RealGM 2023 Top 100 Project - #8 (Shaquille O'Neal)

[f4p]

KD's decision to join the Warriors will always be held against him. They were always Steph's team. KD has never won a title as the #1.

this will sound like it's directed at you, but it's not. you just said something i've seen a million people say, and steph is starting to get traction.

how is it that KD gets blamed for joining steph but steph doesn't get blamed for recruiting KD? steph and draymond were the ones crying in the parking lot after game 7 and begging KD to come join them so they could beat lebron. steph and the gang were the ones who drove out to the Hampton's to meet KD to beg him to join them. i would say in a transaction, the person who flies across the country and drives out to the other person's house is the one doing the asking.

steph was the reigning mvp, the first unanimous mvp in nba history, and he waved the white flag! he called his big brother to come help him beat up lebron. it's insanity. and KD is the one who gets the heat for it! his legacy was all out there in front of him. by the end of the 2016 regular season, he had taken over the nba. he had maybe the best regular season ever. his team won the most games ever. he looked like he was usurping The King while The King was in his prime. and then he choked the finals. some will say it was injury, but he played great in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. but no matter, maybe he was injured, maybe draymond's suspension was the key. great, come back and prove it. do what other greats have done at their low moments. when they've tasted their own blood. like lebron after the 2011 finals. go work on your game, improve on your weakness, resolve to not throw behind the back passes into the stands with 5 minutes left in game 7 of the finals because everything had been so easy to that point that you forgot you could fail.

come back for the trilogy with lebron. but waving the white flag?

steph had 2 options:
1. dominate the 2016 playoffs, win the finals and finals mvp, reign over the league. and hey, if you decide things can only get better, maybe see if KD wants to join the party.
2. get embarrassed in the 2016 finals, tell everyone you'll be better, and run it back. want us to believe you were injured, that draymond's suspension meant something? ok, come back and prove it.

but option 3? pulling the biggest [bleep] move ever and just giving up and taking the easy way out. i still can't believe it. and he got rewarded for it! maybe he just read the situation perfectly and realized that between his smile, his cute kid, his popular wife, the sports media, and all his fans, that he was the teflon don of the nba. immune from criticism. can you imagine anyone else on this list blowing a 3-1 finals lead and the very next season being praised for stacking his roster so high he couldn't screw the finals up?

for a league where being the #1 on a title team, leading your team in the biggest moments, where that stuff arguably matters more than in any other league, where so much of your legacy is counting alpha titles, he went and asked someone else to take over in the big moments so he could beat lebron. when he was the back to back mvp! then that guy did it, winning 2 straight finals mvp's. and then...teflon don somehow walked away with all the glory. he gave up his mantle, but still wanted all the credit. and you all gave it to him. none of the responsibility, all of the glory. who else in the top 10, top 15 has gotten that deal?

and just personally, i can't believe he did it. i get mad if i lose a sizable lead in a pickup game. and would usually give anything to run it back right then and there. i can't imagine being as good as steph, and having as low a moment as he had in the 2016 finals, and not wanting to run it back the very next second. the warriors were a homegrown team. the story of the nba. steph could have still come back and won in 2017 (they would have probably been favored) and people would have just gone with the injury story in 2016 and he could have stayed on track from 2016. hell, he might even be higher in this project if he wins 2017 by himself instead of bringing in a mercenary. i just can't imagine wanting to give the team up to durant or at least share it with durant, and then have the gall to say "look at my impact numbers, it's still my team, i just asked this guy here for no apparent reason, also he did really well in the series i struggled in last year, but that's probably nothing important".

and please spare me the "what is he supposed to do, you have to make your team better" or "the GM is the one who wanted him". if steph curry told bob myers under no uncertain terms that he didn't want KD, then KD isn't showing up there. that's the end of the story. to basically take the worst moment of your career and not only not respond to it, but to just straight up go around it is just not how sports are supposed to work. at least if you want people to sing your praises. but oh, steph's praises people will sing.


and people will say i'm a steph/warriors hater. well, i am. but this has nothing to do with that. part of the fun of sports is liking some teams/players and hating others. it's why i watch. but i always give credit where it is due. i hated michael jordan and put him #1 in this project. hated tom brady, still the GOAT. like the 3-peat lakers, the warriors were the kind of team i loved to hate. they made me watch, to see them lose even though they mostly won. to watch the brilliance you couldn't deny. the stupid KD signing cheated us all out of the best part of the story. do the warriors come back and win in 2017 and maybe even 2018 and shut me up? maybe. i figured they actually would win in 2017. and i'd have steph a lot higher (just like 2022 moved him up a few spots for me). do they lose and prove they were a one-hit wonder and we get to say "told ya so" about playoff failures? maybe. but instead they chose to take an incomplete for the next few years. oh, you played well in the 2017 playoffs with no pressure and no competition and won? wow, it's just like in that movie where the rich team got up big in the championship game against the poor team and then stayed ahead and won easily. so inspirational. and yet, somehow steph is so well-liked he gets rewarded for it. and the guy who came to the rescue gets a bunch of "but look at the impact numbers, not at the differing team results" to dismiss it all, because people like steph. truly fascinating.

[f4p]

It's a shame that KD has his decision to go to the Warriors held against him, even though he's always played hard like a pro on the court and never hurt the on court product, while Kobe forcing his way to the Lakers and demanding a trade later while actively damaging their on court results at times is apparently fine.

