What more does Curry need to do, in your opinion, to overtake Kobe?

[AEnigma]

So, on the idea that debates that bring up the past are about "ego", I'm going to make a general statement here that's relevant to what some folks have said, just to be clear:

I don't expect anyone to defer to my opinions simply because I've been right in the past, but I do think people need to recognize when they are actually penalizing people for being right when most people were wrong.

I'd have never imagined after 2015 that people would actually be trying to use the 2013 & 2014 assessment of Curry on this board against people, but here we are. You wouldn't get here if people simply looked at the basketball questions from the time when statements were made and reflected based on how accurate or prescient they were. But if what you're doing instead is looking to explain why others come to different conclusions based on psychological bias, then the actual correctness of others gets omitted from the core analysis.

Thus it gets concluded that whatever assessments were done before, there must have been a bias involved that discredits the conclusions. And when it gets pointed out that the conclusions were actually correct, this is dismissed as luck rather than used to reflect on what those people might have been able to see.

This board - and let's be real, we're talking about a small kernel of people who were participating in a project of the time - developed a pro-Curry reputation because it was in a small minority arguing that Curry was far more impressive in 2013 & 2014 than most realized. Had this board instead thought like everyone else, it wouldn't have been perceived as having that bias, and thus would be seen as more objective in its analysis by some of those coming later. The key to being perceived as unbiased then would have been to parrot what everyone else thought at the time, and thus be wrong about what was happening.

This might seem unfair as an assessment to people. Perhaps they want to argue that Curry wasn't actually that good at the time, and it's just a coincidence that he emerged as an MVP in '14-15, and made those who thought they saw something that wasn't previously there think they'd been proven right. We can explicitly debate that if people want, but my core point is this:

It's not about me or anyone else being able to predict the future perfectly - nobody can. It's about recognizing the way we anchor ourselves when we look to evaluate the ideas put forth by others - cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, all that stuff.

Pointing to someone's "bias" when looking to evaluate their logic is a recipe for getting trapped in a schema of false knowledge and absurd logic - such as actually using the fact that someone was right when we were wrong as evidence that there was something wrong with their process rather than recognizing what should be obvious: That it was our opportunity to learn from our mistakes.

None of this is to claim that I have no ego, but really, I'm not taking issue with people's methods because I feel a need to defend my ego. I'm doing it because I see something really, really problematic that I'm seeing in the process that people are using. These people are plenty smart and in general plenty educated - it's not a problem caused by an obvious downgrade in mental talent. Rather, it's a subtle trap that the human brain is prone to falling into.

And it's happening like crazy on the current social internet in many, many circles.

I think you're right about most of what you say here but something I'd like to see more of from the people who appear to be most pro Steph in these sorts of debates is a willingness to accept or see some of the question marks people raise about him. Whether its the amount of impact Draymond and Klay may have on things like +/- or the times when defenses seem to find a way to lessen his impact. Also there's been times where he'd had a proclivity to get too fancy with the ball and make some silly turnovers. I have no issue with the idea of him being above Kobe or a top 10 player of all time either. I just want as full a picture of possible to be used in these types of debates. Steph does have weaknesses(like most any player).

Right, which was the point of my earlier post. Claiming it is not about “ego” falls flat when rather than engage with criticisms, those criticisms are constantly met with personal scoldings instead.

Here is a good post written in the maligned 2020 dark times:

My (incredibly rough) methodology involves looking at on court offensive ratings in both the regular season and the playoffs (per minute played) for Curry, and then weighting this vs the expectation set by Curry's opponents.

From 2015-2019 -

* Curry played 3442 minutes in the playoffs, and obviously, far more than this in the regular season.
* The On-court ORTG for the Warriors with Curry during the playoffs was 115.86 vs a 107.66 average defence (+8.2).
* In the regular season, this number was 119.99 vs a 108.40 average defence.
* Opposing team defences being only 0.74 PP100 tighter than the regular season expectation is actually quite low.

The obvious major caveat to this methodology is the presence of injuries/lineup changes, but without doing something as drastic as, say, assigning individual regular season player value (e.g. DRAPM) vs playoff minutes in every playoff series, this is probably close to as good as we'll get. And of course, we could nitpick certain things (e.g. Durant not playing the entirety of the 2019 playoffs) but then this ignores things such as Durant also missing regular season time in 2017/2018, and other opposing players missing time vs the Warriors. So, for the sake of simplicity, I'll call this even.

I haven't calculated this on a wider scale yet, but a -3.39 drop seems quite large, and also somewhat jibes with the fact that Curry has one of the larger relative TS% drops on record (from memory, a game-weighted glance took Curry from approximately +10.1 TS% to +7.3 TS% relative to the opponent) and in general, has fewer assists and points/slightly more turnovers.

So, whilst Curry still has tremendous value in the playoffs, he does appear somewhat more human in a playoff context, and the relative team efficiency follows. In fact, the opposing player for the #23 slot (CP3) actually had a 5 year span (2013-2017) underneath this methodology with a relative playoff on court ORTG of +8.73 (i.e. higher than the Warriors), albeit in clearly fewer games.

There have also been criticisms levelled at Curry for not having tremendous on court playoff ORTGs without Durant, and it kind of holds true - in 2015, his playoff ORTGs in each series were +7.9 (against a fairly poor Pelicans defence), -0.4, +3.6, +1.1, in 2016 he had +3.8 and +4.2 in his final two series (i.e. the ones where he played every game), and he had +9.3 (against a league average defence that lost Jusuf Nurkic right before the playoffs) and +3.0. Note that in 2015, the Warriors were also the #2 ranked offence in the league, and #1 in 2016. Outside of 2017, which was a simply stunning playoff run, there is a fairly strong correlation between the relative ORTG with Curry on court in the playoffs and the opponent's relative DRTG - 0.79 across 13 series. In other words, outside of 2017, the Warriors obliterated weaker defensive teams, but looked far more mortal than their regular season expectation against the stronger defensive teams with Curry on the court.

Without actually undertaking such a detailed analysis for every star player we're considering, there definitely appears to be a notable amount of evidence that Curry is clearly more human in the playoffs, and even more so against the toughest defences. And this doesn't mean that he's a playoff scrub at all - he's still fantastic, but it does mean that the individuals that aren't voting Curry in at this point, or second guessing his impact based on the playoffs... just might be onto something. The degree as to which somebody weights the playoffs vs the regular season, or how much they feel that the Curry drop-off is real, is up to them.

This is really just food for thought though, because Curry's playoffs always seem to become a talking point.

