Ol Roy wrote:One_and_Done wrote:Ol Roy wrote:We have to pretend Jerry West and other great shooters couldn't make threes because of DeMar DeRozan (who historically isn't even that great from the long midrange).
Let's call it "DeMar's Law."
Demar is just the most obvious example. There are others. It's not appropriate for us to grant players a skillset they never possessed.
Jerry West absolutely possessed the skillset to shoot from behind the three-point line. He was a deep shooter even before it resulted in extra points. I don't have to grant it to him; he developed it himself.
The
appropriate approach is to make informed judgements on what is most plausible, not use rigid gatekeeping to uphold an extreme narrative.
But we've been through this tired exercise before. If you want to trash a player, you allow yourself to make a declarative statement. If someone has a more positive assessment, then you try to impose agnosticism on them. If someone tries to project a player based on how their demonstrated skillsets would adapt in a modern context, you say that is an imaginary player and it isn't allowed. If you want to project a player into a modern context, you create your own imaginary player (one that isn't allowed to adapt to their environment, unlike real players) and point out that your boxed-in construct would obviously play poorly.
Once the discussion turns into how a player would project in another era, we are already engaging in a fictional, speculatory exercise. As most people pick up on, it's simply self-serving to try and shut off the speculation that happens to run counter to your narrative. It's not inappropriate to postulate adaptations, you just disagree because it conflicts with your basketball worldview.
So, if you don't like speculation then refrain from it entirely instead of adhering to double standards; "projection for me but not for thee."
We’ve been over this before.
There are degrees of speculation. I think taking a player with their existing skillset, and imagining them in another context, is fine. We do that every day when we speculate on how a trade would work out. That is perfectly sensible. Imagining the player with a skillset they never possessed is too speculative. No matter how refined the player, or how hard a worker, it’s entirely possible that the skill just doesn’t develop (like many refined players who worked hard).
Some people might say that is “unfair” to older players. I would say:
1) I am not concerned about fairness, just who is the best at basketball. It isn’t fair that Usain Bolt was born with a better physique than other runners, but it doesn’t change the fact he’s faster than them, just like being born short will often “unfairly” limit you as a basketball player.
2) I actually don’t think it’s unfair, because West never being asked to shoot 3s is only one side of the equation. He also benefitted from playing in a terrible era, in a way modern players did not. He benefitted compared to pre-WW2 players who were struck by polio, or players who were never allowed to play basketball because of racism. There’s something perversely unfair about the fact that using this logic Demar would be automatically considered to be a 3pt shooter if he had just played in the 60s and 70s, because nobody ever assumes old legends would fail to develop a skill. The assumption is always that they would, which is clearly wrong because many players today have tried very hard to develop these skills and failed.
Today’s league is superior to older leagues, so success in the modern game should matter more. However, even if you didn’t buy that the 3pt shot has existed for most of NBA history, if we look at what skill sets translate to the majority of league history then that favours 3pt shooters too.
