Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry

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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#21 » by lessthanjake » Sun Jul 7, 2024 1:38 am

Throwawaytheone wrote:
lessthanjake wrote:Once he hit his prime in 2014, Steph Curry typically outdid LeBron in regular season impact (as I’ve shown a bajillion times by listing who was ahead year by year in the various metrics we have)

and subsequent data we have gotten (i.e. for instance, RAPM data, including the limited pre-play-by-play stuff we have) really doesn’t paint a picture of players that are at all close.


Could you post the impact data comparisons for both, with values? How close were Bron/Curry vs Hakeem/Jordan? Would help bring some statistical veracity to the debate.


This doesn’t have the specific values in it, but I did a list of which one of the two was ahead in a ton of different impact metrics each year from 2014 onwards. You can find it in the first spoiler in my post here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2309163&p=107697936&hilit=Curry+Estimated#p107697936

For convenience, I’ll copy-paste that in a spoiler here:

Spoiler:
NBAshotcharts 5-Year RAPM

2013-2018: Curry
2014-2019: Curry
2015-2020: Curry
2016-2021: Curry
2017-2022: Curry
2018-2023: Curry

GitHub Regular Season RAPM

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: Curry
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry

GitHub Playoff RAPM

2013-2014: LeBron
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: LeBron
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: N/A

Cheema 5-Year RAPM

2014-2018: Curry
2015-2019: Curry
2016-2020: LeBron
2017-2021: LeBron

Engelmann PI RAPM

2013-2014: LeBron
2014-2015: LeBron
2015-2016: LeBron
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry

Real Plus Minus

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: Curry
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: Curry
2021-2022: Curry
2022-2023: LeBron

Estimated Plus Minus

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: Curry
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: Curry
2021-2022: Curry
2022-2023: Curry

Regular Season RAPTOR

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: Curry
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: Curry
2021-2022: Curry
2022-2023: Curry

Playoff RAPTOR

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: LeBron
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: N/A
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: N/A
2021-2022: N/A
2022-2023: Curry

Regular Season AuPM/g

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: Curry
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: LeBron
2021-2022: Curry
2022-2023: LeBron

Playoff AuPM/g

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: LeBron
2016-2017: LeBron
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: N/A
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: N/A
2021-2022: N/A
2022-2023: Curry

LEBRON

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: LeBron
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: LeBron
2021-2022: Curry
2022-2023: LeBron

Goldstein PIPM

I’m not aware of publicly-available PIPM data anymore, but we can see which one was ahead in PIPM in three years of Steph’s prime, using the chart near the bottom of this 2018 article by Goldstein, which lists the top all-time PIPM values: https://fansided.com/2018/01/11/nylon-calculus-introducing-player-impact-plus-minus/

2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: Curry
2016-2017: Curry


There’s also the Basketball Database RAPM that I’ve discovered since that post. Using their three-year RAPM, we see the following:

Basketball Database Three-Year RAPM

2014-2016: Curry
2015-2017: Curry
2016-2018: Curry
2017-2019: Curry
2018-2020: Curry
2019-2021: LeBron
2020-2022: Curry
2021-2023: Curry
2022-2024: Curry

Using their five-year RAPM instead, we get the following:

Basketball Database Five-Year RAPM

2014-2018: Curry
2015-2019: Curry
2016-2020: Curry
2017-2021: Curry
2018-2022: Curry
2019-2023: Curry
2020-2024: LeBron

The website has one-year RAPM, but single-season raw RAPM is a pretty bad stat (too much noise—I probably shouldn’t have even included it in the post I linked to above, but did for sake of completeness). That said, in case you’re curious about that, Curry is ahead in 7 of the 11 single seasons from 2014 to present—with the exceptions being 2016, 2020 (obviously), 2021, and 2024.

