Moderators: Clyde Frazier, Doctor MJ, trex_8063, penbeast0, PaulieWal
tsherkin wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Induction Vote 1:
Ewing - 4 (AEnigma, falco, ZPage, LA Bird)
Pettit - 7 (Rishkar, HBK, Samurai, Clyde, Doc, OSNB, f4p)
Stockton - 2 (trex, beast)
Pippen - 3 (trelos, hcl, Ohayo)
No majority. Going to Vote 2 Pettit vs Ewing.
Does 7-4 not count as a majority? Interesting. That's nearly double the number of votes.
Doctor MJ wrote:Majority means you get more than half the votes.
f4p wrote:OhayoKD wrote:I too forgot steph exists
healthy kawhi is churning out a decade of dominant playoff performances. and would be compared to a playoff faller in steph.
and of course healthy kawhi might have another title like 2021
f4p wrote:The raptors had one of the best defenses in nba history and still had that when Kawhi left. Kawhi "drawfing" everyone else on his team isn't really important if he has more help than everyone else he's playing. Distribution of help isn't what determines whether you carry or not.
let's not argue over the word carry. penbeast's very next sentence said he considered kawhi part of an ensemble, from which i took "carry a team" to be the use of carry that would mean "lead a team to a championship" or being the obvious best player on a championship. because the next level up from "ensemble" isn't a 1994 hakeem carry job so it would be weird if penbeast really meant that he thought kawhi could be the best player on a championship team but just chose to word it as "anything below an all-time carry means you're part of an ensemble".
And of course, evidence you've used to argue steph didn't carry works alot better with Kawhi.
what is this a reference to? not sure what steph has to do with kawhi obviously being the best raptor.
The numbers which generated a...+2 playoff offense? Or does that sort of thing only matter with wardell
again, don't know what the curry thing means. not everything has to be some carry over from a previous thread.
He was not "put on" giannis. Gasol was put on Giannis with the raptors employing a team defensive strategy where kawhi spent a marginally larger amount of possessions than siakim helping funnel the freak towards far and away the best defender on the team. Of course Giannis did not shoot much differently when the raptors swapped who started a possession on him(that includes lowry), which should be a big tell you are ascribing far too much credit to the not-big who would spend the next series left on draymond.
kawhi wasn't guarding giannis much. giannis was putting up huge numbers, despite the existence of marc gasol. then kawhi guarded him a lot more and his numbers collapsed, with the continued existence of marc gasol. not sure why you are so adamant we never give kawhi credit for anything.
Of course when he swapped gasol out for an average big in zubac the clippers defense was outright bad in the following 2 playoffs, even though Kawhi's defensive tracking numbers and impact metrics all skyrocketed from 2019. The Raptors meanwhile were unaffected still posting one of the best defenses in history as they would prove to be a better rs and playoff team without Leonard than any non-kd team Steph has been without Steph.
didn't the 2016 warriors in the playoffs go 4-2 with a pretty huge MOV without steph? and that's without counting a game where steph was +0 in something like 20 minutes
of course, we all know the raptors can win regular season games and 1st round series without kawhi. it's just that that after that, we start getting lebronto's instead of world champions.
if he was arguably the best perimeter defender ever at the same time he was giving you 30+ ppg on 65 TS%, then his peak would be considered like top 5.
I don't think peak Kawhi has a particularly strong argument for best perimiter defender of his generation, never mind "all-time":
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2258950
. i'm using "perimeter defender" in the way i assume a lot would in terms of guarding people on the perimeter, not necessarily outdoing a sf/pf combo like lebron on overall defensive impact.And of course his playmaking would really hit its stride in the next season where, on another team that was quite good without him(as good as the no-kd warriors), he...got decked by the soon to be gentleman swept nuggets in one of several series where the clippers defense was outright bad.
the 2020 clippers who went 8-7 without kawhi were as good as the pre-KD warriors? or do you mean the pre-KD warriors without steph? or the KD warriors when KD didn't play?
