parsnips33 wrote:Heej wrote:parsnips33 wrote:
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He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.
So what actually scales best?
Well firstly, how well a skillset scales is partially dependent on what the better players are actually adding to a team. Chris Paul's ball-handling for example is very scalable in a situation like Pheonix, even though it doesn't fit in "combination of off-ball and defense". As it allows him to provide value without taking shots from the the other two scorers and hence contributes to how scalable chris paul is.
Reducing the offensive component to "what can you do without the ball" is filtering out a number of team situations in your analysis, particularly if you are reducing "what can you do without the ball" to shooting and cutting. And if you are looking for "what takes away from teammates the least", shooting and cutting are not the least overlapping skills:
Heej wrote:- IQ (#1 above anything else)
- communication (on both ends of the floor)
- scouting and gameplan contributions in the film room/film study (part of IQ but important enough to be its own category)
Calling IQ a "skill" is a misnomer in the context as it is not really a skill, but rather a quality that is a prerequire for
a. a variety of extremely scalable skills
b. reliable application of said skills
This can manifest as
-> Running though and preparing counters for potential playoff opponents (per rondo, the 2020 lakers had Lebron look at Boston and Rondo look at miami after the Nuggets series)
-> Pre-empting opposing subs, making them for your own team (bob meyers notes Lebron doing this during their finals, arenas notes him doing this to seal game 5 in his first playoff series)
-> Directing teammates to the right spots to break down defenses (draymond, cp3, lebron all have several instanced of doing this)
-> anticipating and adjusting personal and team strategy based on the effeciacy(or lackthereof) of initial plans or adjustments made by an opponent
-> identifying and blowing up (personally or via communication) opposing offensive sets (draymond, kg, lebron. cp3 all do this)
-> preparing strategies and directing teammates to deal with opposing offensive stars (the classic example is russell vs wilt, kd notes lebron doing this against him, and kobe is reported to have done this in prep for the 2010 finals)
-> advising teammates on what they can physically do to overwhelm a specific personell matchup (lebron did this with ad in their first win vs the warriors this season)
-> drawing up plays
-> controlling tempo
These sorts of applications bolster a team regardless of personell, can be done without even being on the court(if you recall draymond was mic'd up doing this from the bench in game 3 vs the lakers last year), and work with stars and non-stars. More over there is minimal risk of diminishing returns as there are only a handful of a players who can effectively do these things in the league.
If we look for players who've been able to lead championship team under multiple coaches we get...
-> Bill Russell
-> Lebron James
-> Magic Johnson
-> Kareem Abdul Jabbar
Three of these four players were did most if not all of the things listed above with the last one experiencing a relative renaissance at advanced age playing with one of those first 3.
Per Coaching RAPM(which treats coaches as 6th men and then specifcally tries to adjust by looking how players do with and without them), top coaches have similar stars with Phil Jackson coming as an outlierish +6 (which tracks when you consider his track record with key players missing from his teams). It shouldn't be that suprising then that the biggest impact outlier(as well as the most successful player ever) was the one player in nba history who literally won as a player coach while the modern impact outlier is le
gm.
The other commonality here:
Defense.
Bill Russell, Lebron, and Kareem are all able to carry good defenses with Kareem being on a different level from James and Russell being on a different level from Kareem. 3 and D's are not the most scalable,
defensive stats are.
Duncan is considered less scalable than Shaq and Steph but if we consider fit and results:
-> Steph is a
guard who was relatively weak as an on-ball passer and decision maker and defender who was paried with a defensive anchor who also is a great on-ball passer and a great floor-general/on-court coach
-> Shaq was a
center who was relatively weak defending against space on the perimiter, handling the ball, shooting, and a passing and was paired with
a guard who was an excellent ball-handler, a very good shooter, and a very good passer
-> Duncan was a
Center who was relatively weak as a passer, ball-handler, and perimeter defender paired with...
a center who was a worse passer, a worse ball-handler, and worse in space.
Yet somehow it was Duncan who produced the best impact portfolio(kills the other two in rapm while posting the best extended wowy splits of anyone between Kareem and James) and the most team success(with two championships including a dominant one with that specific pairing).
The somehow really isn't hard to figure out. Defensive stars are far less common than offensive ones and even the allegedly least scalable defensive skill(paint-protection) has repeatedly proven to stack very well(wallaces -> pistons, giannis/lopez -> bucks, duncan/robinson -> spurs are 3 of your top 5 non-russell defenses).
An offensive star who is good or nuetral defensively or a 3 and d wing lose more next to most stars than a player who can actually exert star-level impact defensively.
Heej wrote:He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.
So what actually scales best?
#1 and 2 in a macro sense are IQ and motor. Drilling down I'd say:
Help defense/processing rotations, switchability on D,
turnover economy, rebounding, playmaking.
Idk about calling turnover economy a skill. It's more a product of other skills. (and important not to conflate actual turnover economy with bbr turnover economy)
Also paint-protection(and deterrence from that capacity to protect) is probably more scalable than playmaking or scoring and generates more value than any other defensive skill, so it should definitely be listed here.