Curry vs Paul in PO

[Doctor MJ]

Paul's numbers are inexplicably bad regarding the 'FFF'

Guessing he gets injured for at least half of those though.

Well what I’d say is that there’s a built in explanation:

In series, teams adjust. Both the coaching strategy and the player comfort. If your group is the one that adjusts better, you’re the figure-outers. The other group would be the figured-out.

It’s possible that Paul’s situation can be chalked up to the unique bad luck of him and his teammates tending to get injured mid-way through playoff series.

But if this isn’t the answer, then I’d argue the question isn’t whether Paul’s team is the one who gets figured-out, but how specifically this is occurring.

Perhaps there’s an answer that doesn’t say anything specifically bad about Paul, but something is occurring.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Aside from the specifics and speaking to the concept ...
I disagree with this as the "built in" framing. Maybe the leading team is worse but figures out their opponents weaknesses from the start whilst the opposing team takes time to even things out strategically and win on talent (which I would not consider being "figured out". Just as one example. I don't immediately see why one should be more likely than the other.

Well, if we were talking about a player known for being on teams that came into series with strategies that were radically different from the regular season, then I think that would be a perfectly plausible explanation.

Do you believe that historically this is just as common as teams who get stuck in Plan A as the series gets away from them?
Can you give examples of these teams known for radical Game 1 game plans?
Do you associate Chris Paul teams with radical Game 1 game plans?

[Owly]

Well what I’d say is that there’s a built in explanation:

In series, teams adjust. Both the coaching strategy and the player comfort. If your group is the one that adjusts better, you’re the figure-outers. The other group would be the figured-out.

It’s possible that Paul’s situation can be chalked up to the unique bad luck of him and his teammates tending to get injured mid-way through playoff series.

But if this isn’t the answer, then I’d argue the question isn’t whether Paul’s team is the one who gets figured-out, but how specifically this is occurring.

Perhaps there’s an answer that doesn’t say anything specifically bad about Paul, but something is occurring.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Aside from the specifics and speaking to the concept ...
I disagree with this as the "built in" framing. Maybe the leading team is worse but figures out their opponents weaknesses from the start whilst the opposing team takes time to even things out strategically and win on talent (which I would not consider being "figured out". Just as one example. I don't immediately see why one should be more likely than the other.

Well, if we were talking about a player known for being on teams that came into series with strategies that were radically different from the regular season, then I think that would be a perfectly plausible explanation.

Do you believe that historically this is just as common as teams who get stuck in Plan A as the series gets away from them?
Can you give examples of these teams known for radical Game 1 game plans?
Do you associate Chris Paul teams with radical Game 1 game plans?

To be clear when I said aside from the specifics and speaking to concept that meant this isn't about Chris Paul.

I'm not greatly into the weeds on X's and O's.
I don't know how many teams make "radical" changes across NBA history either prior to or during series.
There's a lot more talk of the chess match going on these days, I don't know if that's better, more niche coverage or more changes, my limited guess would be both.
Fwiw, I don't think it would require "radical" changes. I can imagine a player simply being better prepared, having a better, more integrated mental book on his opponents and given a touch more time than usual, being better able to read their tendencies and turn one to three plays a game the other way, which might only turn a 1-2 into a 2-1 but there's your "fall" criteria hit. Then again if they're really integrating that knowledge into their game quickly, adaptably they might do it RS and it's baked into how good they are RS.

fwiw, On Paul ...
I am inclined to think that if one is arguing Paul is the constant and his flaws were something you could figure out after about two or three games of close analysis then I don't understand how he sustained such impact over his career.

I'd just want someone to look closer at ... Is he playing worse. Is he less effective. How much can be explained by injuries. How much is stuff that fluctuates a lot and is quite likely (or in the case FT% near certain) to be luck (3pt%) and less likely to be opponent planning changes. I'd want to look at individual teammates free throw percentages. I'd want to establish baselines for how all players stats change in wins versus losses as the two groups of games as presently dictated (with the split coming at a point after a win and followed by a loss and basically built to stack results on either side rather than performance up to and then after ... say, game 4. I'd want something like that game 4 version as at least an alternative. I'd want to look at all series rather than the subset that's more likely to fit the hypothesis. IDK at the moment it just feels a bit "they lost so why did they lose" and as before that going ahead is bad ...

