All-Season Player of the Year Discussion thread

[Dr Spaceman]

I have no issues w/ O vs. D, I have issues w/ workload and what is asked of different players, Green's role is that of a role player.

Edit: Or another way, what if you take each guy off his team or reduce his role greatly? With Dray, you get......well basically last year's Warriors, still agreat team. With Westbrook, you get a 3-10 team with about a negative 15 net rating.

I'm sorry Bondom, but using "workload" as an argument against Draymond borders on completely disingenuous. Honestly I don't know how someone could even come to that conclusion unless you were literally only watching the guy with the ball the whole time. Draymond is more active and involved than basically any player in the NBA on both ends, with his screen setting, passing, shooting, and oh yeah being the best defensive player in the NBA on a team that works primarily due to his ability to cover every inch of the floor.

The only way this is tenable is if you personally just put way less value on defensive work than offensive work. In such case I would ask you why you believe this (and actually please lay out the logical steps that led you there, because it will help everyone in this discussion), and also note that this is exactly the perspective that Doc put forth in his response to you and you rejected that... and then went on with the exact same thing.

The second point still stands, and my mistake for not wording well but I can't think or a way to put it. Remove each guy from a team, and what results? That's what I mean by "workload".

Is replaceability better?

Your point isn't a bad one in general, but here's the thing: we have reason to believe the Warriors would lose more by losing Draymond than any team would losing any player. Look at his net on/off for the playoffs. His numbers KILL any player playing starting minutes in the league. RAPM is what it is, but at this point basically every other metric that uses that method is saying the same thing.

The data aren't saying Green is a really valuable role player. The data are saying Green is the singular most impactful player in the league. And it's not just one stat anymore. So frankly the onus is on everyone to make a case against that, which I already have, but you're essentially sitting here saying "Come on guys, we know this isn't right, move along because there's nothing to see here".

I'd be more sympathetic to your stance if, say, these stats had a history of making "super role players" look like the MVP of the league. They don't, though, so it behooves us to look into what makes Draymond special here, and there isn't probable cause for outright dismissal.

[bondom34]

Your point isn't a bad one in general, but here's the thing: we have reason to believe the Warriors would lose more by losing Draymond than any team would losing any player. Look at his net on/off for the playoffs. His numbers KILL any player playing starting minutes in the league. RAPM is what it is, but at this point basically every other metric that uses that method is saying the same thing.

The data aren't saying Green is a really valuable role player. The data are saying Green is the singular most impactful player in the league. And it's not just one stat anymore. So frankly the onus is on everyone to make a case against that, which I already have, but you're essentially sitting here saying "Come on guys, we know this isn't right, move along because there's nothing to see here".

I'd be more sympathetic to your stance if, say, these stats had a history of making "super role players" look like the MVP of the league. They don't, though, so it behooves us to look into what makes Draymond special here, and there isn't probable cause for outright dismissal.

What other numbers are saying this though? Because straight on/off had Klay pretty close to him in the RS, yet nobody here is saying anything of this sort about him. These stats do have sort of this history as well, wasn't Korver supposedly second best in the east by some measures which even at the time I didn't dismiss? I could add others but don't have the numbers at the moment, when I do I may add an edit. The difference being Korver's team wasn't as good around him and Green's was. I suspect we'd be doing this w/ him had Atlanta had a better cast, but we're not. I wish we had some of ElGee's WOWY stuff with these guys but Dray only missed a smaller number of games to be reliable anyway, so its moot, but looking outside of RAPM, I'm not seeing what you could say makes him this impactful.

Second on GSW in VORP (well behind Curry), well behind Westbrook, and borderline top 10 (which I admit is surprising to me even).

Second in BPM (again well behind those others).


Borderline to 50 in WS/48 in the NBA.

Second on the team in DBPM, well behind Bogut.

So essentially, he's to me in a perfect spot where he's feeding off the strengths of those around him and as I think you said earlier, he's the perfect puzzle piece to fit in there. Does that mean he's not good? No. But that does mean to me he has no real way to be considered because ultimately he is replaceable and wouldn't be able to replicate these results elsewhere.

Edit: Others to add...

Korver
Morrow
Markieff Morris
Robert Covington

all top 20. And apparently Z Bo is suddenly a very good defender, better than Mozgov.

