Regular Season: '23 Curry vs '23 Lillard

[jalengreen]

Saw this comparison and found it interesting

Steph: 56 GP, 34.7 MPG, 1941 total minutes
Dame: 58 GP, 36.3 MPG, 2107 total minutes

Steph: 30-26 W-L as starter (14-12 without)
Dame: 27-31 W-L as starter (5-9 without*)
* Blazers' record without Dame excludes the 1-9 end of season run where he was shut down for the tank

Steph: 29.4 / 6.1 / 6.3 on 65.6% TS%
Dame: 32.2 / 4.8 / 7.3 on 64.5% TS%

Steph: +5.8 on, -2.2 off, +8.0 on/off
Dame: +2.2 on, -10.6 off, +12.8 on/off

Steph: +6.3 EPM, +12.2 EW
Dame: +7.1 EPM, +14.3 EW

Steph: +3.47 LEBRON, +7.00 WAR
Dame: +3.75 LEBRON, +8.20 WAR

Feels like a rare regular season in which Lillard has a case over Curry (for the regular season, overall season this will most likely not be a discussion following the postseason) that isn't just because he played far more games.

What do you think?

[rand]

RAPM

Steph: #37 (#15 ORAPM, #220 DRAPM)
Dame: #58 (#8 ORAPM, #491 DRAPM)

I think they were about even offensively this season but defensively Dame continues to be one of the worst defenders in the NBA as he has been throughout his entire career while Curry is actually an above average defender at his position.

[Dutchball97]

I don't see how people would pick Curry here tbh and him currently winning the poll by a landslide is a huge disappointment for the board that's supposed to actually do some research instead of defaulting to what might've been in the past. They're in a similar caliber this season but Dame played more and played better per minute so unless people are conflating team results with individual performance or projecting past seasons or something there isn't really a case for Curry over Dame.

[AEnigma]

I don't see how people would pick Curry here tbh and him currently winning the poll by a landslide is a huge disappointment for the board that's supposed to actually do some research instead of defaulting to what might've been in the past. They're in a similar caliber this season but Dame played more and played better per minute so unless people are conflating team results with individual performance or projecting past seasons or something there isn't really a case for Curry over Dame.

Or perhaps people are doing more than just looking at a few raw averages and all-in-ones and saying yep, nothing more to consider.

Lillard may have become a better player, but the test of that for most people is not going to ever be based on what he is putting up on a lottery team.

[Dutchball97]

I don't see how people would pick Curry here tbh and him currently winning the poll by a landslide is a huge disappointment for the board that's supposed to actually do some research instead of defaulting to what might've been in the past. They're in a similar caliber this season but Dame played more and played better per minute so unless people are conflating team results with individual performance or projecting past seasons or something there isn't really a case for Curry over Dame.

Or perhaps people are doing more than just looking at a few raw averages and all-in-ones and saying yep, nothing more to consider.

Lillard may have become a better player, but the test of that for most people is not going to ever be based on what he is putting up on a lottery team.

Perhaps they're being more thorough but judging by how literally none of that has been talked about it is fair to assume they don't have a statistical basis for picking Curry over Dame this season. I'm always open to have my mind changed but at least bring an argument instead of some vague maybes.

Also the question is who had a better regular season in 22/23 but then you say that Lillard being a better player than Curry this regular season shouldn't matter because he's on a lottery team?

Weird.

[AEnigma]

It means there is an innate disparity in scale of production, yes. The goal is not to individually produce more “numbers”.

I am not saying it is outright wrong to see Lillard with an advantage in the all-in-ones and decide he gets the regular season edge this year, but if next year Lillard is on a more competitive team and his production slides, are you going to retroactively change how you assessed this year, or are you going to conclude that 2023 was an unfortunate wasted year right when Lillard peaked and that tragically he was unable to maintain that form for any longer.

[Dutchball97]

It means there is an innate disparity in scale of production, yes. The goal is not to individually produce more “numbers”.

