Owly wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:iggymcfrack wrote:
What do you think about the 2014 season instead? He misses 20 games in the regular season and his RS impact numbers aren't quite as good, but he's healthy for all 13 playoff games and he performs pretty immaculately in the playoffs with single game plus/minuses of +26, -2, +4, +12, +11, and -4 in the series they end up losing to the Thunder.
So, fine for people to push back against what I'm going to point out, but "immaculate" is not what the story of Paul's play was not the takeaway:
Paul on loss: 'It's just bad basketball'In the biggest game of his career, Paul suddenly experienced the worst 45-second stretch of his career and was at a loss for words when trying to explain what happened.
"It's me. Everything that happened there at the end is on me," Paul said. "The turnover with 17 seconds left, assuming they were going to foul was the dumbest play I've ever made. To even put it in the official's hand to call a foul on a 3 ... it's just bad basketball."
Maybe the bitter final note underrates Paul in the series, but the ending of 2014 is kinda Paul's lowest narrative point.
Thoughts on this exchange
Cavsfansince84 wrote:A lot of the CP3 talk is too career based for a peaks project imo. I think most of us know he's sort of a rapm god over the last 20 years. It seems like most are going with 2015 for his peak and you have to take into account the 3-1 blown lead to the Rockets in the 2nd rd. Though having said that, he didn't actually play bad during the comeback. He played pretty well so its hard to hold the loss against him that much but at the end of the day its his 6.8srs team losing to a 3.8 srs team that both won 56 games. Which isn't great in a peaks project.
So to me it really is on which side of the 3 quotes you stand. And I'm firmly on the middle one is what matters.
"Blown lead" ... would it have been better to get to the same differential and outcome but always behind or equal?
" its his 6.8srs team losing to a 3.8 srs team" ... they're a 6.8 SRS team that are +11.8 with him on and (via an 18.4 on-off) -6.6 with him off. If you don't think a player played badly ... and you know the team without him isn't good... aren't you just punishing him for making them good overall by their minutes with him and/or creating a system which is heavily contingent on having good teammates (and/or teammates who happen to play well in the playoffs in a particular year).
"immaculate" is not what the story of Paul's play was not the takeaway
Slight struggles parsing this with the phrasing aside - I
think the message here is. "Paul had a bad 45 seconds ... Paul, takes ownership, said he had a bad 45 seconds ... therefore ... ???" but I'm not getting the intended conclusion.
I suppose if it against a literal case for "immaculate" sure. But then literally any play will have minor imperfections.
But if it's just 45 seconds that counted just the same to the scoreboard as every other 45 seconds of that game weren't good, overall he was really good, as he had been throughout the series ... and that's a "narrative" low ... aren't we able to dig deeper than the easily available ending.
So a lot of stuff here and in your other response and I'm not sure where to start, but you do raise good points.
I think the issue with Paul in this context is that basically no matter where you look in a putative peak year, there's disappointment in the end, and not just because they didn't win it all, but because they didn't get as far as it seemed like they should. People generally agree that Paul with the Clippers is the type he should have been leading contenders, yet they couldn't ever get past the 2nd round. That was a huge disappointment, and while each year might seem like a fluke, in ended up being every year until he went to other teams built to feature other players.
I think you're right to push back against the idea that a bad 45 seconds defines a player's peak, but when it's a situation that is seen as continuing to happen whenever Paul is leading a would-be contender, then the specific "it's only one anecdote" defenses stop working, because we're just constantly seeing this with Paul.
I'm not saying it means he can't get in at the #9 or #10 spot, but someone was saying that these issues are why he drops to #9/10, and the problem with that is that you have to go considerably further down the list before you're actually in debate with other players with similar disappointments. I could have seen Paul get in even higher than #9...but he does have issues that the other guys in consideration here don't really have.
Re: creating a system heavily contingent on teammates playing well. Let me clarify here:
I'm not suggesting that Paul was playing well and his teammates played poorly, I'm suggesting that the way Paul likes to play allows him to rack up points & assists as the defense prevents his teammates from getting involved up to their capacity. To some degree this is true for all ball-dominant players and Paul isn't the worst of the bunch, however, the fact that he's so controlling and likes to play so slowly gives playoff defenses a chance to really hone in on things.
Hence, the idea that Paul's team might be the one who gets figured out rather than the other way around.
I'm not going to allege that a theory like this has been proven, or even that it could be proven, but it's the concern, and it's a concern I was bringing up certainly before Paul got to Phoenix.
I'll also say that health is a big X factor here... but when some combination is dragging down Paul's team every time during his peak years, to some degree the difference feels moot.
To point to something statistical here.
Chris Paul played in 24 Game 6/7's in his career.
In Game 6's, he went 6-10 with a positive +/- 6 times.
In Game 7's, he went 3-5 with a positive +/- twice, and he actually has the worst cumulative +/- of any player we have on record.
Further, in the Game 7's his team played at home in 5 of the 8 games, so this isn't a case where his team was going up against teams that they were supposed to be outclassed by. He's the losing-est Game 7 player we have in the data, and he's doing this disproportionately on teams that were superior in the regular season and got to play the game at home.
Now how much should any of this granular data mean on its own? Not that much I'd agree. We need the broader context if we want to generalize.
But if you're looking to understand the how of Paul not getting deep into the playoffs until he left LA, it's these late series disappointments that are literally the reason, and so then it's just a question of whether this should be chalked up as coincidental or not.
