How many Curry years over Peak Kobe?

[Matt15]

How many Curry years would you take over Peak Kobe?

[Primedeion]

Zero. 09 Kobe tops every Curry season as the undisputed #1.

[One_and_Done]

Pretty much any prime year where Curry is reasonably healthy I guess. Curry is just a qualitatively better player.

[TheGOATRises007]

Zero. 09 Kobe tops every Curry season as the undisputed #1.

What's the argument for 09 Kobe over 17 Curry?

Not even flaming. Legit curious, because I think you present good arguments for Kobe vs other players.

[Whopper_Sr]

14-19, 21

[Special_Puppy]

15-17

[f4p]

2015, 2016 too much fall off in the playoffs. 2017 you could replace curry with basically any random fringe all star and win a title comfortably. Hard to take any season over 2009.

[jalengreen]

In terms of how good the season was, just 2017. In terms of how good he was as a player, basically his entire prime.

[Narigo]

2016 maybe 2017 as well

[iggymcfrack]

I'd go 2015-2019 and 2022. So his real prime years pre-injury plus his crazy late career comeback season where he had the clutch playoffs and won FMVP.

[homecourtloss]

Zero. 09 Kobe tops every Curry season as the undisputed #1.

What's the argument for 09 Kobe over 17 Curry?

Not even flaming. Legit curious, because I think you present good arguments for Kobe vs other players.

I’m high on 2009 Kobe and feel he’s getting underrated now, but I also would like to hear the argument over any of 2015-2017 Curry. Curry’s impact footprint has been explicated by some of his biggest proponents including Curry being the lynchpin on 2017 Warriors.

Spoiler:

The Question of Curry's Superior Impact, and the importance of individual Offense > Defense

After LeBron (assuming he's rightly going in first), I think most people have a general group of players: 01 Shaq, 03 Duncan, 04 Garnett, 17 Curry, 23 Jokic. Assuming LeBron will go in first, I’d like to focus on the next five players. Of these five players, I think most people favor the big men. However, I’d argue Curry is still underrated after all these years.

Curry’s rather singular in how he gets his impact: there’s never been another player with his gravity, with his unique combination of on and off-ball shooting, scoring, and playmaking. It may be harder for people to see how he dominates the league compared to an outlier athletic phenom like Shaq, or players in the classic two-way big mold like Duncan and Garett. But like the Barkley saying “Jump shooting teams can’t win championships”, people may intuitively favoring a traditional mold, while underrating how revolutionary Curry was. The data on the whole suggests Curry really did have the more valuable full-season peak than Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, and Jokic, and I think that’s something people should take seriously: I don’t think it can be simply explained away just by being ‘ahead of his time’ or in a better situation or something like that.

A. Is Curry really the most valuable of these players according to the data?

Team Overall SRS
- 17 Curry’s Warriors 16.15 >> 01 Shaq’s Lakers 12.20 > 03 Duncan’s Spurs 9.01 > 23 Jokic’s Nuggets +8.50 > 04 Garnett’s Timberwolves +5 (decimal values weren’t given)
So while Curry obviously had better teammates, there is significantly more value to go around for the peak-Curry Warriors.

Peak WOWY (change in Margin of victory per game with/without a player in game, in 5-year stretch surrounding the peak year):
- 15-19 Curry +12.47 (52 missed games) > 21–25 Jokic +8.91 (36 missed games) > 01–05 Duncan +6.95 (30 missed games) > 99–03 Shaq +6.68 (42 missed games) > 2004–2008 Garnett +5.66 (23 missed games; no usable sample of missed games in 02–06)

Full Season Plus Minus (relative plus minus for playoffs):
- -17 Curry 19.29 > 23 Jokic 12.48 > 01 Shaq 9.73 > 03 Duncan 9.11 > 04 Garnett 7.81
Full Season Plus Minus (relative plus minus for playoffs, 7x playoff weighting):
- 17 Curry 21.2 > 01 Shaq 14.36 > 23 Jokic 11.15 > 03 Duncan 10.55 > 04 Garnett 4.92
Curry stays significantly ahead as we go to longer peak samples (~5 years).