I am not saying it is outright wrong to see Lillard with an advantage in the all-in-ones and decide he gets the regular season edge this year, but if next year Lillard is on a more competitive team and his production slides, are you going to retroactively change how you assessed this year, or are you going to conclude that 2023 was an unfortunate wasted year right when Lillard peaked and that tragically he was unable to maintain that form for any longer.

When you look at LEBRON you'll see Dame has 4 seasons better than his 22/23 season all in a row from 2017 to 2020. For Curry the 22/23 season is only his 9th highest rated in LEBRON in his career. Of those 8 Curry seasons that are better than his 22/23 season, 7 of them are even higher rated than Dame's 18/19 peak season.

The point is we're not talking about peak Curry nor peak Dame, we're talking about a 35yo Curry who has nearly halved his impact since 2015-2017 and a 32yo Dame who has like 1 point less impact than his peak.

What happens next season is irrelevant to what happened this regular season imo. This is not a level unheard of for Dame.

[SpreeS]

It means there is an innate disparity in scale of production, yes. The goal is not to individually produce more “numbers”.

I am not saying it is outright wrong to see Lillard with an advantage in the all-in-ones and decide he gets the regular season edge this year, but if next year Lillard is on a more competitive team and his production slides, are you going to retroactively change how you assessed this year, or are you going to conclude that 2023 was an unfortunate wasted year right when Lillard peaked and that tragically he was unable to maintain that form for any longer.

When you look at LEBRON you'll see Dame has 4 seasons better than his 22/23 season all in a row from 2017 to 2020. For Curry the 22/23 season is only his 9th highest rated in LEBRON in his career. Of those 8 Curry seasons that are better than his 22/23 season, 7 of them are even higher rated than Dame's 18/19 peak season.

The point is we're not talking about peak Curry nor peak Dame, we're talking about a 35yo Curry who has nearly halved his impact since 2015-2017 and a 32yo Dame who has like 1 point less impact than his peak.

What happens next season is irrelevant to what happened this regular season imo. This is not a level unheard of for Dame.

Let's wait PO. Nothing will change between Curry/Lillard, if Curry will keep production as last year with deep PO run. Guy could be not so interested in RS after ordinary champioship.

[Dutchball97]

It means there is an innate disparity in scale of production, yes. The goal is not to individually produce more “numbers”.

I am not saying it is outright wrong to see Lillard with an advantage in the all-in-ones and decide he gets the regular season edge this year, but if next year Lillard is on a more competitive team and his production slides, are you going to retroactively change how you assessed this year, or are you going to conclude that 2023 was an unfortunate wasted year right when Lillard peaked and that tragically he was unable to maintain that form for any longer.

When you look at LEBRON you'll see Dame has 4 seasons better than his 22/23 season all in a row from 2017 to 2020. For Curry the 22/23 season is only his 9th highest rated in LEBRON in his career. Of those 8 Curry seasons that are better than his 22/23 season, 7 of them are even higher rated than Dame's 18/19 peak season.

The point is we're not talking about peak Curry nor peak Dame, we're talking about a 35yo Curry who has nearly halved his impact since 2015-2017 and a 32yo Dame who has like 1 point less impact than his peak.

What happens next season is irrelevant to what happened this regular season imo. This is not a level unheard of for Dame.

Let's wait PO. Nothing will change between Curry/Lillard, if Curry will keep production as last year with deep PO run. Guy could be not so interested in RS after ordinary champioship.

This thread: who had the better regular season, Curry or Dame?

You: Let's wait for the play-offs.

Make it make sense. Has nobody read the title or something? I mean even in the opening post it is stated that Curry will almost certainly have a better overall season due to actually making the play-offs. This isn't about who you'd take going forward, this isn't asking if Dame has surpassed Curry, it's literally and only just the 22/23 regular season.

[AEnigma]

It means there is an innate disparity in scale of production, yes. The goal is not to individually produce more “numbers”.

I am not saying it is outright wrong to see Lillard with an advantage in the all-in-ones and decide he gets the regular season edge this year, but if next year Lillard is on a more competitive team and his production slides, are you going to retroactively change how you assessed this year, or are you going to conclude that 2023 was an unfortunate wasted year right when Lillard peaked and that tragically he was unable to maintain that form for any longer.