[kendogg]

Chris Paul is John Stockton version 2.0. Amazing floor leader who played both ends and had virtually no weakness aside from height. Absolutely a top 25 career all time. But Curry is probably top 15 when all is said and done and has an outside shot at top 10. Curry's offensive gravity is unprecedented for a guard. Yes some of that is due to his era and how much easier it is to score in this era than any other, but it doesn't take away from the fact that Curry is the only guy that gets doubled off the ball.

[rk2023]

Chris Paul is John Stockton version 2.0. Amazing floor leader who played both ends and had virtually no weakness aside from height. Absolutely a top 25 career all time. But Curry is probably top 15 when all is said and done and has an outside shot at top 10. Curry's offensive gravity is unprecedented for a guard. Yes some of that is due to his era and how much easier it is to score in this era than any other, but it doesn't take away from the fact that Curry is the only guy that gets doubled off the ball.

Shaq and Kareem?

[kendogg]

Chris Paul is John Stockton version 2.0. Amazing floor leader who played both ends and had virtually no weakness aside from height. Absolutely a top 25 career all time. But Curry is probably top 15 when all is said and done and has an outside shot at top 10. Curry's offensive gravity is unprecedented for a guard. Yes some of that is due to his era and how much easier it is to score in this era than any other, but it doesn't take away from the fact that Curry is the only guy that gets doubled off the ball.

Shaq and Kareem?

Doubled off ball as a guard. Yes Shaq and Wilt did, maybe Kareem at times as well, but they are all centers.

[Doctor MJ]

Aside from the specifics and speaking to the concept ...
I disagree with this as the "built in" framing. Maybe the leading team is worse but figures out their opponents weaknesses from the start whilst the opposing team takes time to even things out strategically and win on talent (which I would not consider being "figured out". Just as one example. I don't immediately see why one should be more likely than the other.

Well, if we were talking about a player known for being on teams that came into series with strategies that were radically different from the regular season, then I think that would be a perfectly plausible explanation.

Do you believe that historically this is just as common as teams who get stuck in Plan A as the series gets away from them?
Can you give examples of these teams known for radical Game 1 game plans?
Do you associate Chris Paul teams with radical Game 1 game plans?

To be clear when I said aside from the specifics and speaking to concept that meant this isn't about Chris Paul.

I'm not greatly into the weeds on X's and O's.
I don't know how many teams make "radical" changes across NBA history either prior to or during series.
There's a lot more talk of the chess match going on these days, I don't know if that's better, more niche coverage or more changes, my limited guess would be both.
Fwiw, I don't think it would require "radical" changes. I can imagine a player simply being better prepared, having a better, more integrated mental book on his opponents and given a touch more time than usual, being better able to read their tendencies and turn one to three plays a game the other way, which might only turn a 1-2 into a 2-1 but there's your "fall" criteria hit. Then again if they're really integrating that knowledge into their game quickly, adaptably they might do it RS and it's baked into how good they are RS.

So, I'll just say, what you describe is absolutely plausible, but in my observations in series basketball - for whatever they are worth - is that those best able to game plan against their opponent tend to demonstrate this capacity after the series has begun rather than before.

fwiw, On Paul ...
I am inclined to think that if one is arguing Paul is the constant and his flaws were something you could figure out after about two or three games of close analysis then I don't understand how he sustained such impact over his career.

I'd just want someone to look closer at ... Is he playing worse. Is he less effective. How much can be explained by injuries. How much is stuff that fluctuates a lot and is quite likely (or in the case FT% near certain) to be luck (3pt%) and less likely to be opponent planning changes. I'd want to look at individual teammates free throw percentages. I'd want to establish baselines for how all players stats change in wins versus losses as the two groups of games as presently dictated (with the split coming at a point after a win and followed by a loss and basically built to stack results on either side rather than performance up to and then after ... say, game 4. I'd want something like that game 4 version as at least an alternative. I'd want to look at all series rather than the subset that's more likely to fit the hypothesis.