Also, as an amendment on what I said in the spoiler about not being aware of publicly-available PIPM data beyond the 2015-2017 years I noted there, the Basketball Database website does have more fulsome PIPM data. And we see that it looks like this:

Basketball Database PIPM

2013-2014: Curry
2014-2015: Curry
2015-2016: Curry
2016-2017: Curry
2017-2018: Curry
2018-2019: Curry
2019-2020: N/A
2020-2021: Curry
2021-2022: Curry
2022-2023: LeBron

____________

I also did some related analysis last year of the average league placement of players in various impact metrics. See the spoiler and link below: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2310528&p=107776281&hilit=Placement#p107776281


Spoiler:
Some data on top players’ average placement in the league in various impact metrics in the last decade. I’ve included Jokic, Giannis, and Embiid’s average placement in the last five years, just for reference as to how they’ve done in these metrics more recently—obviously if we looked at the whole decade they’d look worse.

Average League Placement in EPM in the last decade (excluding injury seasons)

1. Steph Curry: 2.89
2. Nikola Jokic (last 5 years): 4.80
3. Giannis Antetokounmpo (last 5 years): 5.00
4. Kawhi Leonard: 5.50
5. Joel Embiid (last 5 years): 6.00
6. LeBron James: 6.80
7. Kevin Durant: 9.38
8. James Harden: 9.70
9. Chris Paul: 12.2

Average League Placement in RPM in the last decade (excluding injury seasons)

1. Steph Curry: 4.56
2. Nikola Jokic (last 5 years): 5.80
3. Giannis Antetokounmpo (last 5 years): 6.00
4. LeBron James: 6.60
5. James Harden: 10.30
6. Joel Embiid (last 5 years): 13.20
7. Chris Paul: 13.60
8. Kevin Durant: 15.62
9. Kawhi Leonard: 17.75

Average League Placement in full season RAPTOR in the last decade (excluding injury seasons)

1. Steph Curry: 3.56
2. Nikola Jokic (last 5 years): 3.80
3. Kawhi Leonard: 3.88
4. Joel Embiid (last 5 years): 6.80
5. Giannis Antetokounmpo (last 5 years): 7.00
6. LeBron James: 10.9
7. Kevin Durant: 12.5
8. James Harden: 12.7
9. Chris Paul: 18.2

Average League Placement in NBAshotcharts RAPM in the last decade (excluding injury seasons)

1. Steph Curry: 8.11
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo (last 5 years): 12.8
3. Kawhi Leonard: 13.63
4. Kevin Durant: 13.63
5. Joel Embiid (last 5 years): 17.4
6. Chris Paul: 24.3
7. Nikola Jokic (last 5 years): 31.6
8. James Harden: 32.5
9. LeBron James: 34.1

Average League Placement in LEBRON in the last decade (excluding injury seasons)

1. Giannis Antetokounmpo (last 5 years): 2.00
2. Steph Curry: 5.11
3. Nikola Jokic (last 5 years): 5.20
4. Joel Embiid (last 5 years): 6.00
5. LeBron James: 6.90
6. Kawhi Leonard: 7.00
7. James Harden: 8.40
8. Chris Paul: 10.40
9. Kevin Durant: 10.75

Average League Placement in AuPM/g in the last decade (excluding injury seasons)

1. Steph Curry: 3.78
2. Nikola Jokic (last 5 years): 4.6
3. Giannis Antetokounmpo (last 5 years): 5.4
4. Kevin Durant: 6.13
5. Joel Embiid (last 5 years): 7.40
6. James Harden: 11.5
7. LeBron James: 13.70
8. Kawhi Leonard: 13.75
9. Chris Paul: 17.7

Steph has the best average placement in every single one of these impact metrics, except one. And that’s even above just the last 5 years of Jokic, Giannis, and Embiid—obviously it’s harder to maintain such league placement over a longer timespan. In the one measure where Steph’s average placement isn’t the best of anyone’s, he’s 2nd to Giannis, but of course I’m just listing Giannis’s last 5 years—if we extended it back even just a few years to start at Giannis’s 3rd season, he’d be below Steph in that too.