We just voted in Wilt, who refused to live in Philly while he played there and commuted from NY for games, and we're about to vote in Shaq, but KD of all people is being dinged for being Toxic... in a comparison with Kobe! Kobe is one of the most toxic superstars we've seen. Really amazing stuff. I may have to focus on supporting Dirk for now if this 'yeh ok, he was better, but I just don't like him' stuff continues. I'm not a big fan of people with Kobe's rap sheet either tbh.

I hold the decision against him on an all-time rating scale, but only because he arguably made the team WORSE replacing Harrison Barnes. They went 67-15 in 2015, 73-9 in 2016, and 29-4 when Steph played and KD didn’t from 2017-2019. That’s a record of 169-28 (.858) over a 5 year span.

When KD played over that same 5 year span, they went 51-11, 49-19, and 54-24. That’s a combined record of 154-54 (.741). Yeah, KD was a more resilient scorer in the playoffs and I’m sure he did at least make them a little better in the playoffs, but was he even as valuable as Draymond while he was with the Warriors? I doubt it. He basically hasn’t done anything to suggest to me that he was a top 5 player since 2014 and that makes it hard for me to take him seriously above Wade and Kawhi, let alone D-Rob and Giannis.

let's not just gloss over the playoffs. the 2016 warriors would be considered possibly the greatest team ever if steph doesn't have an atrocious finals and they blow a 3-1 lead. the entire reason they wanted KD was for the matchup with lebron. people can point to whatever else they want, but the 2017 cavs looked even better than the 2016 cavs and yet KD made it a joke of a series. by putting the highest volume/efficiency combo in finals history (35 ppg on 70 TS%). he did exactly what they brought him in for. it's funny how KD's stats in those years are always pointed to as having benefited from steph, but steph having easily his best statistical playoffs in 2017 is never seen as being due to KD. he even got that voted as his peak!

and of course, the next year, the biggest series was against the rockets. in the first 5 games when the rockets looked to be at parity, KD was at 31.2/5.6/2.0 on 59.9 TS% (+14 on court). steph was at 23.8/6.4/4.8 on 56.1 TS% (+10 on court). they are pretty even in the 2 games with no cp3 around for steph.


and then, the next year, what was assumed to be the biggest series (before KD got hurt) was once again against the rockets and again, we get KD at 33.2/5/4.4 and 58.9 TS% (21.8 game score even missing part of a game) and steph having maybe his worst series ever (or the 2016 finals) with 23.8/5/4.7 on 53.9 TS% (14.6 game score). and steph's stats were even worse through the first 5 games, when KD kept the warriors afloat by going nuclear.

time and time again, in the warriors actual biggest series, KD outperforms steph but steph does enough in the other series that somehow it's "his team". even in the finals, the warriors lost 4 out of 5 games KD didn't play with KD popping in for 11 minutes in one game to score 11 points on 100% shooting and providing all of the margin of victory (+7 with KD, won by 6).

[iggymcfrack]

KD's decision to join the Warriors will always be held against him. They were always Steph's team. KD has never won a title as the #1.

this will sound like it's directed at you, but it's not. you just said something i've seen a million people say, and steph is starting to get traction.

how is it that KD gets blamed for joining steph but steph doesn't get blamed for recruiting KD? steph and draymond were the ones crying in the parking lot after game 7 and begging KD to come join them so they could beat lebron. steph and the gang were the ones who drove out to the Hampton's to meet KD to beg him to join them? i would say in a transaction, the person who flies across the country and drives out to the other person's house is the one doing the asking.

Two reasons:

First and foremost, Steph won 2 rings without KD. If KD had won a ring in OKC, gone to Golden State for a couple, and then won another ring in Brooklyn, people still wouldn't like the decision to join up with Steph, but they wouldn't be holding it against him in any kind of all-time rating sense. The point is that he gave up 3 years where he could possibly prove he's capable of winning a ring as the #1 guy to go be Steph's sidekick and now it might never happen.

The second reason is that Steph was so clearly so much more valuable than KD on the Warriors that KD seemed pretty much superfluous. Warriors were 29-4 with Steph and no KD and 24-16 with KD and no Steph. The impact stats paint both Steph and Draymond as more valuable with KD a distant 3rd. If he'd been more valuable than Steph and made the team better and they'd gone 77-5 or something, it could be a different story. It literally seemed like he was just hanging out getting his shots and getting in the way as much as he actually helped the team. It was embarrassing.

[ShaqAttac]

VOTING

1. KG

almsot best impact, best longetivity, great d, good o, yeah he didnt win much but can ya really blame him? He kills the rapm stuff and he kinda kills shaq there so I cant really put shaq ahead.

2. Magic. bro won 5 chips and maybe more impact than hakeem or mj. also crazy offenses. if not for hiv i probs have him higher.

Nom: Kobe

impact dont look as bad as i was thinking, and he got longetvity and he won 5 chips like magic. I would nom mikan but it dont look like he's gonna get voted so ill go with kobe for now.