Full Season On/off:
- 23 Jokic 22.3 > 17 Curry 21.1 > 04 Garnett 20.1 > 03 Duncan 17.0 > 01 Shaq 16.1
Curry sneaks ahead of Jokic and gains a much larger advantage over Garnett/Duncan/Shaq as we go to long peak samples (~5 year).

Full Season On/off (7x playoff weighting):
- 17 Curry 22.0 > 03 Duncan 21.7 > 04 Garnett 21.4 > 23 Jokic 17.7 > 01 Shaq 13.1
Curry gains a much larger advantage over Duncan/Garnett/Jokic as we go to long peak samples (~5 years). Shaq sneaks out in first in longer samples, but only if we include the year 2000 which is before the era.

So the raw impact metrics tend to suggest Curry was the most impactful, and often by a large margin. Now raw impact metrics are noisy with high uncertainty, so this is far from conclusive. What about adjusted metrics?

Full Season Augmented Plus Minus (a combination of the most accurate box stat on the market, and plus minus data)
- 23 Jokic 7.3 > 17 Curry 6.8 > 04 Garnett 6.6 > 03 Duncan 6.2 > 01 Shaq 5.9
Full Season Augmented Plus Minus (7x playoff weighting, averaged game-wise)
- 23 Jokic 7.4 > 17 Curry 7.1 > 03 Duncan 6.9 > 01 Shaq 6.2 > 04 Garnett 6.0

APM (regular season only)
- 17 Curry 8.5 > 03 Duncan 6.8 > 04 Garnett 6.4 > 23 Jokic 6.2 > 01 Shaq 5.6

There are different versions of RAPM, but to start with ‘Vanilla RAPM’, Curry again looks the best:
Vanilla RAPM (regular season only)
- 17 Curry 6.51 > 04 Garnett 4.70 > 23 Jokic 4.51 > 03 Duncan 3.79 > 01 Shaq 3.50
Curry remains ahead as you extend the RAPM to long peak samples (~5 year). Playoff RAPM is flawed, given the smaller samples and uneven lineups/matchups, but 15-19 Curry stays ahead of all but Duncan in 5-year playoff RAPM, and 13–17 Curry is ahead of Duncan too (note we lose playoff data in 23 from this source, so don’t have full Jokic stats).

EPM (regular season)
17 Curry 8.2 > 23 Jokic 7.9 > 04 Garnett 6.4 > 03 Duncan (no data before 2002)
EPM (playoffs)
- 17 Curry 8.9 > 03 Duncan 7.8 > 23 Jokic 7.2 > Garnett (no data before 2002)
EPM is commonly considered the most accurate descriptive stat on the market. I don’t have a subscription, but from posts from other people, available Shaq data in regular season. In the playoffs, 17 Curry is ranked 3rd on record over every Duncan, Garnett, Jokic, or Shaq playoffs on record.

So the adjust impact metrics are more mixed, but also frequently portray Curry at either best, and always in the top two.

On the whole, the data’s noisy, and one can always find stats they favor one player over another. But in a brief survey, looking across raw impact stats (WOWY and plus minus based), adjusted impact stats, and our best available hybrid stat, in regular season and full season samples across sample sizes, Curry tends to come out on top.

B. How is it that a one-way offensive player could be more impactful than two-way players?
In the recent DoctorMJ thread, we discuss the idea that individual offensive impact supersedes individual defensive impact in the play-by-play era. I suspect people are underrating how much more important individual offense is. Which is not to say that defense isn’t important (it’s equally as important at a team level) or that having great individual defenders aren’t a key foundation to building great team defenses… but still, individual offensive impact seems to significantly outweigh individual defensive impact.