____________

Note: On the values themselves, we can’t really do much of a comparison, because we don’t have the same impact metrics for the vast majority of Jordan’s and Hakeem’s careers. To the extent we do have different stuff for Jordan and Hakeem (such as Squared’s RAPM), different measures are scaled differently and use different methodology, so we can’t really compare the numbers in a direct way to what we have in different measures for LeBron and Curry. And even the small number of measures we have for both sets of players (Real Plus Minus being one example) are likely not scaled the same in different years, making it probably a flawed approach to compare values in different years. This is largely why my past analysis has focused on who is ahead in a given year or timeframe, as well as looking at average league placement. Indeed, at one point I did analysis on average values in some of these stats, and had the pro-LeBron crowd here tell me (I think correctly actually) that that was not a valid approach, for these reasons. In any event, here I don’t know that we have any need to compare values, since we have Curry outdoing LeBron in Curry’s prime, while, as I’ve noted, Jordan easily outdoes Hakeem in the impact data we do have from their years.

And since I haven’t noted this stat previously regarding Jordan/Hakeem and writing this made me think of it, I’ll note that we have RPM from 1997, a year where Hakeem was still in his prime, and Jordan was ranked 1st in the league with 7.62, while Hakeem was ranked 30th with 2.77. In 1998, Hakeem was arguably not quite in his prime anymore and Jordan had declined a bit, but Jordan was 5th with 5.96, while Hakeem was 22nd with 3.18. So yeah, Jordan is ahead and it’s not close. And we see a similar story in the various other metrics I’ve mentioned for those two (Squared RAPM, Engelmann’s quarter-by-quarter RAPM approximation, single-season RAPM from the play-by-play era, WOWYR, Moonbeam’s regressed WOWY analysis, the Basketball Database’s multi-year RAPM, etc.)
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#22 » by Throwawaytheone » Sun Jul 7, 2024 2:16 am

lessthanjake wrote:Note: On the values themselves, we can’t really do much of a comparison, because we don’t have the same impact metrics for the vast majority of Jordan’s and Hakeem’s careers. To the extent we do have different stuff for Jordan and Hakeem (such as Squared’s RAPM), different measures are scaled differently and use different methodology, so we can’t really compare the numbers in a direct way to what we have in different measures for LeBron and Curry. And even the small number of measures we have for both sets of players (Real Plus Minus being one example) are likely not scaled the same in different years, making it probably a flawed approach to compare values in different years. This is largely why my past analysis has focused on who is ahead in a given year or timeframe, as well as looking at average league placement. Indeed, at one point I did analysis on average values in some of these stats, and had the pro-LeBron crowd here tell me (I think correctly actually) that that was not a valid approach, for these reasons. In any event, here I don’t know that we need to really compare values, since we have Curry outdoing LeBron in Curry’s prime, while, as I’ve noted, Jordan easily outdoes Hakeem in the impact data we do have from their years.


Thanks for all the data. For clarifications sake, I didn't mean the comparison of the values between Steph/Bron and Jordan/Hakeem, the metrics aren't the same in most cases (even between variants of the same metric), nor are the eras of course which has it's own host of effects on the range these metrics can have, so it's comparing apples to oranges. I meant the values compared between Steph and Bron year by year for example, but it doesn't matter much since you listed who is leading which works the same.

For what it's worth, I have this "SPI PIPM" spreadsheet lying around. I did some searching and it just seems to be an attempt to create a more stable and luck-adjusted variant of PIPM after we lost all databases for it. https://nbacouchside.net/2022/11/05/introducing-nba-stable-player-impact-spi/
Data summarized below based on the spreadsheet I have (should be the same as the data in that link)

Spoiler:
2014:
Lebron: +5.4
Curry: +5.3

2015:
Lebron: +5.1
Curry: +8.5

2016:
Lebron: +5.9
Curry: +9.4

2017:
Lebron: +4.8
Curry: +7.9

2018:
Lebron: +3
Curry: +6.8

2019:
Lebron: +3.6
Curry: +6.4

2021:
Lebron: +4.6
Curry: +4.5
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#23 » by EmpireFalls » Sun Jul 7, 2024 2:41 am

Hakeem and Curry had almost completely opposite team building luck around them so it’s really hard to answer this question. Imagine Hakeem on a team with as much talent as the 2014-19 Warriors… man.

Alternatively, imagine Steph on the ghastly abomination that was the post-Sampson late-80s/early-90s Rockets… Or hell, imagine Steph on even the mid 93/94 rockets.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#24 » by homecourtloss » Sun Jul 7, 2024 3:43 am

EmpireFalls wrote:Hakeem and Curry had almost completely opposite team building luck around them so it’s really hard to answer this question. Imagine Hakeem on a team with as much talent as the 2014-19 Warriors… man.