[lessthanjake]

Spoiler:

KD's decision to join the Warriors will always be held against him. They were always Steph's team. KD has never won a title as the #1.

this will sound like it's directed at you, but it's not. you just said something i've seen a million people say, and steph is starting to get traction.

how is it that KD gets blamed for joining steph but steph doesn't get blamed for recruiting KD? steph and draymond were the ones crying in the parking lot after game 7 and begging KD to come join them so they could beat lebron. steph and the gang were the ones who drove out to the Hampton's to meet KD to beg him to join them? i would say in a transaction, the person who flies across the country and drives out to the other person's house is the one doing the asking.

steph was the reigning mvp, the first unanimous mvp in nba history, and he waved the white flag! he called him big brother to come help him beat up lebron. it's insanity. and KD is the one who gets the heat for it! his legacy was all out there in front of him. by the end of the 2016 regular season, he had taken over the nba. he had maybe the best regular season ever. his team won the most games ever. he looked like he was usurping The King while The King was in his prime. and then he choked the finals. some will say it was injury, but he played great in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. but no matter, maybe he was injured, maybe draymond's suspension was the key. great, come back and prove it. do what other greats have done at their low moments. when they've tasted their own blood. like lebron after the 2011 finals. go work on your game, improve on your weakness, resolve to not throw behind the back passes into the stands with 5 minutes left in game 7 of the finals because everything had been so easy to that point that you forgot you could fail.

come back for the trilogy with lebron. but waving the white flag?

steph had 2 options:
1. dominate the 2016 playoffs, win the finals and finals mvp, reign over the league. and hey, if you decide things can only get better, maybe see if KD wants to join the party.
2. get embarrassed in the 2016 finals, tell everyone you'll be better, and run it back. want us to believe you were injured, that draymond's suspension meant something? ok, come back and prove it.

but option 3? pulling the biggest [bleep] move ever and just giving up and taking the easy way out. i still can't believe it. and he got rewarded for it! maybe he just read the situation perfectly and realized that between his smile, his cute kid, his popular wife, the sports media, and all his fans, that he was the teflon don of the nba. immune from criticism. can you imagine anyone else on this list blowing a 3-1 finals lead and the very next season being praised for stacking his roster so high he couldn't screw the finals up?

for a league where being the #1 on a title team, leading your team in the biggest moments, where that stuff arguably matters more than in any other league, where so much of your legacy is counting alpha titles, he went and asked someone else to take over in the big moments so he could beat lebron. when he was the back to back mvp! then that guy did it, winning 2 straight finals mvp's. and then...teflon don somehow walked away with all the glory. he gave up his mantle, but still wanted all the credit. and you all gave it to him. none of the responsibility, all of the glory. who else in the top 10, top 15 has gotten that deal?

and just personally, i can't believe he did it. i get mad if i lose a sizable lead in a pickup game. and would usually give anything to run it back right then and there. i can't imagine being as good as steph, and having as low a moment as he had in the 2016 finals, and not wanting to run it back the very next second. the warriors were a homegrown team. the story of the nba. steph could have still come back and won in 2017 (they would have probably been favored) and people would have just gone with the injury story in 2016 and he could have stayed on track from 2016. hell, he might even be higher in this project if he wins 2017 by himself instead of bringing in a mercenary. i just can't imagine wanting to give the team up to durant or at least share it with durant, and then have the gall to say "look at my impact numbers, it's still my team, i just asked this guy here for no apparent reason, also he did really well in the series i struggled in last year, but that's probably nothing important".

and please spare me the "what is he supposed to do, you have to make your team better" or "the GM is the one who wanted him". if steph curry told bob myers under no uncertain terms that he didn't want KD, then KD isn't showing up there. that's the end of the story. to basically take the worst moment of your career and not only not respond to it, but to just straight up go around it is just not how sports are supposed to work. at least if you want people to sing your praises. but oh, steph's praises people will sing.


and people will say i'm a steph/warriors hater. well, i am. but this has nothing to do with that. part of the fun of sports is liking some teams/players and hating others. it's why i watch. but i always give credit where it is due. i hated michael jordan and put him #1 in this project. hated tom brady, still the GOAT. like the 3-peat lakers, the warriors were the kind of team i loved to hate. they made me watch, to see them lose even though they mostly won. to watch the brilliance you couldn't deny. the stupid KD signing cheated us all out of the best part of the story. do the warriors come back and win in 2017 and maybe even 2018 and shut me up? maybe. i figured they actually would win in 2017. and i'd have steph a lot higher (just like 2022 moved him up a few spots for me). do they lose and prove they were a one-hit wonder and we get to say "told ya so" about playoff failures? maybe. but instead they chose to take an incomplete for the next few years. oh, you played well in the 2017 playoffs with no pressure and no competition and won? wow, it's just like in that movie where the rich team got up big in the championship game against the poor team and then stayed ahead and won easily. so inspirational. and yet, somehow steph is so well-liked he gets rewarded for it. and the guy who came to the rescue gets a bunch of "but look at the impact numbers, not at the differing team results" to dismiss it all, because people like steph. truly fascinating.

I’m of the view that neither of them should be criticized—the Warriors created a team within the context of the team-building rules that existed, and it was really good, just like the 1980’s Lakers and a bunch of other stacked teams have done. We don’t have to value them winning those titles in the same way that we’d value something like Dirk winning the 2011 title, but I don’t really understand personal criticism for the creation of a team completely within the rules of the game. This wasn’t even borderline rule-breaking, like a player refusing to play and feigning injury unless they’re traded for peanuts to their preferred team. It was just garden-variety team-creation that was completely within the rules.