Just from memory, other stars have evidence that points to higher playoff resilience - for example, Wade's relative TS% reached +6 in his healthy playoff years from 2005-2011 (i.e. ignoring 2007) after being at +3-3.5% in the regular season, Nash/Magic had stupendous postseason offences, Paul has a clear scoring uptick (IIRC, he's at something like +6 TS% on higher volume from 2008-2017 himself), Kobe's got some great offences and increases his TS% from 2008-2010, etc.

FWIW, I think that #24 is a fine place for Curry, and I think that he could even be higher, or lower, and I wouldn't have any real complaints either way. I think Curry is an amazing player... but the arguments for Curry (grandiose impact, changing the game, team culture) are strong, and the arguments against Curry (durability, worse in playoffs, longevity) have merit too. Do we have to be so dismissive of the other school of thought and plummet into an online pool of rage?

And then a year earlier, when he was more freshly in everyone’s minds, we see an argument that feels very reminiscent of some of the arguments that have been levied against other all-time players with a superstar postseason and plus/minus teammate:

People here will remember I was saying Curry was the GOAT at the end of the regular season in 2016, even though I argued at the time I didn't see any improvements in his game from 2014 to 2015 to 2016 (he added that nasty floater after 2013 but there was no major improvements from 14 to 15). Kerr's ability to install an offense that was perfect for his skillset led to an offensive explosion. So with me not seeing any improvement in his game I personally don't put him up there, but many people do think he improved. In what? IDK, I've heard arguments for things, none that properly take into account the difference in role he's had, but honestly it's irrelevant in my case against him, just the reason I personally put him way under most as opposed to just being against him under some guys.

Now into the actual argument against him, and this is similar to my argument against 2013 LeBron, his postseason performance wasn't top tier. Or even the tier under that. Or even the tier under that.

In 2016 following that amazing regular season we got to see the team without him in 6 games in their first 2 rounds and the team went 4-2. He came back from his injury and looked perfectly healthy averaging 29.3/6.4/6.7 on 61.6 TS% in his 9 games before the Finals. Then in the Finals he was stopped by the same strategy that stopped him in the 2015 Finals and was the 4th best player in the series if I'm being generous (he has no argument over Draymond, Lebron, and Kyrie).

Now I don't think I have to explain why his 2016 Finals performance was ****, that's a given. What I do find more compelling is the argument that Draymond Green is more valuable to the team than Curry. Now I don't think he's better but someone earlier this year (maybe Spaceman?) brought up Draymond being better than Curry and it's kinda been burrowing into my head the more I think about it. Flat out I'm taking Draymond if you ask me which of the two I'd rather have if I'm trying to win 4 7 game series. Looking at postseason RAPM Draymond comes out tied for first with Lebron since 1998:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQdG8Zv84zqKEzETDjd8KPsClcw9bPETX9v_x_KEAxjv9NrFaWikOoiSaciy1jbMiygg2D-V8DUQn0O/pubhtml?gid=112475182&single=true

And Curry's +/- numbers in the postseason outside of 2017 have always tailed Draymond's. Basically we have a guy that has the biggest regular season to postseason numbers drop in league history, played below superstar level in back to back Finals and wasn't the best player on his team in them, and falls behind a great teammate in all +/- metrics in both 2016 and other seasons. To me that signifies how much exactly the team helped him get those numbers in the regular season, how much they helped him get those impact numbers (it's worth mentioning Draymond had better +/- numbers in 2016 in the regular season too), and how his true level of play really wasn't super elite.

…

Curry's never been great at taking PGs off the bounce and he's never been particularly great at the point part of being a point guard with below average vision and passing ability for a starting PG. He's not super athletic and he doesn't have super handles so he's limited in his ability to penetrate so he can't make up for his lack of vision.

Actually looking at the numbers now Curry doubled his isolations in the playoffs (probably because Curry mostly isos on big men and they mismatch hunt more in the playoffs) and was way more efficient on isolations than in the regular season in the 2016 playoffs. His scoring wasn't his biggest issue at all, his ability to play point guard and handle simple traps on the PNR against Cleveland was.

That said looking at the numbers now (I'd like to add I've been saying this since I saw those games live but I've never looked the numbers up) the real drop off in his scoring production came in the pick and roll. Curry in 2016 was the most efficient high volume PNR player in the league averaging 1.11 ppp. In the playoffs he averaged 0.7 ppp with a 28.3 TOV% in the pick and roll. That lends a lot of credence to my argument that what really messed him up was Cleveland having the options to trap him with their bigs and Curry just failing to do things most elite PGs in the league do easily.

…

So when you notice Curry playing way outside of his usual in 2017, the thought should be why. To me when looking at it, and especially when looking for a why it's obvious Curry performs well against teams that are overwhelmed by that offense and his game. Once a team with enough defenders to cover Curry and the rest of the team comes along he struggles similar to how Dirk had his fatal flaw against smaller guys but less exploitable considering the team Steph was on. The Cavs weren't amazing on D but they had Tristan Thompson who can reasonably switch on Curry and allows them to defend all the Warriors at once. The other teams Golden State have played without KD (excluding the Raptors) haven't had that, how'd he perform in those situations? Well take out Curry's Finals series and the first 2 games he played in 2016 where he was injured and he's averaged:

30.4/5.9/6.5 on 62.4 TS% with a 120 ORTG and 28.6 PER in 29 games.

That's in line with his numbers in 2017 (slightly less efficient, slightly lower PER, more ppg). His Finals numbers in those 3 years against opponents that weren't overwhelmed?

26.2/5.1/5.3 on 58.8 TS% with a 109 ORTG and 20.8 PER in 19 games.

And I'm confident saying it's a trend now after 3 Finals series without KD against tough defenses that could key in on him. He might've avoided that weakness in 2017, but I don't think it makes his postseason performance actually better, it just means he got favorable matchups (I will acknowledge that yes, every matchup ever would be favorable with that squad).

Does 2022 inherently disprove all of this retroactively? Does it mean they were “wrong” and therefore everyone beating the Curry drum was “right” and by rule the people we all should ask to enlighten us with their superior basketball vision? (Incidentally, 2022 Draymond again cleared Steph in postseason on/off, as he has for five of their six Finals runs, as well as in postseason plus/minus.)

If Curry “critics”, so to speak, should be expected to “[recognise] the way we anchor ourselves when we look to evaluate the ideas put forth by others - cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, all that stuff,” then that needs to be applied both ways. However, most of the time, the focus instead seems to me to be redirected from reflection on potential personal cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias to everyone else implicitly refusing to accept these very objective and internally consistent Curry conclusions. Again, to me, biweekly posts lamenting the board’s supposed failure to properly appreciate Curry’s greatness seems counter-productive. To me, if we were committed to learning from the past, around the fifth or sixth time there probably should have been some recognition that the problem may lie elsewhere.

