lessthanjake wrote:One_and_Done wrote:Special_Puppy wrote:
I don’t have as high an opinion of Durant or Klay that year than you do. To be clear I’m super high on Harden overall
Curry and KD were regarded as the 2nd and 3rd best players in the league that year when healthy. Maybe you could make an argument they were only 'top 5', but it would be a stretch. Even if we granted you that, there is literally no parallel for 2 such players to be supported by another 2 all-stars, one of whom is a DPOY quality player, and to have good role players beyond that is absurd. The phrase 'not overwhelmingly talented' was ridiculous. They were more overwhelmingly talented than any team in NBA history other than the 2017 version of their team.
Durant’s impact was never as good as his reputation. Same with Klay. Klay was really not an all-star level player at that point (it’s arguable whether he ever was one, but he definitely wasn’t one at that point). Meanwhile, Draymond was not as good in 2018 as he’d been in the prior two years. Which is why he was a distant 6th in DPOY voting, not on all-defensive first team, and why starting from those last two Durant years impact data no longer had him looking like the impact giant he previously looked like—for instance, his NBArapm two-year RAPM for 2018 & 2019 was 21st in the NBA (and got worse in subsequent years) and pretty much every all-in-one agrees generally that he had that sort of fall off. And the depth on the team beyond that was actually pretty thin. You actually really don’t want guys like Nick Young and Quinn Cook in your playoff rotation, and Livingston was pretty washed by that point. It was still a great team and the most talented team in the league that year, but you’re taking the rosiest view of all these players to the point of it not really being a realistic portrayal of what reality was in 2018.
This is a good example for everyone of where a hyper-focus on advanced stats gets you. You start making statements like “5 time all-star Klay Thompson, who made 2 all-nba teams and was 10th in MVP voting, was never really an all-star” and that a guy with an MVP, 15 all-star appearances, 11 all-nba teams (6 of them first teams), and 11 top ten MVP finishes (4 of them 2nd or higher) was apparently never that good.
Of course, in reality we have ample evidence KD had a huge impact on winning, even for non-stacked teams.
In 2014 for example, the Thunder were 25-11 in the games Westbrook missed, thanks to KD.
His Brooklyn time is a bit of a mess to assess, because of all the stuff that happened involving availability of guys, but we can see in 21 the team was 23-12 with KD, and only 25-24 without him. Similarly, the Nets in 22 were 36-19 with him, and only 8-19 without him. We also saw KD carry the Nets in the 21 playoffs, almost past the Bucks, with Kyrie and Harden both going down with injuries. If KDs toe isn’t on the line, the Nets likely win the championship this year largely on the back of KD.
In KD’s Phoenix tenure, despite being past his prime, the win-loss still holds up well for KD. From 23 to 25 the Suns were 85-60 with him, and 15-30 without him. The contrast was stark.
But hey, some computer formulas that, by their nature, are unreliable at accurately measuring value don’t agree, so I guess forget all that other stuff.
I’m told Draymond was “worse” in 2018, which is apparently reflected by his 6th in DPOY. Does that mean he became a better defender last year at age 34 when he finished 3rd? Come to think of it, he was 3rd and 4th in 2021 and 23 too. In reality, younger Draymond was just as good on D, if not better, and the numbers you’re looking at are probably extra distorted due to the coasting the team did in the RS, the small sample of the playoffs, and the presence of so many awesome players next to each other creating a lot of statistical noise. Of course, defensive stats in particular are notoriously bad at tracking how good you are, even moreso than offensive ones.
This is where overreliance on advanced stats leads you.