NBA teams’ goal is to win titles, and they should rightly do everything within the rules to make that as likely as possible. It’s the whole point of the endeavor and an individual team should have absolutely zero regard for competitive balance. They’re not a charity. I’d say Steph would be being actively detrimental to his team (and therefore would’ve been doing something he should’ve been criticized for) if he’d decided that his ego couldn’t handle a clear improvement to his team’s chances to win titles. One can call it lucky that the team-building rules ended up allowing for it, but criticizing Steph for wanting to legally optimize his team’s chances to win titles is IMO quite silly. It amounts to criticizing Steph for being okay with his team doing exactly what it should do.

Anyways, even talking about people who (IMO wrongly) criticize these guys for this, the reasons Steph is criticized less than Durant are fairly clear:

- Steph has won titles before and after Durant, so there’s no argument that he *needed* to create such a team in order to win.
- Relatedly, once Durant came, it was clear from the data who had the bigger impact on the team. There’s good reason to believe that the Warriors could’ve won still even without Durant (though of course it would not have been as likely), while there’s no good reason to believe that the Warriors could’ve won with Durant and without Steph.
- The primary reason anyone considers the move to be weak is that the Warriors had won 73 games the year before. But Steph was an enormous reason that that happened, while Durant obviously was no part of it. To a lot of people, it feels less objectionable for a player to want a piece to be added to their team that they’ve already made super good than it does for a player to be the piece added to a team that is already super good. We just don’t expect a guy to veto improvements to his own team or to not seek them out—in fact, that’d be behavior that would (or at least should) typically be criticized as egotistical.

___________

* As a sidenote, I’ll also mention that this idea of it being “weak” for superstars to aim to be on the same team as each other is a notion that is really specific to basketball. Other sports don’t have this weird ego-filled notion that players shouldn’t aim to be on a team that’s *too* good, otherwise it’s “weak.” Indeed, in soccer, the world’s best players are constantly talking about how much they want to play with each other, and it is actively looked down upon when players want to be the best player on a lesser team rather than going to a better one. In past years, people/media have criticized Harry Kane specifically for *not* wanting to leave a lesser team he’s the best player on to go to teams where he wouldn’t be the best player—*that* is considered “weak” because it’s seen as his ego not being able to handle being on a great team and as him lacking an ambition to win. People criticize Neymar for leaving Barcelona because he was in Messi’s shadow there—that is considered weak and stupid and his ego getting in the way. This notion in basketball that great players shouldn’t try to win *too much* is actually a very weird basketball culture thing, where players are expected to take an objectively stupid alpha demeanor.

[OhayoKD]

KD's decision to join the Warriors will always be held against him. They were always Steph's team. KD has never won a title as the #1.

this will sound like it's directed at you, but it's not. you just said something i've seen a million people say, and steph is starting to get traction.

how is it that KD gets blamed for joining steph but steph doesn't get blamed for recruiting KD? steph and draymond were the ones crying in the parking lot after game 7 and begging KD to come join them so they could beat lebron. steph and the gang were the ones who drove out to the Hampton's to meet KD to beg him to join them? i would say in a transaction, the person who flies across the country and drives out to the other person's house is the one doing the asking.

Two reasons:

First and foremost, Steph won 2 rings without KD. If KD had won a ring in OKC, gone to Golden State for a couple, and then won another ring in Brooklyn, people still wouldn't like the decision to join up with Steph, but they wouldn't be holding it against him in any kind of all-time rating sense. The point is that he gave up 3 years where he could possibly prove he's capable of winning a ring as the #1 guy to go be Steph's sidekick and now it might never happen.

The second reason is that Steph was so clearly so much more valuable than KD on the Warriors that KD seemed pretty much superfluous. Warriors were 29-4 with Steph and no KD and 24-16 with KD and no Steph. The impact stats paint both Steph and Draymond as more valuable with KD a distant 3rd. If he'd been more valuable than Steph and made the team better and they'd gone 77-5 or something, it could be a different story. It literally seemed like he was just hanging out getting his shots and getting in the way as much as he actually helped the team. It was embarrassing.

Not in the playoffs(kd has higher on/off in 18 and 19) which is really the only thing arguably impressive about 17-19 as a stretch. Of course competition is a factor in that and you can justifably point out steph did pretty well without kd in 2019. But by that same token Kd>steph in 2018 is very clear cut.

Of course this logic works much better with "playoff riser" shaq during the one and only dominant title run of his career...

But I guess scoring better than a guy for one series by box(17 kd) is > outscoring and outcreating a guy(by box) for 3(2001 kobe)...

[AEnigma]

KD's decision to join the Warriors will always be held against him. They were always Steph's team. KD has never won a title as the #1.

this will sound like it's directed at you, but it's not. you just said something i've seen a million people say, and steph is starting to get traction.

how is it that KD gets blamed for joining steph but steph doesn't get blamed for recruiting KD? steph and draymond were the ones crying in the parking lot after game 7 and begging KD to come join them so they could beat lebron. steph and the gang were the ones who drove out to the Hampton's to meet KD to beg him to join them? i would say in a transaction, the person who flies across the country and drives out to the other person's house is the one doing the asking.

Two reasons:

First and foremost, Steph won 2 rings without KD. If KD had won a ring in OKC, gone to Golden State for a couple, and then won another ring in Brooklyn, people still wouldn't like the decision to join up with Steph, but they wouldn't be holding it against him in any kind of all-time rating sense. The point is that he gave up 3 years where he could possibly prove he's capable of winning a ring as the #1 guy to go be Steph's sidekick and now it might never happen.