This will probably be interpreted antagonistically, so I will clarify what I mean: if the goal is to foster understanding, I am legitimately baffled by the idea that the best approach is to establish a routine chiding those who dare attempt to highlight perceived inconsistencies and methodological faults. If indeed the whole body of work is truly so impeccable and indisputable as seems to be the feeling, then it feels as though the most intuitive response should be to engage with those concerns honestly. Maybe, it might even be best to do some self-reflection as to why these concerns recur, on a level beyond, “Well, everyone else must be too reluctant or obstinate to accept what I know.”

[OhayoKD]

career turnovers would probably be better than using raw +/-.

Really?

1. LeBron
2. K Malone
3. Westbrook
4. M Malone
5. Stockton
6. Kobe
7. Kidd
8. Erving
9. Gilmore
10. Harden
11. IT
12. Hakeem
13. Ewing
14. Pierce
15. Magic
16. Reggie Theus

Yeah, quit trolling

Going back to Colbinii's original point, I feel as if the best general gauges in getting there are Win Shares, Wins Added, Win Prob. Added (eg. CORP % from Thinking Basketball), # of seasons at a certain statistical threshold(s) (eg. minimum BPM, LEBRON, WS/48, so on).

Win-shares kinda gets there but keep in mind it probably skews towards smaller players(ar at least smaller players who are also steal/block accumulators). If Lebron had historical data, it would be alot more useful

CORP is cool as a formula to put inputs in, but the seasonal inputs are just an informed opinion so the outputs aren't really a stat. I'd recommend vetting and tinkering with season to season inputs and making curves based on where you and ben disagree if you want to use it to inform a "career val" eveluation. FWIW, I think sideshow bob's individual season evaluations were more accurate, but I don't know how much he's done it for. Also, if nothing else, remember that the actual "likelihood to win a championship on a random(in-era) team" is going to be much higher for russell/wilt than where Ben pegs them.

[OhayoKD]

Not a fan of Doc's plus-minus variant but uh...

That would require being generous to 2013, 2014, and then just outright ignoring injuries in 2018. To each their own, but your estimation is on the unlikely end of what’s reasonable.

I'd just note:

- We had Curry in our Top 5 for POY in '12-13 & '13-14 on these boards. This might seem like a fringe opinion to you, but the idea that it should make us look "likely unreasonable" because the establishment still thought David Lee was the best player on the Warriors is backwards imho.

i mean, you're basically saying "our opinion that curry was top 5 can't be unreasonable. look, we voted curry top 5." when you say something like "had more/as many top 5 seasons than x", presumably you are making a "top 5" season some sort of delineator of impact. it would be very hard to say that about 2013 curry. like there's no way he was up there with lebron/durant/cp3 and would only be up there with kobe and russ if we're just factoring in their playoff injuries

Huh?

Curry grades better than Byrant in two of the three box-aggregates you like, much better playmaking(would favor kobe's scoring tbh but one can easily argue for curry depending on how they weigh effiency/volume), comparable rs impact stuff, elevates according to adjusted or raw impact in the playoffs. He also led a better team which then had a suprisingly good postseason. And that's all

Hate to break it to ya, but disagreeing with a ranking does not really mean a ranking was wrong, let alone unreasonable. I'd also be careful about coming on that strong since I'm pretty sure If pressed, your argument against Curry as a top 5 player would more or less be "he only scored 21 ppg".

I also don't understand why you keep cherrypicking wonky looking results like they prove something, but whatever. Onto the plus-minus

From what I'm getting, this is the same metric you came up with for us in the other thread. In which case, let me blunt, unless I'm missing something, based on the various criticisms in that other thread you never really addressed, this is just a distortion of on/off. Feel free to argue otherwise, but as you ascribe negative value to certain player seasons, I'm ascribing negative value to this stat, as I think it's actively misleading for all the reasons other people brought up and you didn't really have an answer for.

Not going to get into the ego whatever, and I am not particularly attached to the argued value or lack-there-of of realgm consensus, but I don't think this metric has functional utility and people who look at its outputs may be misled without explicit caveats/neccesary curves noted which most people who use this stat(including yourself in this thread) aren't likely to do.

Moreover, as we can already see in this thread, that this is tied to pure impact stuff semantically(even though it is fundamentally different), may serve as a reason for people to ignore real/pure/raw signals entirely when they do analysis which I think is very detrimental..

There may be value in the discussion around the merits of the stat, but that is not the discussion we seem to be having here.

Mind you I have no great hatred for Curry(literally defended him in the first half of this post!), so I doubt this is cognitive dissonance(but feel free to argue otherwise!).

[NBA4Lyfe]

Stay healthy.

It’s too late, curry has proven he can’t stay healthy and is lagging behind in career vorp and win shares to all time great guards

James harden according basketball reference is closer to Kobe than Stephen curry is

[f4p]

Not a fan of Doc's plus-minus variant but uh...

I'd just note:

- We had Curry in our Top 5 for POY in '12-13 & '13-14 on these boards. This might seem like a fringe opinion to you, but the idea that it should make us look "likely unreasonable" because the establishment still thought David Lee was the best player on the Warriors is backwards imho.

i mean, you're basically saying "our opinion that curry was top 5 can't be unreasonable. look, we voted curry top 5." when you say something like "had more/as many top 5 seasons than x", presumably you are making a "top 5" season some sort of delineator of impact. it would be very hard to say that about 2013 curry. like there's no way he was up there with lebron/durant/cp3 and would only be up there with kobe and russ if we're just factoring in their playoff injuries

Huh?

Curry grades better than Byrant in two of the three box-aggregates you like,

well, just looking at them as players through their careers, if they played a similar level season, i would expected kobe to win PER, curry to slightly win WS48, and decently win BPM.

so 23.0/0.174/4.6 for kobe is probably about on par, maybe tiny edge for kobe compared to 21.3/0.180/5.4 for curry.

much better playmaking(would favor kobe's scoring tbh but one can easily argue for curry depending on how they weigh effiency/volume), comparable rs impact stuff, elevates according to adjusted or raw impact in the playoffs. He also led a better team which then had a suprisingly good postseason.

well, he did get to play the king of the surprise 1st round loss in george karl so that helped. and curry vs kobe in "impact" numbers is pretty much always going to look good for curry based on what we know those numbers say about them. which still doesn't keep even quite a few people from this board for picking kobe over curry, presumably because not everyone buys the difference they portray between the two.