CJ Miles also very high, and Lou Williams can defend as well.

When you have a stat this noisy, there's almost no real starting point to me.

[colts18]

Except Pipp was better across the board other than rebounding in every one of those seasons.

And defense.

Draymond Green played defense this year on the level of Peak Pippen.

[Doctor MJ]

Its not that at all, its a very simple question/point to me, and that's if you take 2 players with entirely different roles. One is a team's focal point, the other is a 2nd/3rd guy on a team. Green is fantastic at what he does, but he's a super role player, that's it. I have no issues w/ that, but to say that he's deserving of a top 5ish spot is way high. Let me put it a way for simplicity (and I'm not saying one should do this but it simplifies). If you had the ability to look at every available statistic available and watch these teams play EXCEPT one, you could easily say Green wasn't even near this list. There's essentially one number saying he belongs, and its the NPI data. I have no issues w/ O vs. D, I have issues w/ workload and what is asked of different players, Green's role is that of a role player.

Edit: Or another way, what if you take each guy off his team or reduce his role greatly? With Dray, you get......well basically last year's Warriors, still agreat team. With Westbrook, you get a 3-10 team with about a negative 15 net rating.

Hmm. Where to start here? I suppose the biggest thing is that the following things seems to be things you believe:

1) You don't have issues favoring offense vs defense.
2) You just see Green & Kawhi as players who clearly are not of top tier value - you actually in this post imply Westbrook's impact is vastly greater than Green's.
3) Those two players finished Top 2 in DPOY voting, but I haven't seen you object so hard to that.

The last of the might have just been something I missed, so feel free to elaborate on that. Short of that though, you're essentially saying "It's not that I have an offensive bias, it's just that I happen to think that the top offensive players right now are vastly more important than the defensive players." Does that not sound odd to you?

Speaking more generally, one thing that seems clear is that whereas I tend to view a team as being of two halves, and having foundations for each side, you tend to view that team in terms of one foundation. So OKC has Westbrook, and so without Durant that means they are building everything they do around Westbrook whether it's a strength of Westbrook's, or a weakness.

Let's switch away from Westbrook because that's a sore spot between us and focus on Curry here. I'll fully grant that Curry is the primary player that the Warriors are built around, and that part of that means trying to find a place of value for him on defense. But the Warriors had the best defense in the league this year, that was at least as important as their offense to their success, and Curry is nothing like the main engine that makes that work. The fact that Curry is the offense's engine thus to me seems entirely insufficient when it comes to talking about the Warriors' success on the other end of the floor, and the ones who are truly responsible to me deserve a ton of credit. What of that do you object?

[Texas Chuck]

The Draymond green argument is probably the same argument people had about Scottie Pippen from 91-93.

Nah Pippen was seen way differently than Green. Which he of course proved in spades when Mike went to play baseball and he was a legit MVP candidate. But those of us old enough to have lived through those days know Pippen was nothing at all like Green in play or perception.

[Doctor MJ]

I have no issues w/ O vs. D, I have issues w/ workload and what is asked of different players, Green's role is that of a role player.

Edit: Or another way, what if you take each guy off his team or reduce his role greatly? With Dray, you get......well basically last year's Warriors, still agreat team. With Westbrook, you get a 3-10 team with about a negative 15 net rating.

I'm sorry Bondom, but using "workload" as an argument against Draymond borders on completely disingenuous. Honestly I don't know how someone could even come to that conclusion unless you were literally only watching the guy with the ball the whole time. Draymond is more active and involved than basically any player in the NBA on both ends, with his screen setting, passing, shooting, and oh yeah being the best defensive player in the NBA on a team that works primarily due to his ability to cover every inch of the floor.

The only way this is tenable is if you personally just put way less value on defensive work than offensive work. In such case I would ask you why you believe this (and actually please lay out the logical steps that led you there, because it will help everyone in this discussion), and also note that this is exactly the perspective that Doc put forth in his response to you and you rejected that... and then went on with the exact same thing.

I'm going to just give a little "yeah, what he said" here because he said the other thing I was going to say:

This statement about workload and "role player" doesn't make sense to me.

1) I see Green certainly putting in 100% energy out there. This isn't a guy getting by on standing around until he's needed.

