Heej wrote:lessthanjake wrote:Heej wrote:Your whole point is that some skills like shooting are more portable because good teams have ballhandling which is interesting because one can just as easily say that good teams often have shooting and cutting as well so guys who can draw 2 to the ball consistently are actually what's more valuable. See how dumb this concept is? It's literally just wielded as a cudgel to punish guys people dislike or as a crutch to support guys they like.
As I said, the point I am making operates under a baseline assumption that genuinely really good NBA players (which you need in order to have a good team) are more likely to have really good on-ball skills, compared to other offensive skill sets. That seems intuitively right to me, and I think it is ultimately what people like Ben Taylor are also assuming when they talk about this concept. But, as I said, it is possible to conceive of roster construction in which you have a really good team and are lacking in on-ball skills. In that case, a guy with great on-ball skills would be really “portable” in that scenario, IMO. Personally, that seems less likely than the flip side, so I’d wager that a guy with great off-ball skills would be more likely to end up being really “portable.” If you disagree with that underlying assumption, then that’s fine.
I will note, however, that you’re oversimplifying what I’m saying to try to boil it down to “skills like shooting are more portable.” I’m really talking about a player’s off-ball game *as a whole.* Shooting can be a big part of that, of course, but off-ball movement is a huge factor, and there’s other things like screening ability as well. Someone can be a great shooter and not be a great off-ball player. In any event, overall, it’s more about how much value a player can have without the ball, because I’m assuming that a really good NBA team is likely to have other really good players who may be less "portable" and need the ball to get even close to maximizing their value. In that sense, I also tend to think players who make quick decisions with the ball are likely more "portable" because that tends to get others involved in the possession more (which is more and more important the better the teammates are, and therefore probably has even more value the better the team—though obviously it's a good trait no matter what).
What you don't realize you're actually getting at is that you're presupposing the guys who are stacked in one attribute are deficient in the "opposing" one which is what's actually holding the team back.
Yes, I think this is actually a good point for you to make. I actually *am* making that kind of assumption about a superstar player’s teammates. The reason for that is that I’m assuming the guy whose “portability” we are evaluating is the best player on his team, and therefore that his teammates have flaws, at least in relative terms (even if they’re really good players overall). And I am assuming that someone is more likely to have really good teammates that are great on the ball and relatively less good off the ball, rather than vice versa (i.e. that they’re players who need to the ball to get close to maximizing their value). If the opposite is true on a particular team, or if the really good teammates are actually equally good at both, then the intuition I’m talking about with regards to “portability” wouldn’t really logically follow.
In any event, in the scenario I’m outlining (where a player has really good teammates that are much better on the ball than off it), you are right in a sense that that other player’s deficiency is part of what would be holding the team back. But there’s going to be deficiencies for players on any team—even the best ones. My intuition here is that a more “portable” player is one that covers the deficiency that I think is most common amongst other really good players, rather than one that shares that same deficiency (at least in relative terms).
Since you want to simplify it to on-ball vs off-ball and assume that most good players will spec towards on-ball; what you fail to understand here is that it's not as simple as one guy's deficiency being covered by another's proficiency lmao.
In reality what happens is that schemes accentuate both players deficiencies until the ancillary skills are able to break the scheme and allow players to unleash their proficiencies. If you have a guy you consider to be more portable because he specs towards off ball, teams will just blitz the on-ball guy and get it out of his hands while forcing the off-ball guy to make the plays.
Phoenix is a fairly clear example of this where their big 3 were all theoretically portable players on paper who should have all been able to cover for the other's on-ball skills as great off-ball guys. Instead the Wolves were just able to attack all of their creating deficiency such that their proficiencies were unable to be utilized enough.
Your intuition fails to account for how modern zone schemes are able to completely flip the math on guys' skillsets and force them to round out their weaknesses to maintain their baseline efficacy. And this has been a theme in our discussions imo that you just don't seem well versed in the Xs and Os of basketball and tend to look at it through a spreadsheet or what looks good on paper.