So, to your second paragraph:

That study would be worth doing, and maybe at some point I'll do it. Last year I posted some numbers focused on +/- to show the trend of Paul having issues on the back end of series, but I won't pretend that gives the kind of multi-dimensional picture like a study along the lines you request would do.

Re: if can be figured out over series, how sustain impact for a career? I'd think of it like this:

It's not lottery teams who are doing this by definition, nor is it any of the many teams Paul's team has beaten in the playoffs. Paul's had excellent playoff success by even HOF threshold standards. We're not talking about a situation where Paul's teams drop from NBA championship contender levels to G-league levels. We're talking about the possibility of a slight dip wherein excellent teams can find a way to adapt and effectively drop Paul's team down one rung on the NBA's 30-rung ladder.

Further, often when this happens, you're talking about a team changing collective shape at the direction of their coach. Not every coach develop their team to be able to assume novel shape effectively during a playoff series, to say nothing of making the right call on which novel shape will swing the series.

When you think of this as something that might only be relevant in match-ups against like 10% of the league, I think it seems like a less dramatic thing that if feels like when we discuss it in player comparisons.

Why? Because we're generally comparing a player with another player who is "comparable", as in, seen as similarly good at basketball. In such comparisons, nits are picked to death as we try to find some way to feel like we can select one over the other, and then things get passionate, and over time we get polarized, etc, etc.

And of course all of this whittling down of the percentage likelihood that something like this was occurring is further whittled by the fact that injuries were a significant part of what happened.

And of course, this is basketball. We're not talking about a player being unable to succeed on any possession. What we're talking about a slight tilting of the efficiency landscape that's just enough to tilt the net advantage to the other side.

Truly, we are essentially by definition here "blowing this up out of proportion". That's what lenses are for. It's a useful thing, but it can transform lizards into dragons.

IDK at the moment it just feels a bit "they lost so why did they lose" and as before that going ahead is bad ...

Wanted to break this out separately because of the phrase you put in quotes, which is very interesting and has me thinking a bit.

Can you elaborate on what specifically the epistemic pitfall is?

To give an example, I could see an argument here that the pitfall is something like:

Treating an incomplete set of possibilities as if it were the complete, and thus deciding that a particular thing must be true because no other imagined possibilities could be, when the true lay outside imagination.

Would you agree that that's a relevant pitfall? Are there others on your mind?

[Lost92Bricks]

People once again only comparing Paul to players who won championships making him look bad and being overly critical of him.

How the hell does a hall of fame player lose every poll and comparison and always leads to controversial discussion.

[Lost92Bricks]

Why does Chris never get compared to guys like Iverson or Damian Lillard or Westbrook or Reggie Miller on here.

People just like criticizing him and blaming him so they go right to the championship players to compare him to.

[No-more-rings]

Why does Chris never get compared to guys like Iverson or Damian Lillard or Westbrook or Reggie Miller on here.

People just like criticizing him and blaming him so they go right to the championship players to compare him to.

Well many people yourself included claim he’s a Steph Curry level player, even despite his resume and accomplishments being markedly worse so not sure what exactly is surprising.

[Lost92Bricks]

Well many people yourself included claim he’s a Steph Curry level player, even despite his resume and accomplishments being markedly worse so not sure what exactly is surprising.

That is SO FAR from being the consensus on him. Please stop.

The few times you see it triggers you so much that you pretend that's the common way people see him.

So it gives you an excuse to complain how overrated he is.

[Doctor MJ]

Why does Chris never get compared to guys like Iverson or Damian Lillard or Westbrook or Reggie Miller on here.

People just like criticizing him and blaming him so they go right to the championship players to compare him to.

I understand it feeling that way, but do remember that as of the 2020 Top 100 Paul ranked ahead of Curry. That wasn't a Peak debate of course, but fundamentally the reason why Paul gets in debates with the likes of Curry is because of highly rated he is.

[Owly]

Don’t have time and am kind of burnt out but briefly.

Re Paul figured out: I guess I don’t get what it means to be figured out. My thinking was a specific flaw that maybe it takes a high level team to figure out … but once it’s out it’s out.
Tangent I think you’ve asserted that a single game was sufficient to deter teams playing Nash to score …
Other teams would see this. Heck players and coaches in on this strategy would move … it would be out there for everyone.
I think then maybe it’s not something specific and constant … but if it’s not constant … (what is it?). I'm missing something here.