Alternatively, imagine Steph on the ghastly abomination that was the post-Sampson late-80s/early-90s Rockets… Or hell, imagine Steph on even the mid 93/94 rockets.


Team building was different back then, but overall your post rings true. The Rockets had no idea what they were doing and had a penchant for acquiring drug addicts, volatile tempers, etc., on their roster.
lessthanjake wrote:Kyrie was extremely impactful without LeBron, and basically had zero impact whatsoever if LeBron was on the court.

lessthanjake wrote: By playing in a way that prevents Kyrie from getting much impact, LeBron ensures that controlling for Kyrie has limited effect…
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#25 » by lessthanjake » Sun Jul 7, 2024 8:07 am

OhayoKD wrote:
Salad-san out

Your post includes a good bit of non-responsive silliness and ignores pretty much everything I’ve been saying, mostly I think because you don’t have a substantive response to make on this.

You made two points, both were addressed.
First, a decade (which is the time period I looked at the bajillion times I analyzed Steph’s and LeBron’s year-by-year impact data) certainly qualifies as an “era.”

Eras cover multiple decades and in the context where Lebron and Curry are given possession of the era grammatically, it's more natural to choose the seasons for the players based on their career arcs/trajectories/internal scaling than to restrict yourself to comparing the two players over a shared period of time when both are at different places in their career
you can continue to answer the question in this thread by way of saying LeBron was a lot better than Steph in 2010-2013 and then object to anyone not doing that.

I didn't answer the question that way.

Second, regarding the quoted portion above, Squared has never run RAPM that includes LeBron James, so what you’re saying doesn’t make sense.

I didn't say he did.

Someone else copied Squared's method and formula and scaling while partially sampling data for everyone in a similar way to see how Lebron would look with that same sort of inflation.
Comparing RAPM values done by different sources is obviously silly, since they don’t use the same methodology or scale in the same way.

Replying without reading is also silly:
When similar sampling was done using a similar approach with a certain somebody


Your whole "second point" was "non-responsive silliness" to set-up another iteration of "look at how I won" as the overton window here continues to steadily shift against the players you defend because you

A. have "nothing substantive to offer".
B. clutter your posts with reassurances you do actually have something to offer when you clearly don't.


There’s actually genuinely nothing specific here of substance whatsoever. It’s all just vague statements without specific evidence, arbitrary statements relating to silly semantics (“eras cover multiple decades”), immature jabs, and weird/baseless meta-commentary. I’ve provided a lot of info in this thread. Others can read through what I’ve posted and look at your mostly immature responses and make up their own minds.
OhayoKD wrote:Lebron contributes more to all the phases of play than Messi does. And he is of course a defensive anchor unlike messi.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#26 » by ardee » Sun Jul 7, 2024 9:08 am

lessthanjake wrote:
Throwawaytheone wrote:
lessthanjake wrote:Once he hit his prime in 2014, Steph Curry typically outdid LeBron in regular season impact (as I’ve shown a bajillion times by listing who was ahead year by year in the various metrics we have)

and subsequent data we have gotten (i.e. for instance, RAPM data, including the limited pre-play-by-play stuff we have) really doesn’t paint a picture of players that are at all close.


Could you post the impact data comparisons for both, with values? How close were Bron/Curry vs Hakeem/Jordan? Would help bring some statistical veracity to the debate.


This doesn’t have the specific values in it, but I did a list of which one of the two was ahead in a ton of different impact metrics each year from 2014 onwards. You can find it in the first spoiler in my post here: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2309163&p=107697936&hilit=Curry+Estimated#p107697936



That was a tremendous post. I've been appreciating Steph a lot more lately and this post really pulled together a lot of my scattered thoughts and added even more for me to think about. I think LeBron was better than him every year of the 2010s besides 2015 and 2019, but Steph is still the player that defined the 2015-onward era the most and dictated the course of the league since then.