Versatility has become the name of the game in every sport now.
Lol, you apparently fail to realize that any defensive scheme designed to stop a really good player from doing the thing he is really good at will essentially inherently open things up for his team—thereby deriving value from forcing the defense to open things up. This is good for the offense! To take your example, if a team blitzes a great on-ball player to get it out of his hands, then that will create an advantage for the team by itself, because as long as that guy is able to get it out of his hands (which, if he’s a really good on-ball player, he should be able to do with consistency), the defense is left scrambling. That guy’s on-ball skill will have done its job incredibly well! Will the off-ball guy now have to make plays with the ball? Maybe, but it’d be from a position of advantage, and it’s actually quite likely that the great off-ball player will instead manage to use his great off-ball movement to massively exploit the now-scrambling defense—indeed that’s the wheelhouse of a great off-ball player! The two skill sets feed off each other in this example, and that’s the point! Both guys can do what they do best, at the same time (in this example, it’d be one guy creating the advantage, and the other exploiting that advantage using his biggest strength). Meanwhile, let’s take the flip side of this. Let’s say the defense instead tries to take away the off-ball guy, by shading defenders towards him as he moves off the ball (like how we have seen teams deal with Steph). They may well be able to limit the off-ball guy’s opportunities, but we’ve seen this movie before, and it ends up inherently opening space for the on-ball guy (because you can’t deal with an off-ball guy that way *and* double the guy on ball, or you just obviously create a layup line for everyone else).
Ultimately, it is a very basic concept that if two guys can play to their strengths and put pressure on the defense *at the exact same time*, then it is better than a situation where two guys can only truly play to their strengths one after the other. And, to go back to the thrust of your post, this is better precisely because of the fact that defenses aim to force players onto their weaknesses. Defenses can’t force two great players off their strengths at the same time, so they will generally fail in that goal against a team with a great on-ball and great off-ball player. It’s a pick-your-poison, but with the only options being a complete disaster for the defense. We saw this very well with Steph and KD. Meanwhile, with two great on-ball players, particularly if they aren’t great shooters, they inherently cannot both play to their strengths at the exact same time, and you can force them to their weakness by helping off the guy who is off the ball. Sure, the other guy may ultimately get the ball with some space to attack into, so that’s not all bad, but if he isn’t a great shooter, then the defense doesn’t have to close out super hard on him and the whole thing can easily break down a bit (not to mention that such a player will often not have the off-ball movement to put himself in the best position to receive the ball and exploit that space, often allowing the defense to end up recovering).
If your two best offensive players both excel on the ball but aren’t great off of it and aren’t great shooters, then you can help a decent bit off of whichever one doesn’t have the ball without too much worry. Both guys end up taking turns trying to operate on the ball against a team that can stack the paint more than they otherwise would, because the shooting isn’t great. In a lot of ways, it ends up arguably making it *harder* for each guy to create advantages using their strengths. And, to repeat myself, this is because when the one guy is playing to his strengths, the other guy inherently is not, and so you never have two guys creating advantages at once (or, perhaps more accurately, without having both guys play to their strengths at the same time, you’re not forcing the defense to live with an unmitigated version of one of the guys’ strengths).
This all seems rather obvious, and it’s a little surprising to me that a self-avowed X’s-and-O’s guru such as yourself would not understand it. It’s very basic stuff, and I’m frankly starting to wonder if your self-proclaimed vast knowledge of basketball is all talk—after all, as I’ve noted to you before, I have literally never once seen you actually break down any film, but instead I just constantly see you talk about how much you know and how good at breaking down film you are, all while you make extremely basic pronouncements about what basketball schemes aim to do (i.e. the type of statements one could glean from watching a few YouTube videos). Nothing you say about X’s and O’s has any depth to it whatsoever (it’s all just vague generalities), and yet a large percent of your posts involve you extolling your own depth of knowledge. Basketball is not very complicated, but still you very likely know quite a lot less than you think you do—perhaps the Dunning-Kroger effect in action.