Hate to break it to ya, but disagreeing with a ranking does not really mean a ranking was wrong, let alone unreasonable. I'd also be careful about coming on that strong since I'm pretty sure If pressed, your argument against Curry as a top 5 player would more or less be "he only scored 21 ppg".

i believe he scored 22.9 ppg. 23.0 ppg is my cutoff for top 5 . but mainly, i think they were somewhat similar, i just think the gear kobe hit towards the end of the season where he elevated and drug the lakers to the playoffs, a lakers team that then got obliterated by 19 ppg in the playoffs without him, means he had a level that curry didn't at that point.

as for disagreeing means it's wrong, that wasn't my point. my point was that the evidence presented for why a top 5 ranking had validity was essentially a past vote by the very same people arguing for its validity.

[zimpy27]

Kobe was a much better defender and although Curry is a better offensive player, Kobe didn't take the same dip in offensive stats that Curry does in the playoffs.

Based on regular season only I think Curry is above Kobe.

[OhayoKD]

Not a fan of Doc's plus-minus variant but uh...

Huh?

Curry grades better than Byrant in two of the three box-aggregates you like,

well, just looking at them as players through their careers, if they played a similar level season, i would expected kobe to win PER, curry to slightly win WS48, and decently win BPM.

so 23.0/0.174/4.6 for kobe is probably about on par, maybe tiny edge for kobe compared to 21.3/0.180/5.4 for curry.

TLDR: Curry does better in the stats, but I expect him to look better in those stats, so he's worse. And to pre-empt a false equivalency, when I made this sort of claim, I used the real-world/historical trends/film to establish there being a bias, then i did the "so player x ~ player y here isn't great" while substituting the box-output with real-world data to support that claim/

You're doing "I think this stat is biased"(why?) so "stat that favors curry leans kobe actually". No, until you make a compelling case for bias regarding 2013 Curry who was not even being used for off-ball creation by jesus-water worshipper mark jackson, the numbers favoring curry is positive for curry. He looks better box and impact wise than Kobe and does so while being coached by a guy who thought holy water would heal Steph's leg. This actually favors Kobe though...cause reasons.

well, he did get to play the king of the surprise 1st round loss in george karl so that helped. and curry vs kobe in "impact" numbers is pretty much always going to look good for curry based on what we know those numbers say about them.

Yeah, and you haven't done anything to demonstrate that's a result of bias, as opposed to a reflection of curry being more valuable. Keep in mind, this is 13/14 so "Dray collinearity" isn't really going to work here(not that people apply colinearity considerations consistently, cough jokic cough).

as for disagreeing means it's wrong, that wasn't my point. my point was that the evidence presented for why a top 5 ranking had validity was essentially a past vote by the very same people arguing for its validity.

[/quote]
You said "Curry is not up there with Kobe unless you penalize him for a playoff injury" after implying the ranking is unreasonable. Idrc if it was the focus, it was something you said and it's completely fair-game to push.

[Doctor MJ]

When you mention Kobe and Shaq in this light, are you referring to them as a simultaneous package pertaining to their feud and falling out? As someone who is a newer-generation Lakers fan and far from that whole quagmire, I can't say i recall much from real-time but from what I have read.. it definitely seems like a "takes two to tango" superstar clash that both could have and should have handled better in hindsight.

Ah, indeed that's a big part of this, and as someone who did live through it in real time, it was maddening. I blame Shaq more than Kobe for the debacle for a number of reasons, one of which is that I believe Shaq was always an imagined slight away from franchise sabotage, but with Kobe it was far from imagined. People tend to lionize Kobe for what they perceive as his alphaness, but it was obvious from the jump that there were things he could have done to keep the partnership with Shaq healthier and he just didn't want to because of the Jordan-like future he imagined for himself. If Kobe comes in with a different attitude, it's very possible that that core ends up winning more than 3 titles together.

But there's more to it than that, there's the treatment of the working class employees of Staples Center, the impatient demands for talent acquisition, the trade demand, and the unwillingness to decrease primacy when other talent was on the roster. Kobe could have very easily gone through the rest of his post-Shaq career without winning another title, and if that's what had happened, perception of him would be very, very different.

I don't want to overstate the significance of all of this when making a GOAT list, but if the question is simply where there were some cons to go along with the pros with him for the Lakers, yes, there certainly was.

Thank you for sharing, could only imagine. I think you summarized it to a spade when looking at / thinking about their respective involvement in the feud (on top of other off the court noise between the two I feel uncomfortable to address).

As for the second paragraph, would you mind elaborating more on the employee treatment? Am unfamiliar with this consideration myself. I am anti public trade-demand in general, and feel this is best addressed as an internal affair in contrast to going on ESPN - therefore am in agreeance on that.

One area where I may see differently is what I highlighted in bold. I feel there to be a lot of team indicators (quantitative and qualitative) showing Kobe was good at elevating teammates and making their life easier from 2008-2010 - and find this a major reason we reached the heights we did and hung back to back banners (my view may be somewhat anchored by recent information of re-visiting Pau Gasol's testimonials amidst his special night). Though, as a whole, I agree with some of his tendencies on offense and defense to be somewhat a limitation in terms of how I evaluate Kobe's peak and career

One last consideration I'm linking is Sansterre's write-up regarding Kobe and the 2009 Lakers (viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2054025). I found it to be great and a summary of how I view his Lakers' tenure - though I am willing to conceed there are further questions and lower-points in the 20 years of his career

Re: employee treatment. Okay, I'll elaborate. Let me say up front that I don't have evidence to present to back any of this up, so I honestly don't think I should persuade people with what I share.

One of my buddies worked as an engineer at Staple Center - where the Lakers, Clippers & Kings play along with concerts, award shows, etc - for a long time. He doesn't give a hoot about sports, but went out of his way to speak to what Shaq & Kobe were like. He said that everybody loved Shaq - that he was friendly, fun & respectful of what workers were doing when they that intersected with him. And he said that Kobe on the other hand treated workers like they were in his way, and was easy to piss off.

He also referred to an incident that really polarized him against Kobe (as a person, remember he didn't care about basketball). Another workers was wearing a hat from a non-LA NBA team, and Kobe came up and - for what it seemed to the guy - sucker-punched the side of his head.

Now what led to this? My buddy says that Kobe was trying to knock the hat off the guy, and either entirely missed, or contacted in a way where it felt like a blow.

Further:
Was it wise for the guy to wear that hat? No.
Is this something I think Kobe should have gone to jail for? No.

But it's one of those things where the most powerful man in the room - both by social status and by physical stature - ends up committing violence to someone lesser, and there are no consequences for it. And it led to my buddy and others seeing Kobe as someone who could and would do whatever he wanted to you, and so you best watch your step.

Here's the thing that strikes me about this: This isn't behavior that's out of place with Kobe's persona at all, just like it wasn't out of place for Michael Jordan to lash out physically due to the intensity of his basketball drive. This is the sort of "killer instinct" we lionize because we feel it can help you win in the game.