The second reason is that Steph was so clearly so much more valuable than KD on the Warriors that KD seemed pretty much superfluous. Warriors were 29-4 with Steph and no KD and 24-16 with KD and no Steph. The impact stats paint both Steph and Draymond as more valuable with KD a distant 3rd.

I do not have the impression that F4p is saying Durant’s career is better than Curry’s or that Durant peaked higher than Curry did. My impression of what he is saying is that there are a lot of strange optics to giving Curry four rings and Durant two fake rings. Curry has two rings without Durant, and Durant has zero without Curry. Massive distinction. But they were not the best team in league history before they replaced their fifth best player with the third/fourth best player in the league.

If he'd been more valuable than Steph and made the team better and they'd gone 77-5 or something, it could be a different story. It literally seemed like he was just hanging out getting his shots and getting in the way as much as he actually helped the team. It was embarrassing.

Okay but he did make them better. This takes us back to those Wilt Lakers — and many other similar circumstances, but thus far in the project, that is what has been discussed.

I have seen complaints over not “properly” crediting Curry for winning 140 regular season games across back-to-back 10 SRS campaigns. Well, one of the key reasons those accomplishments are not credited at face value is that they did not really play like a 10 SRS team in the postseason.

To be clear, that is not some unique failing only applicable to Curry. The 2016 Spurs in the same year very much did not perform like a 10 SRS team. The 2009 Cavaliers were not a 9 SRS team. And it goes both ways: the 1993-95 Rockets were better than their SRS, as typically were the Bad Boy Pistons.

You look at the Wilt Lakers and they get no better in the regular season (arguably are worse)… but they are better when it matters. The 1983 76ers are only a bit better in the regular season adding Moses… but they are a lot better in the postseason. Same with adding Barkley to the Suns. Lebron had his best regular season results in 2009, but his teams are much better in the postseason when he has actual talent around him. The Thunder had better SRS markers after Harden left, but I am probably not taking any of those subsequent teams in the postseason over the 2012 Thunder. The 2018/20 Raptors had better SRS scores than the 2019 Raptors, but guess which team was the most resilient in the postseason, and which instead followed the legacy of regular season paper tigers like the Moncrief Bucks, the Price/Nance Cavaliers, the Robinson Spurs, the Mitchell/Gobert Jazz, possibly the Chris Paul Clippers...

Durant’s effect was that he gave them a release valve in the postseason. That was why he was recruited: not to win 74 games, not to better secure home-court, not to make the plus/minus numbers go higher… no, he was there to make sure that they had a larger margin for error than any other team in the league. That was his value, and that is for what we should credit him, and when I say that, I say that as someone who does not have him as a top twenty peak and who has him maybe fringe top twenty for the purposes of this project.

[iggymcfrack]

this will sound like it's directed at you, but it's not. you just said something i've seen a million people say, and steph is starting to get traction.

how is it that KD gets blamed for joining steph but steph doesn't get blamed for recruiting KD? steph and draymond were the ones crying in the parking lot after game 7 and begging KD to come join them so they could beat lebron. steph and the gang were the ones who drove out to the Hampton's to meet KD to beg him to join them? i would say in a transaction, the person who flies across the country and drives out to the other person's house is the one doing the asking.

Two reasons:

First and foremost, Steph won 2 rings without KD. If KD had won a ring in OKC, gone to Golden State for a couple, and then won another ring in Brooklyn, people still wouldn't like the decision to join up with Steph, but they wouldn't be holding it against him in any kind of all-time rating sense. The point is that he gave up 3 years where he could possibly prove he's capable of winning a ring as the #1 guy to go be Steph's sidekick and now it might never happen.

The second reason is that Steph was so clearly so much more valuable than KD on the Warriors that KD seemed pretty much superfluous. Warriors were 29-4 with Steph and no KD and 24-16 with KD and no Steph. The impact stats paint both Steph and Draymond as more valuable with KD a distant 3rd. If he'd been more valuable than Steph and made the team better and they'd gone 77-5 or something, it could be a different story. It literally seemed like he was just hanging out getting his shots and getting in the way as much as he actually helped the team. It was embarrassing.

Not in the playoffs(kd has higher on/off in 18 and 19) which is really the only thing arguably impressive about 17-19 as a stretch. Of course competition is a factor in that and you can justifably point out steph did pretty well without kd in 2019. But by that same token Kd>steph in 2018 is very clear cut.

Of course this logic works much better with "playoff riser" shaq during the one and only dominant title run of his career...

But I guess scoring better than a guy for one series by box(17 kd) is > outscoring and outcreating a guy(by box) for 3(2001 kobe)...

During that 2001 run, Kobe averaged 43.4 MPG and Shaq averaged 42.3 MPG. When Shaq was averaging 33/16/5/3 in the Finals, he averaged 45 MPG. You can’t try to glean anything useful from that small of an off sample. Considering that Shaq was much more impactful the entire rest of their run, I think we can look at that as pretty much a fluky blip.

From when Kobe took over as a starter in ‘99 until Shaq left for Miami, Shaq was 31-10 without Kobe and Kobe was 23-26 without Shaq. That’s more than 20x as large of a sample for Shaq without Kobe and Kobe without Shaq as you got in a few minutes here and there in the 2001 playoffs. Basically when Shaq played without Kobe, they were then act same team that 3-peated and didn’t lose a thing and when Kobe played without Shaq, they were the exact same team that couldn’t get oht of the first round from 2005-2007.