On the problem … I think it’s something I’d come to for myself and then agreed with and felt vindicated in reading Thinking Basketball (the book). Winners bias halo (and the negative converse) combined with what you alluded to with regard to this happened so this is all that could have happened. It’s not evaluating the game or how the players played. It’s starting with the conclusion, “You failed” and often any area of relative weakness in the best player … that’s responsible.
Embiid versus Toronto in ’19. They lost. They are +89 with him on (six of seven games positive). But I hear it’s a bad series. Maybe it is. The boxscore isn’t too pretty. Maybe it was luck that they win with him on, or him sharing the court with Butler. But with such a discrepancy I’d at least look a bit closer. I think it’s looked on more kindly if they do better (or less badly) in the minutes he’s off in one of the losses.
Jokic hasn’t won a title so he can’t win a title. Never mind the net impact. Never mind his cast levels. Never mind that we haven’t seen his like offensively at the position … is it fair now to say probably ever? Well nobody wins with a merely neutral defensive center … and he’s probably much worse then that … why else would Denver lose?
Giannis wasn’t a playoff player … until he won a title an then he was and everyone else was wrong. He still couldn’t shoot. I don’t know that he was any different … but he’s got the title so it’s okay.
Jordan ... don't have time to go deep on this but in a recent thread I think I'm seeing his peak as pre-titles (okay check peaks project each time he's getting '91 - still Backpicks 40 has 89-91 pretty much equal in retrospect, I think perhaps '89 marginally the highest on the chart). But at the time you couldn't win building around a guard, without the top center; he was too selfish; you can't win with a scoring champ, And then his teams do win and versions of him we regard as lesser render his teams undeniable because of his iron will, killer instinct, alpha ... whatever.

I don’t know I just think … give things some space to breathe. Acknowledge complexity. But often we need a villain to blame, now!

So, I'll just say, what you describe is absolutely plausible, but in my observations in series basketball - for whatever they are worth - is that those best able to game plan against their opponent tend to demonstrate this capacity after the series has begun rather than before.

Isn’t there a possibility of a loop going on there though. If one expects smart players to change in the middle of series and defines smart players by their changing in the middle of series and … . Related ... isn't the in-series change more noticeable than what is consistent through the series? IDK.

Tired now so not going to proofread, edit, revise as I’d like to. So maybe this isn’t coherent, thought through etc …
Anyway thanks for thoughtful responses. Am likely to leave it here.

[No-more-rings]

Well many people yourself included claim he’s a Steph Curry level player, even despite his resume and accomplishments being markedly worse so not sure what exactly is surprising.

That is SO FAR from being the consensus on him. Please stop.

The few times you see it triggers you so much that you pretend that's the common way people see him.

So it gives you an excuse to complain how overrated he is.

There’s been plenty of it even from knowledgeable posters, you just see what you want to see and ignore the rest.

The only one getting triggered is you apparently, you’ve gone to the point of getting upset that Paul loses comparisons to players who are better and more accomplished. You very well know that on this board, Cp3 is going to crush someone like Lillard or Iverson in a comparison.

[OhayoKD]

Well many people yourself included claim he’s a Steph Curry level player, even despite his resume and accomplishments being markedly worse so not sure what exactly is surprising.

That is SO FAR from being the consensus on him. Please stop.

The few times you see it triggers you so much that you pretend that's the common way people see him.

So it gives you an excuse to complain how overrated he is.

There’s been plenty of it even from knowledgeable posters, you just see what you want to see and ignore the rest.

The only one getting triggered is you apparently, you’ve gone to the point of getting upset that Paul loses comparisons to players who are better and more accomplished. You very well know that on this board, Cp3 is going to crush someone like Lillard or Iverson in a comparison.

wasn't cp3 literally voted ahead of curry last top 100?

[No-more-rings]

That is SO FAR from being the consensus on him. Please stop.

The few times you see it triggers you so much that you pretend that's the common way people see him.

So it gives you an excuse to complain how overrated he is.

There’s been plenty of it even from knowledgeable posters, you just see what you want to see and ignore the rest.