What’s the evidence? Take the offensive and defensive splits in Goldstein RAPM, one of the classic sources for single-year RAPM (1997–2019)
-Offensive RAPM samples over +7: 4
Defensive RAPM samples over +7: 0
-Offensive RAPM samples over +6: 19
Defensive RAPM samples over +6: 4
-Offensive RAPM samples over +5: 50
Defensive RAPM samples over +5: 21

What about nbarapm’s 3-year and 5-year RAPM samples?
-Offensive RAPM samples over +8: 7 (peak Curry comes first)
Defensive RAPM samples over +8: 0
-Offensive RAPM samples over +7: 27
Defensive RAPM samples over +7: 2
-Offensive RAPM samples over +6: 55
Defensive RAPM samples over +6: 11

One can also see that individual offense trumps individual defense in WOWY data, and in team data (e.g. in the Top 20 teams all time in overall SRS, ~75% of those teams’ best players get more value on offense while 25% are get comparable or more value on defense).

How can this be? Volume and efficiency.

Volume: Even the best defenders have significantly less volume than the best offensive players.
In a Thinking basketball study of the 2011 season, the highest defensive usage tops out at 22.4%; the highest offensive usage is 34% during that time. Now usage is a flawed stat, and the study only examined one season (defensive usage may be higher in the dead-ball era), but the available studies suggest defenders have much less volume than offensive players. Which makes sense! Offenses are proactive — they can design the offenses around using the skills of their best player. Defenses are reactive — the opposing offenses can scheme to take the best defenders out of the action, putting them on the weak side or attacking weaker defenders.

Efficiency: The available data also suggests defenders aren’t more impactful on opponent efficiency than the best offensive players. The best offensive players lift their team’s offensive efficiency by +5 to +8 according to nbarapm, while the best defenders hurt opponent’s offensive efficiency by -4.5 to -6 (see the DoctorMJ thread).

So the best offensive players have significantly more volume, and a clear efficiency advantage

Given this asymmetry, Curry comes out as one of the clear offensive GOAT candidates, often with the best offensive RAPM on record, while also being a neutral to positive defender. This may help contextualize why so many of the overall impact metrics are higher on Curry than some of the two-way candidates, e.g. Duncan or KG. Shaq of course gets much of his impact from offense, as dose Jokic, so this could still be complementary to them. But the data we have seems to still favor Curry over those two.

Now It's not so compelling to end the debate -- far from it. No metric is perfect, and each can have wide uncertainty bars. And indeed, people may have contextual reasons to prefer other players (e.g. health/durability). But there do seem to be a trend in the data we have that Curry is the most impactful, and is being underrated in votes so far. Food for thought as people discuss!

Spoiler:

The thing about Curry... well in 16 it didn't end well and his impact in the playoffs is not at the same level, making it hard to choose him over 01 Shaq, 09, 12, 16 or 18 Bron, 03 Duncan...

Then KD is added. And then the Warriors have it all - ultimate spacing with Klay, Curry and KD. Two elite defenders in Iguodala and Draymond. They were deep enough. And when Steph wasn't playing, the Warriors were still unstopable. When Curry had subpar performances in the finals it didn't matter, cause the fire power was still there.

So despite the team being incredible together it's hard to value Steph as much as other guys cause when they weren't there the team would go absolutely nowhere. In 17 the Warriors might even miss Steph for 50% or more of the time and still end up as champions. You can't say that about other guys.

I'm looking at Giannis, Kobe 06 whom I think is underrated peak wise and then Kevin Garnett and Steph, but still not decided the order I want them in. My guess is that Steph will go ahead on this list, but while he is a great ceilling raiser I don't see him putting up Kobe's impact in 06 for example.

Just some food for thought.

I don’t think the bolded is borne out by the data at all. Steph missed 53 games in the regular season + playoffs in the years Durant was on the Warriors. The Warriors were only 29-24 in those games, with a +0.28 net rating per 100 possessions.. Similarly, in the 6156 minutes when Steph was off the floor in those Durant years, the Warriors had a net rating of -0.50 per 100 possessions. The Warriors were actually demonstrably a pretty mediocre team without Steph. Which is not a bad place for a major star’s team to be without them, but they were definitely not “unstoppable” without him, nor do we have any indication that they could’ve won the title without him.

I think the argument people make otherwise is basically to say that they did fine without him *in the playoffs*. But that argument amounts to looking at 6 games in the 2018 playoffs, against a 47–win team and a 48-win team, with four of those games being at home. They did well in those games, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to ignore way larger samples in favor of a playoff sample of a few games against early-round minnows anyways. Nor does beating 47-48 win teams actually give any indication whatsoever that a team could win a title.