Unironically, one could probably argue the raptors were better that year despite your impression we were "carried" in 2019, A run which ended with steph outright outplaying him with weaker support.
"we"? you are a raptors fan? is that where the kawhi animosity comes from? because you seem really committed to the bit.
also, not sure how steph "outright" outplayed kawhi. kawhi has slightly better box numbers despite steph's apparently weaker support presumably requiring him to do more,
and whatever gravity steph has outside the box score would certainly be somewhat offset by kawhi having defensive value.
[/quote]f4p wrote: Pippen basically dealt with it one year in Chicago and he quit on his team in a crucial playoff moment
Is this the series where Pippen's underdog outscored Ewing's favorite culminating in a game 7 where Ewing was getting clamped until Scottie was subbed out at the end of quarter 3
I would say that series is a much better example of a guy being "put on" another than kawhi and giannis yeah
it was a series where pippen did something that would get you roasted in the new york media until the cows came home if kukoc didn't happen to hit a remarkable shot while pippen sat on the bench. and then it would follow you around for 10 years every time something went wrong like any playoff failure followed ewing around. but pippen got it to be largely ignored because kukoc happened to make it and then got it even more ignored because he already had 3 titles with jordan and would get 3 more, so it's just a footnote. that's not how it works if you are carrying a franchise solo in the world's biggest media market without the world's most famous athlete basically sucking up all the media oxygen from you.
tsherkin wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:Majority means you get more than half the votes.
An interesting, if narrow, definition. So the throwaways takeaway from the obvious favorite. That's kinda trash, tbh. Ah well. Agreed upon well in advance, 30 guys in, I don't mean to rock the boat, I just never noticed how weird that was until now.
OhayoKD wrote:f4p wrote:
healthy kawhi is churning out a decade of dominant playoff performances. and would be compared to a playoff faller in steph.
Is the comparison steph vs steph or steph vs kawhi? Steph beats kawhi in playoff impact, team success(with or without kd), and in the run you decided to highlight as kawhi "carrying" a team, Steph quite literally put the same scoring numbers facing a much better opposing defense while also creating far more. In other words, he outplayed him.
You want to bring up per and such to draw a jordan and lebron comparison, but when jordan gets kawhi-level casts(very good without him), he'll have a bunch of years where the bulls play like one of the very best teams ever in the playoffs. When it's just decent/good, they'll play like title or near-title level basketball(1990). When Lebron gets a decent/good cast(or even subpar emperically) his teams sometimes skip a step and play like of the best ever in the playoffs and other times play title-worthy or close to it. When healthy Kawhi gets very good help he doesn't post "one of the best teams ever" and sometimes might even lose to not-finalists like the nuggets or the thunder.
IOW, the comparison is silly. PER is not real.
The actual results hardly justify a steph comparison, never mind an mj one. And never never mind a lebron one.
and of course healthy kawhi might have another title like 2021
And healthy Steph might have had another title in 2016, but that doesn't magically turn him into "best in the league" when we see his team win playoff games without him and beat an extremely strong okc team with steph playing his worst. Of course much of why people think the clippers could have won is what they did without Kawhi against much better teams than who the steph-less warriors were winning games against. Though I suspect if kawhi hadn't gotten hurt and they did win, even by the skin of their teeth, you would have characterized that as a carry job too.
f4p wrote:The raptors had one of the best defenses in nba history and still had that when Kawhi left. Kawhi "drawfing" everyone else on his team isn't really important if he has more help than everyone else he's playing. Distribution of help isn't what determines whether you carry or not.
let's not argue over the word carry. penbeast's very next sentence said he considered kawhi part of an ensemble, from which i took "carry a team" to be the use of carry that would mean "lead a team to a championship" or being the obvious best player on a championship. because the next level up from "ensemble" isn't a 1994 hakeem carry job so it would be weird if penbeast really meant that he thought kawhi could be the best player on a championship team but just chose to word it as "anything below an all-time carry means you're part of an ensemble".