The only one getting triggered is you apparently, you’ve gone to the point of getting upset that Paul loses comparisons to players who are better and more accomplished. You very well know that on this board, Cp3 is going to crush someone like Lillard or Iverson in a comparison.

wasn't cp3 literally voted ahead of curry last top 100?

Yes, but strangely i’d argue Cp3 overperforms in career projects, but underwhelms in peak projects.

[OhayoKD]

There’s been plenty of it even from knowledgeable posters, you just see what you want to see and ignore the rest.

The only one getting triggered is you apparently, you’ve gone to the point of getting upset that Paul loses comparisons to players who are better and more accomplished. You very well know that on this board, Cp3 is going to crush someone like Lillard or Iverson in a comparison.

wasn't cp3 literally voted ahead of curry last top 100?

Yes, but strangely i’d argue Cp3 overperforms in career projects, but underwhelms in peak projects.

longetvity erneh

[Bad Gatorade]

2008 NOH 2-0 SAN
2013 LAC 2-0 MEM
2015 LAC 3-1 HOU
2016 LAC 2-0 POR
2017 LAC 2-1 UTA
2018 HOU 3-2 GSW
2021 PHO 2-0 MIL
2022 PHO 2-0 DAL

In 4 of these series, injuries directly explain the results - Blake in 2013, both Blake and CP3 in 2016, Blake/Gobert's injuries in 2017 (Gobert returned in game 4, Blake stopped playing then), CP3 in 2018. So automatically, 8 series dropping to 4 seems like a far more "plausible" outcome than the 8 you've prescribed.

In 2 of these series, CP3 was still a good player in the closing games (2008 and 2021). The Spurs were the defending champions, and it's not a shock that CP3's team might lose. Ditto for 2021 - there were 3 very close games to finish off the series and CP3 did an admirable job against arguably the best PG defender in the league in Jrue Holiday. I think that these seasons, the Spurs and the Bucks were actually the better teams (and extra analysis I've done on minutes played etc seems to support this - IIRC the Suns were actually the clear underdog vs the Bucks). These series feel like weird hills to die on in terms of reaching a conclusion.

I kind of understand 2015 and 2022. Both series were kind of bizarre - CP3 balled out games 5-7, but the 4th quarter of game 6 had Houston making more 3s than the Clippers made in games 5, 6 AND 7 (with Harden on the bench, mind you), and we remember how oddly that turned out. I'm not sure what to even make of that - absolutely humiliating, sure, and I'm happy to give you this series if you're trying to insinuate Paul was the cause of something happening.

2022, he hit 37 and forgot how to play basketball for a couple of weeks. I don't really know if there was more to it, but it was also highly bizarre.

So yes, of the 8 series, 4 are almost perfectly explained by injuries and 2 series felt like the "expected" conclusion to me. There were only 2 series that felt disappointing from a team perspective to me, and both had a very bizarre set of events occur, and I don't know what to really make of those conclusions in terms of an overarching data point.

Curry
started 20G .441/.356/.855 5.2r 5.0a 1.7s 0.3b 3.6t 25.2p -0.9
finished 19G .478/.434/.851 6.2r 6.5a 1.8s 0.4b 3.4t 31.2p +13.8

Paul
started 20G .503/.426/.871 5.0r 7.9a 1.8s 0.2b 1.9b 22.8pts +9.1
finished 27G .501/.344/.833 3.9r 8.0a 1.6s 0.0b 2.7b 20.4pts -8.0

Is the insinuation here that Paul gets "figured out" in a way that Curry does?

One piece of commentary I'd like to share is that Curry (a 43% shooter) shot 36% from 3 in the "starting" games and 43% from 3 in the "finishing" games. Does this mean that defences suddenly knew how to hone in on Curry for half of a series, and then he managed to whip together some absurd magic in order to shoot properly again? Did Paul (a career 37-38% 3 point shooter) suddenly unleash a new weapon in the "starting" games and then get figured out in the "finishing" games?

Or did you literally take a subset of data following a certain pattern (e.g. series in which the Warriors improved later in the series) and then use their star players' per game numbers (which would highly correlate with the team results) and try to extrapolate what this dataset is showing us about both players?