I think it’s essentially undeniable that Steph was the guy that made the Warriors tick, and that they were really not an elite team without him. They were certainly a *talented* team without him, but the results really don’t bear out that they were actually all that good without him. And, of course, with him they were a top contender for GOAT team. That’s a huge feather in Steph’s cap. As I’ve noted, I’m not inclined to vote Steph higher than #4 here, but looking at what the Durant Warriors did with and without him is actually a data point that suggests he should be ranked higher than that IMO.

Just to add on to this:

17-19 Warriors net rating with all 4 all-stars: +15.9
17-19 Warriors net rating with 3 all stars, no Durant: +11.1
17-19 Warriors net rating with Dray+Curry, no Durant no Klay: +11.6
17-19 Warriors net rating with only Curry, no Durant no Klay no Dray: +9.4
17-19 Warriors net rating with Durant + Klay + Dray, no Curry: +3.7
17-19 Warriors net rating with none of the 4 all-stars: -10.3
Per pbpstats.com, full season data.

The data we have make it pretty clear — without Curry, this team was a far cry from the dominance that earns strong championship odds, and Curry is clearly the only player to have the effect on the Warriors.

People may argue that the team was built around Steph (although isn’t that the case for basically every candidate here?), or that his health is a concern, etc., but it’s really not clear at all how many championships they’d win if they had KD the whole time without Curry. Still a great team, sure. But multiple championships? That’s no so clear!

[eminence]

I'd take '15/'17 pretty easily, a few other years with arguments, but I think I'll go with Kobe today.

[f4p]

I'd go 2015-2019 and 2022. So his real prime years pre-injury plus his crazy late career comeback season where he had the clutch playoffs and won FMVP.

Hard to see any argument for 2022 over 2009

Regular Season
Kobe: 24.4 PER, 0.206 WS48, 5.9 BPM
Steph: 21.4 PER, 0.173 WS48, 5.8 BPM

Kobe even beats out Steph's +10.0 on/off with a +11.1 on/off

It was a down regular season for Steph by basically anything we want to look at.

Post Season
Kobe: 26.8 PER, 0.238 WS48, 9.1 BPM, 32/7/6 in finals with 88 pace and 105 ORtg for the two teams
Steph: 24.4 PER, 0.203 WS48, 7.7 BPM, 31/6/5 in finals with 95 pace and 107.4 ORtg for the two teams

Steph basically just gets his numbers up to Kobe's regular season numbers but Kobe jumps up a level too.

Kobe jumps up to +12.4 on/off while Steph drops to +6.5 on/off.

Steph doesn't really win a single factor here and the 2009 Lakers were a more overall dominant team with Kobe seemingly contributing to more of it (although to be sure both teams had lots of talent).

[f4p]

Zero. 09 Kobe tops every Curry season as the undisputed #1.

What's the argument for 09 Kobe over 17 Curry?

Not even flaming. Legit curious, because I think you present good arguments for Kobe vs other players.

I’m high on 2009 Kobe and feel he’s getting underrated now, but I also would like to hear the argument over any of 2015-2017 Curry. Curry’s impact footprint has been explicated by some of his biggest proponents including Curry being the lynchpin on 2017 Warriors.

Except his lynchpin status seems to be a rather fluky one season experience in maybe the lowest leverage, least stressful season any team has ever had and is based on regular season results that weren't even remotely replicated in the postseason.

He misses time in the 2016 playoffs and even without KD his team plays +12 basketball, an all time level. Steph ends the playoffs with an un-lynchpin-y negative on/off.

He misses time in the 2018 playoffs and his teams goes ahead and ups it to +14 basketball this time. I mean if any team was going to trip up the warriors without Steph around (or at least make them sweat), you'd think it would be the spurs. Right? A veteran squad, hall of fame coach, respectable +2.3 net rating and the #3 defense seemingly perfect for if KD is really just a creation of Steph's gravity. Right? I mean if steph is the lynchpin then presumably the whole thing falls apart without him. It means he has outsized impact compared to what we think. That really the magic of KD plus Draymond's defense plus klay and iggy is the sideshow. But they play +12 against the spurs and beat the hornets by like 20 and would have cruised to the WCF.