And so I don't want this to come across as though I think Kobe's behavior is some unique thing here, only that this is an area where - as has been described to me by a source I trust but who I can't expect any of you to trust - there are some cons to go along with the pros.

Incidentally, I'm not sure what team's hat this was, but in my head I tend to think it's the Kings or the Spurs, so that gives you a sense of what era we're in.

Re: 2008-10. To be clear, while I am lower on prime Kobe than most, I certainly don't disagree with the idea that Kobe was the best player on this 3-year run where the Lakers won 11 playoff series. That's a hell of a big deal.

When I was thinking of the issues I was describing, I was really focused on years later than this.

[Doctor MJ]

I think you're right about most of what you say here but something I'd like to see more of from the people who appear to be most pro Steph in these sorts of debates is a willingness to accept or see some of the question marks people raise about him. Whether its the amount of impact Draymond and Klay may have on things like +/- or the times when defenses seem to find a way to lessen his impact. Also there's been times where he'd had a proclivity to get too fancy with the ball and make some silly turnovers. I have no issue with the idea of him being above Kobe or a top 10 player of all time either. I just want as full a picture of possible to be used in these types of debates. Steph does have weaknesses(like most any player).

No doubt.

And I'll say, the two most annoying to me are a) the careless turnovers and b) anything with the mouthguard. ADHD be damned, once you start throwing that thing at people, you've got a real problem that I think the NBA should take a harder stance on if only for marketing reasons.

[Doctor MJ]

That would require being generous to 2013, 2014, and then just outright ignoring injuries in 2018. To each their own, but your estimation is on the unlikely end of what’s reasonable.

I'd just note:

- We had Curry in our Top 5 for POY in '12-13 & '13-14 on these boards. This might seem like a fringe opinion to you, but the idea that it should make us look "likely unreasonable" because the establishment still thought David Lee was the best player on the Warriors is backwards imho.

i mean, you're basically saying "our opinion that curry was top 5 can't be unreasonable. look, we voted curry top 5." when you say something like "had more/as many top 5 seasons than x", presumably you are making a "top 5" season some sort of delineator of impact. it would be very hard to say that about 2013 curry. like there's no way he was up there with lebron/durant/cp3 and would only be up there with kobe and russ if we're just factoring in their playoff injuries, which then would seem to apply to 2016 and 2018 curry if his team doesn't get him to the next round both times. it's not like his spurs series was amazing, nor was his follow-up series the next year, so it's not like he was just one year from mvp-level playoff series. this isn't like shaq/duncan/garnett/kobe/tmac in the early 2000's. if curry was somehow, some way top 5, then it would only be in the sense that injuries keep some people off the list and then 6-10 are all very close together and maybe some people say curry is an 8.9 compared to 8.8 for a bunch of others (while others would pick someone else as the 8.9).

No, what I'm pointing out is that we saw something that was coming when most people did not, that those people thought clearly indefensible things, and that this makes it clearly unreasonable to use any kind of ad populum of that moment to dismiss our reasoning.

You say "it would be very had to say that about 2013 Curry" - remember there's already a project where this ran that you can go read about right now. If what you want to is to understand how a bunch of extremely knowledgeable people came to this conclusion and then assess what specifically you disagree with about the assessment, you're literally on the very message board where you can go and do that learning.

I will say this, when you say "It's not like his Spurs series was amazing.", I have to ask, what do you remember from that series? If you're not aware that it was a big deal at the time, I'd encourage you to go look for some contemporary articles on the subject.

[Doctor MJ]

all i see is a list of really good players and reggie theus.

And yet:

2004 +/-
Michael Finley +264
Tracy McGrady - 313

that doesn't seem to do a good job.

2004 turnovers
Michael Finley 83
Tracy McGrady 179

much better.

Do you remember what that season was like in Orlando and how McGrady responded to it? If you're under the impression McGrady was extremely valuable that season and simply hindered because of things that were everyone else's fault, you need to do more research.

i'm under the impression he was better than michael finley that season and having crappy teammates isn't a reason to think otherwise.

Please read my post again, note that I didn't say that TMac was bad because he had crappy teammates, and consider asking me questions if you're still confused.

[Doctor MJ]

This is the sort of thing people do like crazy now that's pretty maddening.

You're saying the board was effectively biased in that time frame because they thought Curry looked like an emerging superstar at a time when the establishment thought David Lee was better than him.

You're saying thus that it says something bad about us that we didn't think Lee > Curry, and that's pretty crazy.

no, i think he was saying there were more than 5 people better than curry. not that david lee was one of them.

I’m simply saying I don’t think it’s at all clear that Curry was top 5 those years. You could reasonably put him probably as high as 4, and as low as maybe 8 or 9 loosely speaking? Most level headed people would agree that Lebron, KD and Cp3 were all clearly better. You’d have to have an agenda to think otherwise.

I honestly have no clue what this thing about David Lee is about. I don’t remember anyone saying he was better than Curry back then, but I do remember talk about Monte Ellis being better before he was traded though.

What weird words to put in my mouth though that I thought people we’re crazy for going Curry>Lee lol. I mean that’s a pretty wild response, and based on nothing concrete from what i’ve said.

Point is, Curry being an arguable 4th or 5th doesn’t have the same value as some of his other seasons or some of Kobe’s seasons. Not all “top 5 seasons” have equal value. I figured that was common sense, but apparently not.

I think it's completely find to not have Curry as Top 5 in those years.

Re: "I don't remember anyone saying he was better than Curry back then". Then obviously, you weren't paying close attention because Lee was named to All-Star and All-NBA and Curry wasn't. Now, All-NBA is governed by position so if that were the only thing going on that would be different, but for All-Star, they didn't pick the maximum number of guards they could have so it very much was a choice for Lee over Curry.

- I didn't say you thought people were crazy for thinking Curry was better than Lee, so no, I didn't put those words in your mouth. You might wan to re-read when your first thought is that the person is saying something out of the blue, and then consider asking sincere questions to better understand what the confusion is.

Re: Point is, not all "top 5 seasons" have equal value. You said considerably more than that, but if this is the thing you want to communicate, I don't disagree.

[Doctor MJ]

From what I'm getting, this is the same metric you came up with for us in the other thread. In which case, let me blunt, unless I'm missing something, based on the various criticisms in that other thread you never really addressed, this is just a distortion of on/off. Feel free to argue otherwise, but as you ascribe negative value to certain player seasons, I'm ascribing negative value to this stat, as I think it's actively misleading for all the reasons other people brought up and you didn't really have an answer for.

Not going to get into the ego whatever, and I am not particularly attached to the argued value or lack-there-of of realgm consensus, but I don't think this metric has functional utility and people who look at its outputs may be misled without explicit caveats/neccesary curves noted which most people who use this stat(including yourself in this thread) aren't likely to do.