When you look at LEBRON you'll see Dame has 4 seasons better than his 22/23 season all in a row from 2017 to 2020.

Do you think that those Lillard seasons are therefore all better than both Lillard and Curry are right now?

For Curry the 22/23 season is only his 9th highest rated in LEBRON in his career. Of those 8 Curry seasons that are better than his 22/23 season, 7 of them are even higher rated than Dame's 18/19 peak season.

Did you feel they were particularly close as players in 2019.

The point is we're not talking about peak Curry nor peak Dame, we're talking about a 35yo Curry who has nearly halved his impact since 2015-2017

Yes, he “halved his impact” by a measure which takes multiple Giannis and Jokic seasons, as well as a Harden, Kawhi, and Chris Paul season, over his peak.

Can you analyse how he has changed as a player, or are you restricted to repeating what a few formulas churn out.

and a 32yo Dame who has like 1 point less impact than his peak.

What happens next season is irrelevant to what happened this regular season imo. This is not a level unheard of for Dame.

Lillard has never scored at this level even relative to the league (2020 was similarly efficient but on lower volume). I am more likely to consider 2020 as his real peak contextually — shared scoring volume, was on a relevant team, had what I think was his most impressive playoff series as an individual — but again that brings us back to whether we want to argue prime Lillard was better than multiple prime Curry seasons; I do not.

Now, as for the differences? Well, Lillard was a little more of an outlier a few years ago. This is probably his best scoring season relative to what he individually can do, but he stood out more as a scorer relative to the league in 2019 and 2020. His defence has declined, or at least teams target him more now. He may be a more resilient playoff scorer judging off 2020 and 2021 — probably something you should be noting when trying to push his “impact” in 2017-19… — but we also have no means of testing that because he has missed the playoffs for the past two years now.

All you have done by trying to paint this year as a ho-hum Lillard year is further convince me that it is a superficial comparison. Lillard has never been on Steph’s level, or even particularly close in a broader scheme, and Steph individually has not declined enough for me to feel he suddenly plummeted below Lillard immediately after winning his fourth title. Steph was better every year up until this year, where out of nowhere Lillard jumped ahead despite Steph being one of the league’s best scorers (and rebounding as a scorer compared to a down 2022)? Yeah, Steph also has been targeted a bit more aggressively on defence, but not close to the extent Lillard is targeted, so where exactly is Lillard gaining all this ground?

If all I wanted were a spreadsheet of which players rank where with what choice of all-in-one metric, I could do that myself. None of that is an argument for a player’s actual skillset.

[jalengreen]

I don't see how people would pick Curry here tbh and him currently winning the poll by a landslide is a huge disappointment for the board that's supposed to actually do some research instead of defaulting to what might've been in the past. They're in a similar caliber this season but Dame played more and played better per minute so unless people are conflating team results with individual performance or projecting past seasons or something there isn't really a case for Curry over Dame.

Or perhaps people are doing more than just looking at a few raw averages and all-in-ones and saying yep, nothing more to consider.

Lillard may have become a better player, but the test of that for most people is not going to ever be based on what he is putting up on a lottery team.

I think there's a decent chance that some people are looking at even less than that. Not necessarily everyone, but when the player conventionally known to be better is winning in a landslide & there's very little justification provided, I can't say that my takeaway is "Wow, people are doing a lot of thinking." Maybe I'm wrong though, in which case I'm missing said elevated thinking.

[AEnigma]

I don't see how people would pick Curry here tbh and him currently winning the poll by a landslide is a huge disappointment for the board that's supposed to actually do some research instead of defaulting to what might've been in the past. They're in a similar caliber this season but Dame played more and played better per minute so unless people are conflating team results with individual performance or projecting past seasons or something there isn't really a case for Curry over Dame.

Or perhaps people are doing more than just looking at a few raw averages and all-in-ones and saying yep, nothing more to consider.

Lillard may have become a better player, but the test of that for most people is not going to ever be based on what he is putting up on a lottery team.