"They played -0.5 basketball in January and February without Steph when they clearly couldn't care less but played +14 basketball when there were actually some stakes so let's look at the regular season games" makes no sense. As I've even pointed out, everyone knew Steph would miss the 1st round in 2018 and the warriors were still -900 favorites. -900 implies something like a +8 advantage. And the spurs were +2. So even Vegas just assumed the warriors would knock out a +10 series without Steph. The smart people with the money seemed unpersuaded by the low regular season net ratings. As it turned out, for very good reasons, as the warriors did even slightly better.

So either Steph just weirdly was everything for a team for one year in between 2 years where he wasn't everything, or 2017 is both a one off impact and box score signal not replicated basically anywhere else in Steph's career and it's the noise and was done in an extremely favorable situation (and just to jump ahead of the purposeful misinterpretations, calling it the noise doesn't mean Steph wasn't still really good and impactful in other years).

[iggymcfrack]

I'd go 2015-2019 and 2022. So his real prime years pre-injury plus his crazy late career comeback season where he had the clutch playoffs and won FMVP.

Hard to see any argument for 2022 over 2009

Regular Season
Kobe: 24.4 PER, 0.206 WS48, 5.9 BPM
Steph: 21.4 PER, 0.173 WS48, 5.8 BPM

Kobe even beats out Steph's +10.0 on/off with a +11.1 on/off

It was a down regular season for Steph by basically anything we want to look at.

Post Season
Kobe: 26.8 PER, 0.238 WS48, 9.1 BPM, 32/7/6 in finals with 88 pace and 105 ORtg for the two teams
Steph: 24.4 PER, 0.203 WS48, 7.7 BPM, 31/6/5 in finals with 95 pace and 107.4 ORtg for the two teams

Steph basically just gets his numbers up to Kobe's regular season numbers but Kobe jumps up a level too.

Kobe jumps up to +12.4 on/off while Steph drops to +6.5 on/off.

Steph doesn't really win a single factor here and the 2009 Lakers were a more overall dominant team with Kobe seemingly contributing to more of it (although to be sure both teams had lots of talent).

Looking at 2009 and 2022.

xRAPM: Curry 6.6, Kobe 5.5
2-year RAPM: Curry 6.8, Kobe 3.4
Darko DPM: Kobe 5.0, Curry 4.8
RAPTOR: Curry 6.8, Kobe 6.7

[Ancalagon]

I can absolutely see the argument for Curry as a better player.

In terms of accomplishment and value in a single year, I would take 2009 Kobe over any version of Curry.

[EmpireFalls]

15-17, 2021.

[The Explorer]

I wouldn't take any Curry years over 2009 Bryant.

Bryant in 2009 was guarding the opposing team's best perimeter player in crucial playoff moments while carrying the offensive load. Curry never had to do both at an elite level simultaneously. Bryant led Lakers to 65 wins in an absolutely stacked Western conference in the most defensive era probably of all time. Many people on this forum think 2009 was Lebron James' peak year, and Bryant was better than that, according to James himself and many others.

[Cavsfansince84]

I wouldn't take any Curry years over 2009 Bryant.

Bryant in 2009 was guarding the opposing team's best perimeter player in crucial playoff moments while carrying the offensive load. Curry never had to do both at an elite level simultaneously. Bryant led Lakers to 65 wins in an absolutely stacked Western conference in the most defensive era probably of all time. Many people on this forum think 2009 was Lebron James' peak year, and Bryant was better than that, according to James himself and many others.

I can respect this view. Had Steph been able to finish out in 2016 or combine his 21 rs with his 22ps I'd say no but given the way things worked out I think you can argue peak Kobe over Steph. Even in the current peaks project I basically combined 21&22 to some degree go get him his ranking on my ballot. Which I don't personally like and to me is another reason to just use best rs+ps and leave it at that.