Moreover, as we can already see in this thread, that this is tied to pure impact stuff semantically(even though it is fundamentally different), may serve as a reason for people to ignore real/pure/raw signals entirely when they do analysis which I think is very detrimental..

There may be value in the discussion around the merits of the stat, but that is not the discussion we seem to be having here.

Mind you I have no great hatred for Curry(literally defended him in the first half of this post!), so I doubt this is cognitive dissonance(but feel free to argue otherwise!).

Re: just a distortion of on/off. Distortion would imply I'm building something more complicated than on/off, but the reality is I'm using the more basic stat. I have no objection to using more sophisticated stats - I certainly use them myself - but the idea that sharing raw data is a negative value thing is something I'd object to unless we're talking about something like cherry-picking.

And if we're talking about cherry-picking, then I would encourage folks to think about how to de-pick-the-cherry and consider showing what the results of that stat would look like.

But let me emphasize here:

People seem to be perceiving simplistic data as cherry-picking, and I would object strongly to that way of thinking.
People also seem to be perceiving the presentation of any statistic as something that is intended to be the entirety of the argument, and I would also object strongly to the idea that this is a reasonable assumption in any circumstance, but particularly when the data being shared is so obviously simplistic.

I've been using regressed +/- in some form or another for 15+ years. I'm not someone who fails to understand why we use those more sophisticated techniques, but these metrics don't actually facilitate discussion in this context all that well.

If I simply share two RAPM scores where Player A > Player B with lots of sample, I expect that I'm largely going to get people thinking "Yup, Player A > Player B" or "Still doesn't mean Player A > Player B", and in both circumstances, it's not going to take the conversation anywhere interesting.

Raw data on the other hand cries out for to ask: "So, what all involved caused this?" as well as "If it seems to say Player A > Player B, but we're confident Player B > Player A, what can we identify that might explain the discrepancy?"

If you'd like to re-ask specific questions I never responded to, go ahead.

Re: negative value to a stat. This is an interesting thing to consider. When does the existence of a stat do more harm than good?

I think the most insightful thing I've seen on the subject gets referred to as Goodhart's Law, which gets summarized as
"when the measure becomes the target, it becomes less valid as a measure". This at times can absolutely result in net negative value, but it has to be noted that this only applies when people who have the ability to contribute value are affected.

In this case, we on this board are not NBA decision makers, and it doesn't seem like you're focused on them, so to me what you're saying is that the use of a stat like this drives us further away from from an accurate assessment of the topic in question.

So then, let me ask, can you be specific in where you've seen this manifest?

Re: "people who look at its outputs may be misled without explicit caveats/neccesary curves noted which most people who use this stat(including yourself in this thread) aren't likely to do".

So first, can you be specific about where I have been misled?

As for people in general being unlikely to think of these concerns themselves, this is a plausible concern in general. Where I seem to be getting myself in trouble with folks recently is that I consider all of this to be obvious. Why would anyone who thinks they know better than others about basketball analysis need the caveat in 2023 that raw +/- isn't everything when more sophisticated versions of the stat have been around for 20 years? Only two explanations I can think of:

a) They personally not confused by it at all, but they are concerned about others potentially getting confused, and so they object on the grounds that different approaches must be used so as to not unleash false knowledge on the masses.

This is admirable, and something we can talk at more length about.

b) They don't understand the context they've jumped into and yet manage to still cling to the idea they know best...which gets into all that cognitive dissonance type of stuff.

This is something I'm sure no one would say describes themselves, and I'm sure people are thinking that it's absurd that this "Doctor MJ" guy assumes that he gets decide what thinks people should be expected to bring with them into the dialogue...

but of course this is where we get to the rub that we're not in a random context and I'm not a random guy in this context. I'm not a noob dropping in to some place I've never been before. I've been hear a very long time not just as a poster or Moderator, but as someone creating and running group projects with the intent of facilitating conversations to help build up communal basketball knowledge.

Doesn't mean I'm right about any specific basketball debate.
Doesn't mean I'm choosing the optimal approach to any conversation.

But it does mean that my approach worked with people for a long time, and if it no longer does, then it speaks to a change to the people I'm interacting with. That change doesn't necessarily mean "I'm doing it the right way", but it does mean that people really should look to steelman rather than strawman.

If someone with my experience and success on these boards appears to be saying something incredibly primitive in my data analysis, what more reasonable thing might I actually be trying to communicate?

And of course, I think it would be wise if we all tried to ask this about everyone we interact with, and I don't claim any special immunity to the issue, it's just that when you jump into a new space and you seem to see something beyond basic from established people, you should wonder if you're missing something.

[MyUniBroDavis]

I think you're right about most of what you say here but something I'd like to see more of from the people who appear to be most pro Steph in these sorts of debates is a willingness to accept or see some of the question marks people raise about him. Whether its the amount of impact Draymond and Klay may have on things like +/- or the times when defenses seem to find a way to lessen his impact. Also there's been times where he'd had a proclivity to get too fancy with the ball and make some silly turnovers. I have no issue with the idea of him being above Kobe or a top 10 player of all time either. I just want as full a picture of possible to be used in these types of debates. Steph does have weaknesses(like most any player).

No doubt.

And I'll say, the two most annoying to me are a) the careless turnovers and b) anything with the mouthguard. ADHD be damned, once you start throwing that thing at people, you've got a real problem that I think the NBA should take a harder stance on if only for marketing reasons.

I would have kept the mouthguard and sold it

[MyUniBroDavis]

Wonder if currys impact declining in recent years despite a lot of his production remaining the same has to do with the league catching up in threes and everything

[MyUniBroDavis]

From what I'm getting, this is the same metric you came up with for us in the other thread. In which case, let me blunt, unless I'm missing something, based on the various criticisms in that other thread you never really addressed, this is just a distortion of on/off. Feel free to argue otherwise, but as you ascribe negative value to certain player seasons, I'm ascribing negative value to this stat, as I think it's actively misleading for all the reasons other people brought up and you didn't really have an answer for.

Not going to get into the ego whatever, and I am not particularly attached to the argued value or lack-there-of of realgm consensus, but I don't think this metric has functional utility and people who look at its outputs may be misled without explicit caveats/neccesary curves noted which most people who use this stat(including yourself in this thread) aren't likely to do.

Moreover, as we can already see in this thread, that this is tied to pure impact stuff semantically(even though it is fundamentally different), may serve as a reason for people to ignore real/pure/raw signals entirely when they do analysis which I think is very detrimental..

There may be value in the discussion around the merits of the stat, but that is not the discussion we seem to be having here.

Mind you I have no great hatred for Curry(literally defended him in the first half of this post!), so I doubt this is cognitive dissonance(but feel free to argue otherwise!).