I think there's a decent chance that some people are looking at even less than that. Not necessarily everyone, but when the player conventionally known to be better is winning in a landslide & there's very little justification provided, I can't say that my takeaway is "Wow, people are doing a lot of thinking." Maybe I'm wrong though, in which case I'm missing said elevated thinking.

And where exactly is the “thinking” present in saying, here are a few metrics where Lillard is ahead of Curry. Is it a given now that Franz Wagner is better than Jaylen Brown and that Desmond Bane is better than Bradley Beal because the former in each respective comparison has the edge in EPM, LEBRON, and RAPM?

[Dutchball97]

"Skillset" isn't relevant to impact and we don't have a 100% certain way of measuring impact but you could certainly do better than LEBRON. It's not like having a better jumpshot or being targeted more on defense isn't reflected in stats. Besides that it's about the regular season here and you for some reason keep bringing up the play-offs and overall seasons. It doesn't matter that you don't think Curry is underrated by LEBRON when you're comparing him to his other seasons and another player with a similar skillset.

The point I tried to make with LEBRON that Curry is further removed from his peak level than Dame and for this regular season in particular Dame looks better. If you look at RAPTOR the 22/23 season is the highest in Dame's career at +7.7 and the lowest in Curry's career at +6.5, while Curry's peak regular season (15/16) is at +12.5. Boxscore stats paint a similar picture with this being far removed from Curry's peak, while for Dame his 22/23 is close to his highest marks but not quite first in any of them. I'm not sure what you want to achieve by ranting against "formulas" unless you're able to produce a analysis that's more reliable than the ones we have.

[Dutchball97]

Or perhaps people are doing more than just looking at a few raw averages and all-in-ones and saying yep, nothing more to consider.

Lillard may have become a better player, but the test of that for most people is not going to ever be based on what he is putting up on a lottery team.

I think there's a decent chance that some people are looking at even less than that. Not necessarily everyone, but when the player conventionally known to be better is winning in a landslide & there's very little justification provided, I can't say that my takeaway is "Wow, people are doing a lot of thinking." Maybe I'm wrong though, in which case I'm missing said elevated thinking.

And where exactly is the “thinking” present in saying, here are a few metrics where Lillard is ahead of Curry. Is it a given now that Franz Wagner is better than Jaylen Brown and that Desmond Bane is better than Bradley Beal because the former in each respective comparison has the edge in EPM, LEBRON, and RAPM?

You're conflating "better" with "better regular season". Wagner isn't better than Brown (yet) but why can't he have had a better regular season? Same for Bane and Beal.

[AEnigma]

I suppose I hoped to achieve a dynamic where basketball is not judged by averaging out ranks across a bunch of all-in-ones. Apparently that was asking too much.

Yes, the postseason is relevant to assessing players. If someone looks better in the regular season but never looks better in the postseason, alright, maybe the other guy is just a total sandbagger, but more realistically there is a disconnect between the regular season indicators and what each player is actually doing. What are you hoping to accomplish if you need to take this frame where one guy is worse in the playoffs and in this case missed the playoffs outright, but oh, he was more productive, so I guess that must mean he is better.

Again, everyone can look at a spreadsheet. Conduct some real analysis if you want people to care.

[Dutchball97]

The post-season is the most important part for player evaluation and at the same time an absolute non-factor in a comparison of regular seasons, this thread is about the regular season.

If averaging out multiple of the best metrics isn't a good way to get approximate rankings then I don't know what is besides literally tracking every single game yourself. That might be a fun project later down the line but how many people do you not only expect to watch (nearly) every game but also do so critically while the season is going on?

[jalengreen]

And where exactly is the “thinking” present in saying, here are a few metrics where Lillard is ahead of Curry.

The thinking present is considering the possibility that Player A may have had a worse regular season than Player B despite Player A in general being a far greater player than Player B during this era.

You are the user who proceeded to make the following claim about "thinking":

> Or perhaps people are doing more than just looking at a few raw averages and all-in-ones and saying yep, nothing more to consider.