[lessthanjake]

and of course, the next year, the biggest series was against the rockets. in the first 5 games when the rockets looked to be at parity, KD was at 31.2/5.6/2.0 on 59.9 TS% (+14 on court). steph was at 23.8/6.4/4.8 on 56.1 TS% (+10 on court). they are pretty even in the 2 games with no cp3 around for steph.

What was the +/- by the end of the series? The answer is that Steph had the best +/- of any player in the series. If the best criticism of a guy is to look at a portion of a difficult series and say he didn’t have the best +/- at that point, when he ultimately did have the best +/- by the end, then I think it’s pretty safe to say that there’s not much to criticize.

and then, the next year, what was assumed to be the biggest series (before KD got hurt) was once again against the rockets and again, we get KD at 33.2/5/4.4 and 58.9 TS% (21.8 game score even missing part of a game) and steph having maybe his worst series ever (or the 2016 finals) with 23.8/5/4.7 on 53.9 TS% (14.6 game score). and steph's stats were even worse through the first 5 games, when KD kept the warriors afloat by going nuclear.

Again, this is another point based on a portion of a series. What happened after that? Durant went down and the Warriors won the series without dropping another game. If *that* series is the evidence that Steph was not as important to the Warriors as Durant, then there’s really no argument at all.

time and time again, in the warriors actual biggest series, KD outperforms steph but steph does enough in the other series that somehow it's "his team". even in the finals, the warriors lost 4 out of 5 games KD didn't play with KD popping in for 11 minutes in one game to score 11 points on 100% shooting and providing all of the margin of victory (+7 with KD, won by 6).

As an initial matter, Durant did not score 11 points on 100% shooting in that game. He shot 3 of 5. Anyways, more importantly, what happened in that Raptors series is clearly not some perfect experiment regarding Durant’s influence, since Klay Thompson also got injured. Klay played 4 games and then most of another that he got injured in. In those games, the Warriors went 2-2 and were ahead late in the third quarter when Klay went out in the 5th game Klay played. The Raptors objectively derived their advantage in the series from the portions of the series where the Warriors were without Durant *and* Klay (which unfortunately for the Warriors also happened to be in Warriors home games).

[AEnigma]

Klay was -11 on the court for that series. It was specifically the loss of Durant that completely removed that aforementioned margin for error — even if, yeah, the team would have been even worse off losing their offensive engine in Curry or their defensive engine in Draymond.

[OhayoKD]

and of course, the next year, the biggest series was against the rockets. in the first 5 games when the rockets looked to be at parity, KD was at 31.2/5.6/2.0 on 59.9 TS% (+14 on court). steph was at 23.8/6.4/4.8 on 56.1 TS% (+10 on court). they are pretty even in the 2 games with no cp3 around for steph.

What was the +/- by the end of the series? The answer is that Steph had the best +/- of any player in the series. If the best criticism of a guy is to look at a portion of a difficult series and say he didn’t have the best +/- at that point, when he ultimately did have the best +/- by the end, then I think it’s pretty safe to say that there’s not much to criticize.

[/quote]
And whose +/- was higher that playoff run?

If we are going to call a guy a floor-raiser when he wins b2b despite title-level competition like the Spurs(with teammate injuries playing a massive factor), we can absolutely criticize Steph for his team being as good or worse than the Rockets before their second best player got hurt. Especially when both of the key pieces on the team in question are infamously ball-dominant "floor-raisers" who cannibalize impact and consume their teammates 1-year RAPM(and no folks, that is not how apm works).

Maybe steph shouldn't have cannibalized klay that series?

[lessthanjake]

And whose +/- was higher that playoff run?

If we are going to call a guy a floor-raiser when he wins b2b despite title-level competition like the Spurs(with teammate injuries playing a massive factor), we can absolutely criticize Steph for his team being as good or worse than the Rockets before their second best player got hurt. Especially when both of the key pieces on the team in question are infamously ball-dominant "floor-raisers" who cannibalize impact and consume their teammates 1-year RAPM(and no folks, that is not how apm works).

Maybe steph shouldn't have cannibalized klay that series?

Talking about a team being “as good or worse than the Rockets before their second best player got hurt” is just completely silly, because you’re talking about a 4-game portion of a series. The sample size is tiny (and one of the Rockets’ wins was in OT). In even a slightly larger sample size, the Warriors won the series in 6 games, even though Durant got injured. An argument centered on how a portion of a series went when the Warriors won the series despite their second best player getting injured is just a facially unpersuasive argument. And I actually think these sorts of arguments are a ringing endorsement of Steph. With criticisms this weak, he must be great!

[lessthanjake]

Klay was -11 on the court for that series. It was specifically the loss of Durant that completely removed that aforementioned margin for error — even if, yeah, the team would have been even worse off losing their offensive engine in Curry or their defensive engine in Draymond.