Re: just a distortion of on/off. Distortion would imply I'm building something more complicated than on/off, but the reality is I'm using the more basic stat. I have no objection to using more sophisticated stats - I certainly use them myself - but the idea that sharing raw data is a negative value thing is something I'd object to unless we're talking about something like cherry-picking.

And if we're talking about cherry-picking, then I would encourage folks to think about how to de-pick-the-cherry and consider showing what the results of that stat would look like.

But let me emphasize here:

People seem to be perceiving simplistic data as cherry-picking, and I would object strongly to that way of thinking.
People also seem to be perceiving the presentation of any statistic as something that is intended to be the entirety of the argument, and I would also object strongly to the idea that this is a reasonable assumption in any circumstance, but particularly when the data being shared is so obviously simplistic.

I've been using regressed +/- in some form or another for 15+ years. I'm not someone who fails to understand why we use those more sophisticated techniques, but these metrics don't actually facilitate discussion in this context all that well.

If I simply share two RAPM scores where Player A > Player B with lots of sample, I expect that I'm largely going to get people thinking "Yup, Player A > Player B" or "Still doesn't mean Player A > Player B", and in both circumstances, it's not going to take the conversation anywhere interesting.

Raw data on the other hand cries out for to ask: "So, what all involved caused this?" as well as "If it seems to say Player A > Player B, but we're confident Player B > Player A, what can we identify that might explain the discrepancy?"

If you'd like to re-ask specific questions I never responded to, go ahead.

Re: negative value to a stat. This is an interesting thing to consider. When does the existence of a stat do more harm than good?

I think the most insightful thing I've seen on the subject gets referred to as Goodhart's Law, which gets summarized as
"when the measure becomes the target, it becomes less valid as a measure". This at times can absolutely result in net negative value, but it has to be noted that this only applies when people who have the ability to contribute value are affected.

In this case, we on this board are not NBA decision makers, and it doesn't seem like you're focused on them, so to me what you're saying is that the use of a stat like this drives us further away from from an accurate assessment of the topic in question.

So then, let me ask, can you be specific in where you've seen this manifest?

Re: "people who look at its outputs may be misled without explicit caveats/neccesary curves noted which most people who use this stat(including yourself in this thread) aren't likely to do".

So first, can you be specific about where I have been misled?

As for people in general being unlikely to think of these concerns themselves, this is a plausible concern in general. Where I seem to be getting myself in trouble with folks recently is that I consider all of this to be obvious. Why would anyone who thinks they know better than others about basketball analysis need the caveat in 2023 that raw +/- isn't everything when more sophisticated versions of the stat have been around for 20 years? Only two explanations I can think of:

a) They personally not confused by it at all, but they are concerned about others potentially getting confused, and so they object on the grounds that different approaches must be used so as to not unleash false knowledge on the masses.

This is admirable, and something we can talk at more length about.

b) They don't understand the context they've jumped into and yet manage to still cling to the idea they know best...which gets into all that cognitive dissonance type of stuff.

This is something I'm sure no one would say describes themselves, and I'm sure people are thinking that it's absurd that this "Doctor MJ" guy assumes that he gets decide what thinks people should be expected to bring with them into the dialogue...

but of course this is where we get to the rub that we're not in a random context and I'm not a random guy in this context. I'm not a noob dropping in to some place I've never been before. I've been hear a very long time not just as a poster or Moderator, but as someone creating and running group projects with the intent of facilitating conversations to help build up communal basketball knowledge.

Doesn't mean I'm right about any specific basketball debate.
Doesn't mean I'm choosing the optimal approach to any conversation.

But it does mean that my approach worked with people for a long time, and if it no longer does, then it speaks to a change to the people I'm interacting with. That change doesn't necessarily mean "I'm doing it the right way", but it does mean that people really should look to steelman rather than strawman.

If someone with my experience and success on these boards appears to be saying something incredibly primitive in my data analysis, what more reasonable thing might I actually be trying to communicate?

And of course, I think it would be wise if we all tried to ask this about everyone we interact with, and I don't claim any special immunity to the issue, it's just that when you jump into a new space and you seem to see something beyond basic from established people, you should wonder if you're missing something.

Dawg so like, I respect you as a poster obviously, and I do realize (haven’t followed that much) that you know enough about advanced data that I you think it’s fair to be given the benifit of the doubt considering how long you’ve posted here that ur thought process isn’t as simplistic as “hehe raw +/- is all there is to it” or anything, that’s fine


But man dude you shoulda just said “y’all know me I wouldn’t do that” or something lmao I’m out of breath reading this right now

[Doctor MJ]

From what I'm getting, this is the same metric you came up with for us in the other thread. In which case, let me blunt, unless I'm missing something, based on the various criticisms in that other thread you never really addressed, this is just a distortion of on/off. Feel free to argue otherwise, but as you ascribe negative value to certain player seasons, I'm ascribing negative value to this stat, as I think it's actively misleading for all the reasons other people brought up and you didn't really have an answer for.

Not going to get into the ego whatever, and I am not particularly attached to the argued value or lack-there-of of realgm consensus, but I don't think this metric has functional utility and people who look at its outputs may be misled without explicit caveats/neccesary curves noted which most people who use this stat(including yourself in this thread) aren't likely to do.

Moreover, as we can already see in this thread, that this is tied to pure impact stuff semantically(even though it is fundamentally different), may serve as a reason for people to ignore real/pure/raw signals entirely when they do analysis which I think is very detrimental..

There may be value in the discussion around the merits of the stat, but that is not the discussion we seem to be having here.

Mind you I have no great hatred for Curry(literally defended him in the first half of this post!), so I doubt this is cognitive dissonance(but feel free to argue otherwise!).

Re: just a distortion of on/off. Distortion would imply I'm building something more complicated than on/off, but the reality is I'm using the more basic stat. I have no objection to using more sophisticated stats - I certainly use them myself - but the idea that sharing raw data is a negative value thing is something I'd object to unless we're talking about something like cherry-picking.

And if we're talking about cherry-picking, then I would encourage folks to think about how to de-pick-the-cherry and consider showing what the results of that stat would look like.

But let me emphasize here:

People seem to be perceiving simplistic data as cherry-picking, and I would object strongly to that way of thinking.
People also seem to be perceiving the presentation of any statistic as something that is intended to be the entirety of the argument, and I would also object strongly to the idea that this is a reasonable assumption in any circumstance, but particularly when the data being shared is so obviously simplistic.

I've been using regressed +/- in some form or another for 15+ years. I'm not someone who fails to understand why we use those more sophisticated techniques, but these metrics don't actually facilitate discussion in this context all that well.