I am really starting to think that Steph may be above Magic as the GOAT PG now.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#27 » by CodeBreaker » Sun Jul 7, 2024 10:43 am

MJ/Hakeem
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#28 » by web123888 » Sun Jul 7, 2024 11:15 am

Bigger gap between Jordan / Hakeem.

Many believe Hakeem only won his two titles because of Jordan’s retirement. At no point was he ever even entertained as Jordan’s equal or superior.

Curry won multiple titles with LeBron in the league. He also was widely regarded as the best player in the game for like 98% of the 2016 season until the Warriors choked away the title.

He also revolutionized the game in a way LeBron did not and the entire game is played differently now as a result of his style.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#29 » by EmpireFalls » Sun Jul 7, 2024 1:23 pm

I actually think the D’Antoni/Harden Rockets were the biggest drivers in the way the game is played today. Their style is heavily emulated - I’ve yet to see anything like the Warriors offense or Curry since.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#30 » by jjgp111292 » Sun Jul 7, 2024 11:08 pm

EmpireFalls wrote:I actually think the D’Antoni/Harden Rockets were the biggest drivers in the way the game is played today. Their style is heavily emulated - I’ve yet to see anything like the Warriors offense or Curry since.

Yeah, that "Three-point spam" style that the Knicks and Rockets ushered in during the 2012-13 season was the real start - in both their cases, I point to the 2012 Spurs and Playoff Heat's three-point shooting as the catalysts that finally validated the Moreys of the world.

The Warriors' system is difficult to replicate especially without the shooting talent, whereas Harden-Houston's "interchangable doofuses standing around at the 3-point line waiting for Harden to pass it to them" style is much more graspable for the rest of the league; of course it's also a chicken & egg situation, as the Houston style of basketball is a direct result of the broader statistical evolution and analysis that Darryl Morey was entrenched in. Makes sense that the other teams would follow suit, so now that I think about it I wouldn't exactly credit the Rockets as the influencer per-say, they were just the flag bearers for what was happening across the league

Small wonder the game has gotten a less fun to watch :lol: I think 2015-18 was the sweet spot until we went too deep into Morey ball.

I think overall, the Rockets were more influential on how teams play, but Curry was more influential on how players play. Similar to how the 90s/early 00s were still big men centric despite Jordan being more influential on the players (Very few guys can run the triangle, but most guys can dump the ball in the post to a 7-footer lol)
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#31 » by Ol Roy » Mon Jul 8, 2024 3:40 am

Curry's lack of defensive value makes him the odd man out here.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#32 » by Throwawaytheone » Mon Jul 8, 2024 5:03 am

jjgp111292 wrote:
EmpireFalls wrote:I actually think the D’Antoni/Harden Rockets were the biggest drivers in the way the game is played today. Their style is heavily emulated - I’ve yet to see anything like the Warriors offense or Curry since.

Yeah, that "Three-point spam" style that the Knicks and Rockets ushered in during the 2012-13 season was the real start - in both their cases, I point to the 2012 Spurs and Playoff Heat's three-point shooting as the catalysts that finally validated the Moreys of the world.

The Warriors' system is difficult to replicate especially without the shooting talent, whereas Harden-Houston's "interchangable doofuses standing around at the 3-point line waiting for Harden to pass it to them" style is much more graspable for the rest of the league; of course it's also a chicken & egg situation, as the Houston style of basketball is a direct result of the broader statistical evolution and analysis that Darryl Morey was entrenched in. Makes sense that the other teams would follow suit, so now that I think about it I wouldn't exactly credit the Rockets as the influencer per-say, they were just the flag bearers for what was happening across the league

Small wonder the game has gotten a less fun to watch :lol: I think 2015-18 was the sweet spot until we went too deep into Morey ball.

I think overall, the Rockets were more influential on how teams play, but Curry was more influential on how players play. Similar to how the 90s/early 00s were still big men centric despite Jordan being more influential on the players (Very few guys can run the triangle, but most guys can dump the ball in the post to a 7-footer lol)


I think the impact Curry has had on NBA offenses comes in twofold, not just one.

1- Accelerating the paradigm shift of NBA teams to favour 3s as the primary offense. It was inevitable and would always have happened, but along with Morey's databall offenses, Curry's Warriors showed the legitimacy of the 3 pointer as a primary weapon in the playoffs (people didn't think you could win if you relied on 3s for core offense before Golden State).