I'm pretty sure that Curry, on the whole, historically had a statistically greater playoff drop than Paul (especially prime Paul, who besides a couple of seasons, actually tends to go up in postseason efficacy). A cursory look at BPM, for example, is that Curry only increased his BPM in 2017 and 2021 (the latter being a notorious down year in the regular season statistically), and Paul has a closer to 50/50 ratio.

Also Curry team lost control of the series just one time against Cavs and Paul took over the lead 2 times. Looking at the whole picture these two players moved in different directions. Curry's numbers are all up, Paul's - down. Paul had injuries, teammates had inkuries, but it doesn't explain this turn around from 18W-4L to 3W-28L.

Injuries and teammates actually explained a very large part of that turnaround.

It’s not evaluating the game or how the players played. It’s starting with the conclusion, “You failed” and often any area of relative weakness in the best player … that’s responsible.

Yep, this is the argument I've had with Paul over time.

People see that he lost, so there's always a "reason" that he lost which is tied to him. Sometimes, it is him. Sometimes, the conclusions feel outlandish. For example, ideas that Paul was too conservative/passive are often shared in series in which his team had an elite ORTG and lost on defence. The idea that he might be too conservative is fine - offering it as an explanation for why his team lost on the defensive side of the court seems like the accuser is grasping for straws trying to pin the loss on Paul. I'd be open to the argument re: offensive passiveness if it was team offence causing his series to lose games, but historically (and definitely in his prime) that wasn't the case.

I've said this ad nauseam on the forum - I'm fine with criticising Paul in series such as 2009, where he actually played very poorly, but I think criticising him for losing a series in which he played excellent basketball and trying to offer too many overarching explanations about aggression, not being enough of a scorer, being small etc seems like they're looking for a reason to blame him. Sometimes, this almost loosely translates to "CP3 wasn't 2016 Finals LeBron, so it's CP3's fault" with a different coat of paint.

Even though star player performance + playoff performance are correlated, that doesn't mean that there can't be any outliers. In fact, we'd expect there to be outliers. CP3 has had many tight, coin flip-esque series (e.g. imagine winning 56 games in the regular season and playing a 56 win team in the first round) that have often been heavily influenced by things such as injuries. Until 2018, he never played a team with fewer than 51 wins in the regular season (bar Portland 2016). Is there any coincidence that many of the players known as "chokers" in the past couple of decades have been guys like CP3, Blake, Harden, Westbrook, Durant (until the GSW fiasco), Dirk (until 2011), KG (until going east) etc. The majority of these guys were playing their primes in the west, the better conference for a long time. Guys like Kidd (great player, FWIW) get credit for making 2 consecutive finals, but the best team he played on the way was a 50 win team (2x). That's literally worse than the worst team CP3 played until 2018, not including Portland, which had both CP3 and Blake get injured at the same time.

In the real world, if we flip a coin 10 times, it's entirely possible to get something like 2 heads and 8 tails. Is it so outlandish that a player facing so many competitive series might lose more close series than they win because the smaller, coin flip events just don't happen to go their way? I'd argue that it's almost expected for there to be at least one player at the losing end of all of these series, because the concept of probability tells us that there probably are going to be a handful of outliers.

Why does Chris never get compared to guys like Iverson or Damian Lillard or Westbrook or Reggie Miller on here.

People just like criticizing him and blaming him so they go right to the championship players to compare him to.

People don't really like Chris Paul on average. Some of it is Paul's conniving demeanour (whether it's nut punches, or feeling like a "teacher's pet" or whatever they dislike about him), and I understand that, but I sometimes feel like it's almost a relief to people that the playoff results aren't on his side, because it makes it easier to subliminally dismiss how good he actually is.

[Doctor MJ]

Curry
started 20G .441/.356/.855 5.2r 5.0a 1.7s 0.3b 3.6t 25.2p -0.9
finished 19G .478/.434/.851 6.2r 6.5a 1.8s 0.4b 3.4t 31.2p +13.8

Paul
started 20G .503/.426/.871 5.0r 7.9a 1.8s 0.2b 1.9b 22.8pts +9.1
finished 27G .501/.344/.833 3.9r 8.0a 1.6s 0.0b 2.7b 20.4pts -8.0

Is the insinuation here that Paul gets "figured out" in a way that Curry does?