Sure. By this bar Steph has carried 3 championship teams. 2 of those champions were bigger carry jobs than 2019
and of course when kd-went down curry was doing more carrying than kawhi was that same playoffs. That seems like plenty of reason to me to consider steph the better playoff performer.
And of course, evidence you've used to argue steph didn't carry works alot better with Kawhi.
what is this a reference to? not sure what steph has to do with kawhi obviously being the best raptor.
It is a reference to you repeatedly citing when the warriors were beating/winning games against .500 opponents without Steph. The Raptors were winning playoff series before and after, the clippers were winning games against 60-win teams. Kawhi was healthy in 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2020 with good help. Why does he have 1 championship and a bunch of "lost to the not 2nd best team" to go with it?
The numbers which generated a...+2 playoff offense? Or does that sort of thing only matter with wardell
again, don't know what the curry thing means. not everything has to be some carry over from a previous thread.
It means your numbers don't account for Kawhi not being a steph-level creator. Or even a harden-level one. Or even a Giannis level one.
Scoring a bunch efficiently and making reads does not make you a goat-level engine, at least not if we were to reference actual offensive results. PER isn't real.
He was not "put on" giannis. Gasol was put on Giannis with the raptors employing a team defensive strategy where kawhi spent a marginally larger amount of possessions than siakim helping funnel the freak towards far and away the best defender on the team. Of course Giannis did not shoot much differently when the raptors swapped who started a possession on him(that includes lowry), which should be a big tell you are ascribing far too much credit to the not-big who would spend the next series left on draymond.
kawhi wasn't guarding giannis much. giannis was putting up huge numbers, despite the existence of marc gasol. then kawhi guarded him a lot more and his numbers collapsed, with the continued existence of marc gasol. not sure why you are so adamant we never give kawhi credit for anything.
Gee, I wonder why Kawhi wasn't put on Giannis at the start. Could it be that Giannis would blow right by Kawhi in a typical defensive scheme? You do realize that the way the raptors made giannis "suck"(on offense) would be impossible with standard defensive personell?
Again, Giannis did not shoot significantly differently when he was guarded by siakim(or even lowry). Why do you think that is? We should give kawhi the credit he is actually due. Not credit for what his teammates do.Of course when he swapped gasol out for an average big in zubac the clippers defense was outright bad in the following 2 playoffs, even though Kawhi's defensive tracking numbers and impact metrics all skyrocketed from 2019. The Raptors meanwhile were unaffected still posting one of the best defenses in history as they would prove to be a better rs and playoff team without Leonard than any non-kd team Steph has been without Steph.
didn't the 2016 warriors in the playoffs go 4-2 with a pretty huge MOV without steph? and that's without counting a game where steph was +0 in something like 20 minutes
As did the 2020 raptors in the first round, and of course the clippers put up a mov of 8 against the +8.96 Jazz in 2021.
The difference is one of those teams came within a game of 2 championships while the other lost not to the best team, not to the 2nd best team, but the 3rd best team which would get thumped the next round.of course, we all know the raptors can win regular season games and 1st round series without kawhi. it's just that that after that, we start getting lebronto's instead of world champions.
Lebronto did a lot better in the first and second round in 2020 than they did in 2016, 2017, or 2018. I wonder if there were any changes besides kawhi that might explain that...
I don't think peak Kawhi has a particularly strong argument for best perimiter defender of his generation, never mind "all-time":
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2258950
apparently, it's manu
Sure. He was nowhere near that in 2019 and closer to that when he went to LA. Which gets us back to Kawhi's teams basically never putting up good defensive series when he has alright rim-protectors as opposed to elite ones.And of course his playmaking would really hit its stride in the next season where, on another team that was quite good without him(as good as the no-kd warriors), he...got decked by the soon to be gentleman swept nuggets in one of several series where the clippers defense was outright bad.
the 2020 clippers who went 8-7 without kawhi were as good as the pre-KD warriors? or do you mean the pre-KD warriors without steph? or the KD warriors when KD didn't play?8-7 with a net-rating of +3.3 in 2020. 48 wins and a net-rating of +0.8 in 2019 before they trades sga and scraps for kawhi and mvp candidate paul george. The warriors were generally .500 without steph and were better with or without kd when he was on the floor, in the regular season and in the playoffs.Unironically, one could probably argue the raptors were better that year despite your impression we were "carried" in 2019, A run which ended with steph outright outplaying him with weaker support.
