure Nash wins that 2006 title in his place). No one really argued Wade was better on offence than Nash, although I am sure some would have if it had come up. That is the difference. You are the one with the bad representations here if you think the argument was ever “top ORTG = top player.” With Harden, it is relevant. With Wade and Kobe it really was not… but worth noting that we did see Wade and Kobe’s offensive results compared to each other.