And how was the Warriors’ +/- in the game Klay didn’t play and the rest of the game he got injured in? They got outscored by 22 points in those 62 minutes of basketball at home, and that’s despite Steph scoring 47 points on 63% TS% in the full game Klay missed. You can have a negative +/- and still have been very helpful to the team, if the team would’ve been substantially worse off in those minutes if you’d not been there. And that certainly seems like it was pretty obviously the case here (as we’d expect when we know Klay Thompson was a clearly better player than the players they cobbled together to take those minutes when he was out). Klay Thompson was not the Warriors’ best player, but he was certainly an easily significant enough player that losing him was a major additional factor—which is made even more obvious by the fact that the time periods he missed were where the Raptors derived their advantage in the series. In the 4 full games Klay played, the series was 2-2 despite 3 of the games being in Toronto, and the Warriors were ahead late in the third quarter of a home game when he went out. So, if anything, the Warriors had an advantage in the part of the series Klay played in. They lost the series because they lost a home game Klay was out in, and lost that other game they were leading in after he went out.

[AEnigma]

They lost the series because their starters could not reliably win minutes without Durant (when the Steph/Klay/Draymond trio was on the court, it was dead even, and that is including that quarter of Durant). They just lost by progressively more without Klay. Home games do not swing results by ten points, despite what you frequently seem eager to assert.

[lessthanjake]

They lost the series because their starters could not reliably win minutes without Durant. They just lost by progressively more without Klay. Home games do not swing results by ten points, despite what you frequently seem eager to assert.

They literally were not losing the series with Klay. They went 2-2 in his full games, even though 3 of those games were in Toronto. And then they were ahead late in the third quarter of a home game when Klay went down. They were *winning* the series in Klay’s games! Granted, Durant actually briefly helped in one of those games with Klay. But it’s pretty obvious that the series turned on the Warriors being dominated when both Durant *and* Klay were out. That’s objectively what decided the series. It’s not debatable. And it happened despite Steph going off for 47 on 63% TS%.

[AEnigma]

Really funny to see a Golden State guy turn around and use f4p’s exact 2018 Rockets/Warriors and 2017 Spurs/Warriors process. I guess the conclusion is that Curry actually does have three rings while Durant has zero.

[lessthanjake]

Really funny to see a Golden State guy turn around and use f4p’s exact 2018 Rockets/Warriors and 2017 Spurs/Warriors process. I guess the conclusion is that Curry actually does have three rings while Durant has zero.

Huh? I’m not using any “process.” I’m just reminding you what happened factually. I have no idea if the Warriors could’ve beaten the Raptors if Durant was out but Klay played the whole series. There’s reason to believe such a series would’ve been close and that the Warriors could’ve perhaps won, but really we’ll never know. What we *do* know is we shouldn’t use their loss of that series as an indication of exactly what they were capable of simply without Durant, since there was an additional huge injury that affected the series.

[OhayoKD]

Two reasons:

First and foremost, Steph won 2 rings without KD. If KD had won a ring in OKC, gone to Golden State for a couple, and then won another ring in Brooklyn, people still wouldn't like the decision to join up with Steph, but they wouldn't be holding it against him in any kind of all-time rating sense. The point is that he gave up 3 years where he could possibly prove he's capable of winning a ring as the #1 guy to go be Steph's sidekick and now it might never happen.

The second reason is that Steph was so clearly so much more valuable than KD on the Warriors that KD seemed pretty much superfluous. Warriors were 29-4 with Steph and no KD and 24-16 with KD and no Steph. The impact stats paint both Steph and Draymond as more valuable with KD a distant 3rd. If he'd been more valuable than Steph and made the team better and they'd gone 77-5 or something, it could be a different story. It literally seemed like he was just hanging out getting his shots and getting in the way as much as he actually helped the team. It was embarrassing.

Not in the playoffs(kd has higher on/off in 18 and 19) which is really the only thing arguably impressive about 17-19 as a stretch. Of course competition is a factor in that and you can justifably point out steph did pretty well without kd in 2019. But by that same token Kd>steph in 2018 is very clear cut.

Of course this logic works much better with "playoff riser" shaq during the one and only dominant title run of his career...

But I guess scoring better than a guy for one series by box(17 kd) is > outscoring and outcreating a guy(by box) for 3(2001 kobe)...

During that 2001 run, Kobe averaged 43.4 MPG and Shaq averaged 42.3 MPG.

[/quote]
Correct. Kobe averaged more minutes those playoffs. And that regular season. And the next regular season and playoffs.

How does this help Shaq? If anything it would suggest this isn't Drob and Duncan and more like pippen/mj, dray/steph, except in this case pippen/dray are putting way better numbers for 3 of the four rounds,is playing more minutes for 2 of 3 championship seasons, and goes on to win b2b championships and make 3 straight finals while arguably being more valuable than anyone in the league besides the crazy outlier that is 09/10 Lebron. The Lakers were absolutely not "the same team" in 2005 after losing 3 of their best 4 players from 2004. In 2006 they hadn't come close to replacing what they'd lost but they won 45, posted a solid srs(+2.5) and then took Nash's Suns to 7.

You're stretching a mile and a half to discredit him.

When Shaq was averaging 33/16/5/3 in the Finals, he averaged 45 MPG. You can’t try to glean anything useful from that small of an off sample. Considering that Shaq was much more impactful the entire rest of their run, I think we can look at that as pretty much a fluky blip.

Yeah shaq averaged better numbers for one round against the not best opponent. If 2001 Kobe is a fluky blip then maybe we should just call the 2001 playoffs a fluky blip and ding Shaq for their underwhelming regular season? Extended samples of lineup-adjustment at best put him at 4(at worst much lower) over a stretch that only includes a 3rd of nba history in terms of value(and those sets put extra weight on the playoffs). You can't just pick and choose when sample size matters.