"we"? you are a raptors fan? is that where the kawhi animosity comes from? because you seem really committed to the bit.
The animosity is directed towards dweebs trying to use 2021 to pretend 2020 was a fluke as if we didn't lose our defensive anchor and weren't playing in a different city, and as if we didn't literally make the playoffs the next year despite the roster being gutted. Kawhi gets credit for all-time great scoring campaign. Just like Gasol gets credit for anchoring an all-time defense and the ensemble gets credit for being able to help gasol shut down all comers with or without kawhi. But you wanna boil down the championship to the first part so you can pretend all-time scoring = "top 15 gimme".
Was kawhi the reason nick nurse is a much better coach than casey? Why didn't kawhi make zubac into gasol? Why couldn't the best perimiter defender ever do anything vs the mavs or the nuggets?
also, not sure how steph "outright" outplayed kawhi. kawhi has slightly better box numbers despite steph's apparently weaker support presumably requiring him to do more,
I don't know what box numbers you're looking at. Steph shot about as well on higher volume against a much much much better playoff defense while creating way more. There was no contest offensively, and 2019 kawhi was not nearly a good enough defender to make up that gap. Up until the finals, the raptors were looking like a candidate for being --the best-- modern playoff defense ever(even with the sixers offense being underrated), then Steph happened. You wanna bring up kd minutes, but in minutes without kd or klay, the warriors were still the best offense of the playoffs. That's what carrying looks like.
It's not when KD goes off on a middling defense that is badly suited to defend him(and is outscored by his "arguably worse" teammate in all 3 other series).
It's not when the raptors survive giannis and average help. It's when you're the center of attention for an opponent that shutting down everyone else to a historic degree and they still can't stop you. Kawhi had a good finals. Curry had an all-time performance. That's the difference between being the 2nd best player of your generation and simply being a rich man's Kevin Durant.
and whatever gravity steph has outside the box score would certainly be somewhat offset by kawhi having defensive value.
Yes, being hidden on draymond is great defensive value. Just like Kawhi is the giannis-stopper because giannis shot marginally worse vs leonard than he did vs lowry. It's not like they were an all-time defense without him the next year...
Is this the series where Pippen's underdog outscored Ewing's favorite culminating in a game 7 where Ewing was getting clamped until Scottie was subbed out at the end of quarter 3
I would say that series is a much better example of a guy being "put on" another than kawhi and giannis yeah
it was a series where pippen did something that would get you roasted in the new york media until the cows came home if kukoc didn't happen to hit a remarkable shot while pippen sat on the bench. and then it would follow you around for 10 years every time something went wrong like any playoff failure followed ewing around. but pippen got it to be largely ignored because kukoc happened to make it and then got it even more ignored because he already had 3 titles with jordan and would get 3 more, so it's just a footnote. that's not how it works if you are carrying a franchise solo in the world's biggest media market without the world's most famous athlete basically sucking up all the media oxygen from you.
That's rather funny, because the most talked about thing from that series is 30 years on is...Pippen sitting on the bench.
You know what's not talked about? Pippen, in his first go at carrying the load(on the team everyone was talking about the most), outplaying "alpha" ewing in the biggest game of their season, shutting him down on one end, matching his scoring on the other, and massively outcreating him(15 oc).
Pippen was asked to carry with a bunch of external and internal pressure and did a good job. So good, that media has been trying to spin the story the bulls were punching above their weight because of great...comradery. But also lets ignore the whole of what happened in 1994 because of one possession Pippen sat out because...a player he was repeatedly nearly traded for(and consequently hated) was being drawn up the final shot.
Doctor MJ wrote:The simplest system I could use would be to just take everyone's #1 vote, and give the nod to whoever gets the most of those.