Which, as I previously said, is a bit odd to me considering the actual circumstances of this thread. I don't really see all of this elevated thinking that you speak of.

Is it a given now that Franz Wagner is better than Jaylen Brown and that Desmond Bane is better than Bradley Beal because the former in each respective comparison has the edge in EPM, LEBRON, and RAPM?

No, I do not think so. And if you're implying that I said it's a given that Damian Lillard is better than Stephen Curry, I would strongly challenge that. I hope I'm just misinterpreting your point here and you're not being intentionally dishonest.

(on a somewhat unrelated note, I probably would say that Bane this season > Beal)

[AEnigma]

The fact no one else is posting does not mean no one is capable of giving it thought, it means it is not something that interests them enough to debate. Maybe I should have followed their example if this is going to be the level of discourse.

Bane may be better than Beal now, but situation matters, and I doubt Bane would be ahead in those metrics if they had swapped teams at the beginning of the season.

I imagine you asked the question honestly and are frustrated with the lack of conversation, but I offered an explanation why it does not seem reasonable that Lillard suddenly skyrocketed ahead of Curry, and you seem to have rejected it. Where does that leave us?

[AEnigma]

The post-season is the most important part for player evaluation and at the same time an absolute non-factor in a comparison of regular seasons, this thread is about the regular season.

If averaging out multiple of the best metrics isn't a good way to get approximate rankings then I don't know what is besides literally tracking every single game yourself. That might be a fun project later down the line but how many people do you not only expect to watch (nearly) every game but also do so critically while the season is going on?

I expect some critical thinking at least, just like I did when apparently Lebron was cooked in 2022 because all his “metrics” were mediocre. None of this occurs in a vacuum. It is not enough to say “Curry’s LEBRON is half as impactful as it used to be and therefore Curry is half as impactful a regular season player now.” Analyse what Curry is producing, because that is the only thing he can control. Raw impact fluctuates year to year, but that does not mean players themselves are radically changing at a commiserate level. The question was who was better, not who had bigger numbers in certain select metrics.

[Dutchball97]

The post-season is the most important part for player evaluation and at the same time an absolute non-factor in a comparison of regular seasons, this thread is about the regular season.

If averaging out multiple of the best metrics isn't a good way to get approximate rankings then I don't know what is besides literally tracking every single game yourself. That might be a fun project later down the line but how many people do you not only expect to watch (nearly) every game but also do so critically while the season is going on?

I expect some critical thinking at least, just like I did when apparently Lebron was cooked in 2022 because all his “metrics” were mediocre. None of this occurs in a vacuum. It is not enough to say “Curry’s LEBRON is half as impactful as it used to be and therefore Curry is half as impactful a regular season player now.” Analyse what Curry is producing, because that is the only thing he can control. Raw impact fluctuates year to year, but that does not mean players themselves are radically changing at a commiserate level. The question was who was better, not who had bigger numbers in certain select metrics.

"Feels like a rare regular season in which Lillard has a case over Curry (for the regular season, overall season this will most likely not be a discussion following the postseason) that isn't just because he played far more games.

What do you think?"

And now kindly point out where in the question it says it's about who is the better player because I don't see it. You've been arguing a completely different thing than the purpose of this thread from the start and keep doubling down.

“Curry’s LEBRON is half as impactful as it used to be and therefore Curry is half as impactful a regular season player now.” I don't even know what to say man. HIs impact as measured by LEBRON has nearly halved from his peak to now, I then showed it being a similar case with RAPTOR. For boxscore stats it's generally not halved but still huge differences between his peak and now in all of them. For RAPM it's way more than halved but that's not how we should look at it as the team around him was better too but while Curry is now 37th in the league, Draymond is still 7th despite both peaking at #1 in the 2015-2017 period.

And then you're going to reply oh no what has basketball discussion come to that we're using all-in-one metrics but what do you have that explains such big shifts in every single metric across the board for Curry? Or are you going to say he didn't drop off nearly as much in the play-offs? Because that's true (both because of a lower post-season peak in general and older players trying less in the regular season but still showing up for the play-offs) but not relevant to a question about who had the better regular season.