2- Empowering individual stars to rely on 3s and individual players as a whole to depend on the 3 pointer more, as you said. There's a great quote by FVV about this: “First and foremost, he made it possible for me to be in the NBA… I’m not sure my career would look the same if I wasn’t allowed to take the 3s I’m allowed to take”

That idea of allowing 3s and different varieties of 3s (deep shots, off the dribble, etc) to be a main weapon for players begins at Steph. From all of NBA history to 2015, there were 0 seasons where a player ever attempted 9+ 3pa per game. In 2016, Curry attempted 11.2 3PA per game. THEN Harden attempted 9+ 3PA in 2017 alongside Curry, same for 2018, no doubt he was influenced by Curry's success. Then in 2019, PG joins that list, and then you see a rapid expansion with way more players joining that list. The 9+ cutoff was just a demonstration to clearly show the impact, in reality the influence is much larger because even players who would previously only shoot 2 or 3 began to up that to 5 or 6 as a result of how the game was changing.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#33 » by jalengreen » Mon Jul 8, 2024 6:22 am

Throwawaytheone wrote:
jjgp111292 wrote:
EmpireFalls wrote:I actually think the D’Antoni/Harden Rockets were the biggest drivers in the way the game is played today. Their style is heavily emulated - I’ve yet to see anything like the Warriors offense or Curry since.

Yeah, that "Three-point spam" style that the Knicks and Rockets ushered in during the 2012-13 season was the real start - in both their cases, I point to the 2012 Spurs and Playoff Heat's three-point shooting as the catalysts that finally validated the Moreys of the world.

The Warriors' system is difficult to replicate especially without the shooting talent, whereas Harden-Houston's "interchangable doofuses standing around at the 3-point line waiting for Harden to pass it to them" style is much more graspable for the rest of the league; of course it's also a chicken & egg situation, as the Houston style of basketball is a direct result of the broader statistical evolution and analysis that Darryl Morey was entrenched in. Makes sense that the other teams would follow suit, so now that I think about it I wouldn't exactly credit the Rockets as the influencer per-say, they were just the flag bearers for what was happening across the league

Small wonder the game has gotten a less fun to watch :lol: I think 2015-18 was the sweet spot until we went too deep into Morey ball.

I think overall, the Rockets were more influential on how teams play, but Curry was more influential on how players play. Similar to how the 90s/early 00s were still big men centric despite Jordan being more influential on the players (Very few guys can run the triangle, but most guys can dump the ball in the post to a 7-footer lol)


I think the impact Curry has had on NBA offenses comes in twofold, not just one.

1- Accelerating the paradigm shift of NBA teams to favour 3s as the primary offense. It was inevitable and would always have happened, but along with Morey's databall offenses, Curry's Warriors showed the legitimacy of the 3 pointer as a primary weapon in the playoffs (people didn't think you could win if you relied on 3s for core offense before Golden State).

2- Empowering individual stars to rely on 3s and individual players as a whole to depend on the 3 pointer more, as you said. There's a great quote by FVV about this: “First and foremost, he made it possible for me to be in the NBA… I’m not sure my career would look the same if I wasn’t allowed to take the 3s I’m allowed to take”

That idea of allowing 3s and different varieties of 3s (deep shots, off the dribble, etc) to be a main weapon for players begins at Steph. From all of NBA history to 2015, there were 0 seasons where a player ever attempted 9+ 3pa per game. In 2016, Curry attempted 11.2 3PA per game. THEN Harden attempted 9+ 3PA in 2017 alongside Curry, same for 2018, no doubt he was influenced by Curry's success. Then in 2019, PG joins that list, and then you see a rapid expansion with way more players joining that list. The 9+ cutoff was just a demonstration to clearly show the impact, in reality the influence is much larger because even players who would previously only shoot 2 or 3 began to up that to 5 or 6 as a result of how the game was changing.