One piece of commentary I'd like to share is that Curry (a 43% shooter) shot 36% from 3 in the "starting" games and 43% from 3 in the "finishing" games. Does this mean that defences suddenly knew how to hone in on Curry for half of a series, and then he managed to whip together some absurd magic in order to shoot properly again? Did Paul (a career 37-38% 3 point shooter) suddenly unleash a new weapon in the "starting" games and then get figured out in the "finishing" games?

So, first I'll say that you make good points in your post, and I'll certainly acknowledge that it's possible that the entirety of the trend of Paul's teams taking the lead and then losing in series can be explained by injuries and luck. I think it's fine to agree to disagree on what's most likely there.

I'll leave the first question to the side because I think the subsequent question demand answers that probably answer the first.

Re: does this mean defenses suddenly knew how to hone in on Curry...and then magic? My answer:

Shooting is all about rhythm. Hence there's nothing all that strange about the idea of a shooter gaining rhythm over the course of a series.

And in terms of "suddenly knew how to hone in on Curry", I'd suggest that the entire league learned how to hone in on Curry years ago. Things were different 10 years ago, but now it's really only a question of whether defenses need time to get competent at executing the Curry rules, along with whether specific defenders can learn to disrupt Curry faster than he can learn to exploit them.

Re: did Paul suddenly unleash a new weapon in the starting game? I'm not sure why a new weapon is necessary to explain why Paul would kick ass. He was kicking ass all year, so why wouldn't we expect it to continue in Game 1 of a series?

But to just elaborate in my own words:

If Paul's dropping off over series for reasons other than injury is real, I think "figured out" is a decent way to describe what happens, but it implies something more dramatic than actually occurs. What we'd be talking about is Paul and his team's schemes just becoming a bit less efficient in their per possession performance.

And so if we're just talking about a small difference, I think it's pretty clear how this can happen. A guy like Paul is all about methodically exploiting what the other team gives him. And so if he finds a particular exploit on your team that's really killing you, maybe you figure out how to handle such attacks just a bit better as you go through trying to cope with them from game to game.

Is any of this something I'd be looking to say only happens with Paul? Not at all. But it's plausible that it is part of what's going on with Paul.

[Lost92Bricks]

There’s been plenty of it even from knowledgeable posters, you just see what you want to see and ignore the rest.

The only one getting triggered is you apparently, you’ve gone to the point of getting upset that Paul loses comparisons to players who are better and more accomplished. You very well know that on this board, Cp3 is going to crush someone like Lillard or Iverson in a comparison.

I'm upset that there is always controversy when he gets talked about. You guys keep him at a certain level where he won't be looked at in a positive light.

You don't officially downgrade him to that level you're talking about him as.

You said he would crush Lillard and Iverson in a poll on here. I know he would. But why is that. From a detractor point of view, he is a similar level of player just with more longevity than them.

[Bad Gatorade]

So, first I'll say that you make good points in your post, and I'll certainly acknowledge that it's possible that the entirety of the trend of Paul's teams taking the lead and then losing in series can be explained by injuries and luck. I think it's fine to agree to disagree on what's most likely there.

I think that the trend is there, but I think that the trend is (largely) explained by very reasonable factors in injuries and luck. There might be more to it, and I'm more inclined to think about that in years such as 2009, 2012 and 2022 where he actually played poorly and the team surely felt it than in series where he played well. Either way, let's keep going -

Re: does this mean defenses suddenly knew how to hone in on Curry...and then magic? My answer:

Shooting is all about rhythm. Hence there's nothing all that strange about the idea of a shooter gaining rhythm over the course of a series.

And in terms of "suddenly knew how to hone in on Curry", I'd suggest that the entire league learned how to hone in on Curry years ago. Things were different 10 years ago, but now it's really only a question of whether defenses need time to get competent at executing the Curry rules, along with whether specific defenders can learn to disrupt Curry faster than he can learn to exploit them.