If I simply share two RAPM scores where Player A > Player B with lots of sample, I expect that I'm largely going to get people thinking "Yup, Player A > Player B" or "Still doesn't mean Player A > Player B", and in both circumstances, it's not going to take the conversation anywhere interesting.

Raw data on the other hand cries out for to ask: "So, what all involved caused this?" as well as "If it seems to say Player A > Player B, but we're confident Player B > Player A, what can we identify that might explain the discrepancy?"

If you'd like to re-ask specific questions I never responded to, go ahead.

Re: negative value to a stat. This is an interesting thing to consider. When does the existence of a stat do more harm than good?

I think the most insightful thing I've seen on the subject gets referred to as Goodhart's Law, which gets summarized as
"when the measure becomes the target, it becomes less valid as a measure". This at times can absolutely result in net negative value, but it has to be noted that this only applies when people who have the ability to contribute value are affected.

In this case, we on this board are not NBA decision makers, and it doesn't seem like you're focused on them, so to me what you're saying is that the use of a stat like this drives us further away from from an accurate assessment of the topic in question.

So then, let me ask, can you be specific in where you've seen this manifest?

Re: "people who look at its outputs may be misled without explicit caveats/neccesary curves noted which most people who use this stat(including yourself in this thread) aren't likely to do".

So first, can you be specific about where I have been misled?

As for people in general being unlikely to think of these concerns themselves, this is a plausible concern in general. Where I seem to be getting myself in trouble with folks recently is that I consider all of this to be obvious. Why would anyone who thinks they know better than others about basketball analysis need the caveat in 2023 that raw +/- isn't everything when more sophisticated versions of the stat have been around for 20 years? Only two explanations I can think of:

a) They personally not confused by it at all, but they are concerned about others potentially getting confused, and so they object on the grounds that different approaches must be used so as to not unleash false knowledge on the masses.

This is admirable, and something we can talk at more length about.

b) They don't understand the context they've jumped into and yet manage to still cling to the idea they know best...which gets into all that cognitive dissonance type of stuff.

This is something I'm sure no one would say describes themselves, and I'm sure people are thinking that it's absurd that this "Doctor MJ" guy assumes that he gets decide what thinks people should be expected to bring with them into the dialogue...

but of course this is where we get to the rub that we're not in a random context and I'm not a random guy in this context. I'm not a noob dropping in to some place I've never been before. I've been hear a very long time not just as a poster or Moderator, but as someone creating and running group projects with the intent of facilitating conversations to help build up communal basketball knowledge.

Doesn't mean I'm right about any specific basketball debate.
Doesn't mean I'm choosing the optimal approach to any conversation.

But it does mean that my approach worked with people for a long time, and if it no longer does, then it speaks to a change to the people I'm interacting with. That change doesn't necessarily mean "I'm doing it the right way", but it does mean that people really should look to steelman rather than strawman.

If someone with my experience and success on these boards appears to be saying something incredibly primitive in my data analysis, what more reasonable thing might I actually be trying to communicate?

And of course, I think it would be wise if we all tried to ask this about everyone we interact with, and I don't claim any special immunity to the issue, it's just that when you jump into a new space and you seem to see something beyond basic from established people, you should wonder if you're missing something.

Dawg so like, I respect you as a poster obviously, and I do realize (haven’t followed that much) that you know enough about advanced data that I you think it’s fair to be given the benifit of the doubt considering how long you’ve posted here that ur thought process isn’t as simplistic as “hehe raw +/- is all there is to it” or anything, that’s fine


But man dude you shoulda just said “y’all know me I wouldn’t do that” or something lmao I’m out of breath reading this right now

Well, first I appreciate the kind words MyUniBro!

To your last, the fundamental issue is that I don't think these folks do know me, so I don't have the perceived ethos for such a statement to carry weight.

As to why I go into the detail I do, well, honestly, this is just me replying to the points made in the post I quoted. The verbose way I replied compared to Ohayo's post and the way it hit you surely says something about issues in communicating my ideas to others. Would be good if I could get better, but honestly I feel good just being able to get something out of my head in a form that at least makes sense to me.

Writer's block, believe it or not, is a huge issue for me and one of the things that draws me back to RealGM again and again is that it's a place where I don't seem to have these difficulty. If I can gain momentum writing here, sometimes that helps me with something I'm struggling with elsewhere.

[Doctor MJ]

Wonder if currys impact declining in recent years despite a lot of his production remaining the same has to do with the league catching up in threes and everything

Oh, I think you're definitely right. This is continued paradigm shift causing everyone else to get better in the wake of embracing more effective strategy (some of which came from the Warriors).

Ben's also pointed out that the Warriors' defensive scheme - as cutting edge as it was - is better suited toward stopping the more traditional offensive attacks that rules the land before than the Warrior-influenced schemes of today are. Perhaps the Warriors can innovate from where they are defensively to get back on top, but there's good reason to think that the Warriors would gradually be experiencing a thinner and thinner margin for error even without aging and health concerns.

I still think that the Warriors are an extremely dangerous playoff opponent who we know can sometimes figure things out over the course of the match-up - take any series and if the Warriors win, it won't feel like that much of a surprise - but I think there's good reason to question whether they can really be expected to beat all comers again...and man, if they have to play the Suns in the 1st round with a healthy Durant, I'd have to call the Suns favorites.

At the same time, Curry's still got strong-by-normal standards impact data now despite the fact that the team has made a point to mold a new player in Curry's image (Poole), make sure that their other great 3-point shooter (Klay) gets all the money and all the help he needs to keep doing his thing for as long as possible, and add other 3-point shooters to go along the way...all while Curry ages into his mid-30s. So I'm cautious about assuming that the continued revolution in the game is having the vast majority of what we're seeing is. It's a factor, might be the dominant factor, but I don't want to come to a grand conclusion here prematurely.

[Outside]

I don't have the time or tools to add anything meaningful to a discussion like this, or most of the quality discussions on the PC board, but I'll make an observation anyway. This comp is fascinating to me, for multiple reasons.

-- The difference in eras.

-- The difference in playing styles.

-- How to balance intangibles, box score stats, and derived/impact stats.

-- How to assess Kobe's late-career seasons, which were of questionable value (to put it mildly) in a comparison of all-time greats but still added to career totals in box score stats and related stats like VORP.

-- Both players have a significant number of supporters who are biased, which in a comparison of this type, can tilt their assessment in favor of one player.

In my view, it's impossible to come up with a definitive answer to the question posed in the thread, especially with Curry's career still in progress, and even if you attempt to rely solely on data, where someone ends up on this question depends on how you choose to balance the various data elements in your assessment. But despite all that, it can lead to good discussion, and I enjoy reading that discussion by posters capable of having it.