Harden 3PA/g by season:

- 2013: 6.2
- 2014: 6.6 (+0.4)
- 2015: 6.9 (+0.3)
- 2016: 8.0 (+1.1)
- 2017: 9.3 (+1.3)
- 2018: 10.0 (+0.7)
- 2019: 13.2 (+3.2)

Not really sure how you can be sure of Steph’s influence on Harden when he always shot a high # of 3s and steadily increased that number during the 3pt revolution. Trying to attribute that (one additional 3pa per game) to Steph just looks like you want to shape things to fit a predetermined narrative.

As for the prior claim of players being influenced more by Curry.. I don’t see that either in how they actually play. When you look at high 3pt volume stars of today like Luka and Trae or stars of yesterday like Dame and Harden, which of these guys play like Steph?

Percentage of 3s assisted (2015-)

Curry 60.5%
Lillard 44.6%
Harden 31.5%
Trae 30.8%
Luka 27.1%

And this is just one stat obviously that doesn’t really express what goes into an assisted Steph 3; I don’t see any of the stars these days move off-ball like he does to generate 3s. The increased volume is coming moreso from pullup 3s… the bread and butter of James Harden, the guy who took pullup 3s at a rate that has never been seen before.

I’m sure players would cite Steph as their influences, despite not really playing like him. But in terms of actually doing what many of today’s teams and stars do before they did it, the Rockets and James Harden in particular stand out the most.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#34 » by Throwawaytheone » Mon Jul 8, 2024 6:51 am

jalengreen wrote:
Harden 3PA/g by season:

- 2013: 6.2
- 2014: 6.6 (+0.4)
- 2015: 6.9 (+0.3)
- 2016: 8.0 (+1.1)
- 2017: 9.3 (+1.3)
- 2018: 10.0 (+0.7)
- 2019: 13.2 (+3.2)

Not really sure how you can be sure of Steph’s influence on Harden when he always shot a high # of 3s and steadily increased that number during the 3pt revolution. Trying to attribute that (one additional 3pa per game) to Steph just looks like you want to shape things to fit a predetermined narrative.



1- I already said Morey's databall Rockets played their part in paving the way for the 3p revolution, you're not really saying anything meaningful or of note here.
2- I said influenced by Curry's success, not that he did it because Curry did it, I wasn't "attribut[ing] that" to Curry, don't put words in my mouth.




jalengreen wrote:As for the prior claim of players being influenced more by Curry.. I don’t see that either in how they actually play. When you look at high 3pt volume stars of today like Luka and Trae or stars of yesterday like Dame and Harden, which of these guys play like Steph?

Percentage of 3s assisted (2015-)

Curry 60.5%
Lillard 44.6%
Harden 31.5%
Trae 30.8%
Luka 27.1%

And this is just one stat obviously that doesn’t really express what goes into an assisted Steph 3; I don’t see any of the stars these days move off-ball like he does to generate 3s. The increased volume is coming moreso from pullup 3s… the bread and butter of James Harden, the guy who took pullup 3s at a rate that has never been seen before.


Way to miss all the nuance and not read anything I wrote lol. I never said the modern players were 1 for 1 copies of Curry, so no, their assisted percentages would obviously not be the same. Nobody in NBA history has ever matched Curry's combination of CnS/off the dribble/deep shooting, and there's a good chance nobody does. Again, don't put words in my mouth.



jalengreen wrote:I’m sure players would cite Steph as their influences, despite not really playing like him. But in terms of actually doing what many of today’s teams and stars do before they did it, the Rockets and James Harden in particular stand out the most.


Again, you've completely missed the point about what influence is and how we see Curry's influence appear. I find it especially funny that you've conceded that damn near every player would cite Steph as their influence for how they play and their shooting and volume 3 pointers, yet you've decided they're wrong and you know better about who they were influenced by.

Kinda a strange reply altogether.
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Re: Bigger gap: Jordan/Olajuwon or LeBron/Curry 

Post#35 » by jjgp111292 » Mon Jul 8, 2024 6:52 am

I think D'Antoni activating Harden's full potential and pushing Moreyball to it's most extreme iteration was the reason for Harden's increased 3PA, not really Curry. Like unquestionable in a general sense the Warriors gave that style the credibility for them to confidently stay the course but yeah, I'd say it's their own path overall.
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