From when Kobe took over as a starter in ‘99 until Shaq left for Miami, Shaq was 31-10 without Kobe and Kobe was 23-26 without Shaq.

And that is the regular-season where they only were the best team once. For title one Kobe's minutes took a big spike with granular production improving a bit. For title two Kobe played much better than he did in the RS and for title three while Kobe drops a bit per possession, his minutes spike up again.

If you want shaq the winner of the three championships than give Kobe his due. Kobe averaged more minutes for two of the three seasons, played a system where he was forced to iso a bunch(despite being incredibly efficient at basically every type of offensive play), and arguably played better than Shaq the one-time the Lakers were truly impressive in the playoffs.

Shaq before kobe was getting swept. Shaq after Kobe was getting carried by wade. Narrative? Sure. But i'd say there's more truth there than with you dismissing Bryant as a blip.

[Doctor MJ]

The only times where I rated Shaq as having a Top 5 season were:

'94-95
'97-98
'99-00
'00-01
'01-02

I think it's worth others exploring the same thing. My guess is that most would end up being more charitable to Shaq than I was, but remember when comparing him to a guy like Magic who was having Top 5 seasons as a matter of course all through his career when healthy and did so with a massively positive effect on his teammates rather than an eventually-negative effect on them.

It also means, I actually think Shaq vs Kobe is actually a pretty good debate (Kobe clocks in with 7 Top 5 seasons for me).

I’m out playing poker and on my phone so I can’t respond to this post point-by-point, but this really caught my eye as pretty absurd. You don’t have 98/99 as a top 5 season for Shaq????? Originally I had the Lakers 3-peat years as Shaq’s 3 POY years and ‘99 and ‘03 as POY years for Duncan, but over time, looking deeper into the context, I’ve changed it to give Duncan POY in ‘02 and Shaq POY in ‘99. He was utterly dominant. He led the league in FG%, 2P%, EFG%, PER (with a higher PER than anyone other than himself over a 14 year span), OWS, OBPM, and BPM. He had an on/off of +10.0 compared to -2.3 for Kobe.

In the playoffs, the Lakers lost in the second round, but Shaq averaged 26/12 while leading the playoffs in BPG and ORPG. He also led the playoffs in PER among everyone who played at least 6 games and had an on/off of +14.7. Shaq vs. Duncan is a debate that year, but I feel like not having Shaq top 5 is bananas. You really think Shaq was a bad defender that season while leading the league in BPG in the playoffs and only one year away from the best defensive season of his career? I don’t see it.

Cool, let me try to get my head back around that year - and I'll reiterate that I expect that my assessments on Shaq are lower than most if only because I myself was surprised at how it turned.

So, let's start out with the MVP voting for that year:

!. Malone
2. Mourning
3. Duncan
4. Iverson
5. Kidd
6. Shaq

So right off the bat, if you thought it was a given that Shaq was a Top 5 MVP finisher that year, re-consider.

Looking up my Top 5, I had the following 5 guys ahead of him:

Duncan & Robinson
Malone & Stockton
Mourning

So, Duncan, Malone & Mourning probably don't merit much of an explanation. Literally I'm just with the consensus of the time, and while we can discuss that consensus, it's not really about me.

For me then, it's just Robinson & Stockton that I would need to justify.

Here's the non-Shaq whammy: I rank Robinson at 1 for the year with Duncan 2. I could see changing my opinion to put Duncan back on top that year, but I doubt I'll ever rank Robinson below 2. In a nutshell, Robinson was the best and most impactful defensive player on a team that won with defense, and the scale of his defensive impact is enough to overwhelm Duncan's offensive advantage in my current assessment.

What about Stockton? Well first off, this is part of a broader conversation in terms of how good Stockton was relative to Malone. Is Stockton actually as valuable or more so than Malone? etc. I'll say that in general I'm not a Stockton stan (apologies for the term to those who may resemble that remark, but the alliteration was too much of a draw). Stockton mostly doesn't make my Top 5's, but he's someone good enough that I regularly considered, and if I went 10 deep each year, I'm sure he'd make more of those.

Focusing in on '98-99 for the Jazz...

<pause>

Ah, okay, I've re-considered. It's not just that I can't remember why I came to that conclusion, but that it seems stranger the more I looked at it. I'm moving Shaq up. He now makes my ballot 6 times.

Thank you for pointing me to somewhere so specific.

[AEnigma]

Huh? I’m not using any “process.” I’m just reminding you what happened factually. I have no idea if the Warriors could’ve beaten the Raptors if Durant was out but Klay played the whole series. There’s reason to believe such a series would’ve been close and that the Warriors could’ve perhaps won, but really we’ll never know. What we *do* know is we shouldn’t use their loss of that series as an indication of exactly what they were capable of simply without Durant, since there was an additional huge injury that affected the series.

And what happened factually is that the original Warriors trio was outscored on court without Durant. Klay’s injury made the victory easier and effectively guaranteed, but the Raptors were winning those minutes regardless. If it was “2-2 with a lead,” that is because one quarter of Durant provided just enough to give them an edge in a close game (and in this framework where we need to throw out the Klay-less game, then the series goes to the Raptors as soon as they hit 3 wins).