I think that there might be some truth to the idea of "heating up" in general - I remember reading that the "hot hand" has been explored before, and there's some evidence of it existing (although whether or not it actually exists depends on the player himself). I feel like this data is more so a case of specific selection, because as a cursory marker, Steph's 3P% (across his career) is actually highest in game 1 of his typical series. In terms of accuracy, it goes 1 > 7 > 4 > 3 > 6 > 2 > 5 (and due to not playing too many game 7s, a sample size of 28/66 doesn't seem all that convincing relative to a minimum sample of 156 in other series sizes). He shoots 3s better in the first half of series than the second on average, if anything.

Now I get that it's not all about 3s, but rather, I'm pointing out the notion of randomness and how the specific sample has a clear, highly random marker in 3P% look very different to the overall sample Steph has produced over time.

Looking at TS%, it goes 1 > 7 > 4 > 2 > 3 > 6 > 5. Game Score, 7 > 4 > 1 > 3 > 6 > 2 > 5. Cursory glance seems to be that Steph has been best in the (smallish) sample of game 7s, 1 and 4. That's literally the start, midpoint and conclusion of a series. So yeah, that's why I think the sample is "selective." Doesn't mean Steph doesn't get into rhythm though - we've all seen those Warriors 3rd quarters! I just think that the sample portrayed in the OP is trying to show something that isn't notably prominent on a game-to-game level.

Re: did Paul suddenly unleash a new weapon in the starting game? I'm not sure why a new weapon is necessary to explain why Paul would kick ass. He was kicking ass all year, so why wouldn't we expect it to continue in Game 1 of a series?

Just looked at the same sort of thing as Steph and Paul's numbers seem best in games 1 and 6. Again, beginning and (near) tail end of a series. Sudden dip in game 3 which then recovers. It's more so that I personally feel like the "randomness" of shooting seems to be a more rational explanation to me rather than a chess battle of heating up/cooling off/defences getting cluey/Mercury in retrograde or whatever.

I don't actually think the narratives you're providing are outlandish at all - I don't think the numbers necessarily agree, and I don't think I agree, but they're plausible enough in theory that I'm happy to look into it.

If Paul's dropping off over series for reasons other than injury is real, I think "figured out" is a decent way to describe what happens, but it implies something more dramatic than actually occurs. What we'd be talking about is Paul and his team's schemes just becoming a bit less efficient in their per possession performance.

And so if we're just talking about a small difference, I think it's pretty clear how this can happen. A guy like Paul is all about methodically exploiting what the other team gives him. And so if he finds a particular exploit on your team that's really killing you, maybe you figure out how to handle such attacks just a bit better as you go through trying to cope with them from game to game.

Yup, I understand where you're coming from.

I think I align with Owly a bit more closely on this - if it was easier to 'figure out' Paul, then the blueprint would be more widespread and it wouldn't take Paul getting injured in 2019 (after all of the other injuries ) to finally stop playing like a top 5 guy, and it doesn't make sense to me that teams wouldn't look at this in, say, 2012, and then not think of applying it in 2013, or 2014, or 2015 etc. I hope that makes sense.

Within a particular series, I suppose there's some nuance that CP3's actual scheming might be more effective on a team based level, and so CP3 himself might be less effective... I don't know.

Is any of this something I'd be looking to say only happens with Paul? Not at all. But it's plausible that it is part of what's going on with Paul.

I don't think we're going to fully agree on this, but I think this is a very fair conclusion - I do think that the majority of his "failures" can be chalked up to a few key points -
* His injuries
* His teammates injuries
* A very consistently tough string of postseason opponents in his prime
* Random variation

I'm open to the idea of scheming, teams adjusting, his personality etc having an impact, but I also think that the previous 4 points cover a vast majority of what the reason behind the "failures" are (and yes, I get that saying "failures" in quotation marks is going to make me sound like a post game-5 Giannis ). I don't necessarily think these concepts are wrong per se, but I'm definitely more inclined to run with a more quantifiable set of data than the theoretical set of data.

I actually think it's good to come up with philosophical explanations as to why CP3's team results don't match his individual data, but I also think that it's important to not get attached to the philosophical explanations, especially when more granular data contradicts the philosophy. Sometimes, there just isn't enough readily available data, and that's okay, although I'm personally hesitant to draw too much from those scenarios.