2) This whole thing of "He's a role player" is to me something that implies the player has a very specific job. In reality Green is basically asked to do anything you can imagine on defense and on offense he's the secondary playmaker, which is of particularly importance for Curry compared to someone like Paul because the Warriors make a point to let Curry be off-ball a fair amount.

[Doctor MJ]

Your point isn't a bad one in general, but here's the thing: we have reason to believe the Warriors would lose more by losing Draymond than any team would losing any player. Look at his net on/off for the playoffs. His numbers KILL any player playing starting minutes in the league. RAPM is what it is, but at this point basically every other metric that uses that method is saying the same thing.

The data aren't saying Green is a really valuable role player. The data are saying Green is the singular most impactful player in the league. And it's not just one stat anymore. So frankly the onus is on everyone to make a case against that, which I already have, but you're essentially sitting here saying "Come on guys, we know this isn't right, move along because there's nothing to see here".

I'd be more sympathetic to your stance if, say, these stats had a history of making "super role players" look like the MVP of the league. They don't, though, so it behooves us to look into what makes Draymond special here, and there isn't probable cause for outright dismissal.

What other numbers are saying this though? Because straight on/off had Klay pretty close to him in the RS, yet nobody here is saying anything of this sort about him. These stats do have sort of this history as well, wasn't Korver supposedly second best in the east by some measures which even at the time I didn't dismiss? I could add others but don't have the numbers at the moment, when I do I may add an edit. The difference being Korver's team wasn't as good around him and Green's was. I suspect we'd be doing this w/ him had Atlanta had a better cast, but we're not. I wish we had some of ElGee's WOWY stuff with these guys but Dray only missed a smaller number of games to be reliable anyway, so its moot, but looking outside of RAPM, I'm not seeing what you could say makes him this impactful.

Second on GSW in VORP (well behind Curry), well behind Westbrook, and borderline top 10 (which I admit is surprising to me even).

Second in BPM (again well behind those others).


Borderline to 50 in WS/48 in the NBA.

Second on the team in DBPM, well behind Bogut.

So essentially, he's to me in a perfect spot where he's feeding off the strengths of those around him and as I think you said earlier, he's the perfect puzzle piece to fit in there. Does that mean he's not good? No. But that does mean to me he has no real way to be considered because ultimately he is replaceable and wouldn't be able to replicate these results elsewhere.

Edit: Others to add...

Korver
Morrow
Markieff Morris
Robert Covington

all top 20. And apparently Z Bo is suddenly a very good defender, better than Mozgov.

CJ Miles also very high, and Lou Williams can defend as well.

When you have a stat this noisy, there's almost no real starting point to me.

I do get skepticism about RAPM, but with this talk of "it's just one stat", to me that's a weird thing to say about a defender who nearly won the DPOY.

I'll put it this way: Give me a statistical argument you'd personally stand behind with confidence to say that DPOY voters are totally overrating Draymond Green - and Kawhi Leonard for that matter?

I'll say up front, anything you use that's focused on the box score doesn't work because Green's signature isn't blocks, or steals, or rebounds, but in putting pressure on opposing players, and so that serves as an immediate rebuttal. So what are you left with?

I'm guessing the answer is nothing.

But as I say this, I'm not saying that's proof your instincts are wrong here. Fundamentally you're just skeptical of Green's impact I think and RAPM isn't enough to change that. That's okay, but I think you need to own what it is that makes you skeptical here by really figuring out where the point of divergence is and sharing it with us rather than really arguing the point further.

[bondom34]

[

Hmm. Where to start here? I suppose the biggest thing is that the following things seems to be things you believe:

1) You don't have issues favoring offense vs defense.
2) You just see Green & Kawhi as players who clearly are not of top tier value - you actually in this post imply Westbrook's impact is vastly greater than Green's.
3) Those two players finished Top 2 in DPOY voting, but I haven't seen you object so hard to that.

The last of the might have just been something I missed, so feel free to elaborate on that. Short of that though, you're essentially saying "It's not that I have an offensive bias, it's just that I happen to think that the top offensive players right now are vastly more important than the defensive players." Does that not sound odd to you?

Speaking more generally, one thing that seems clear is that whereas I tend to view a team as being of two halves, and having foundations for each side, you tend to view that team in terms of one foundation. So OKC has Westbrook, and so without Durant that means they are building everything they do around Westbrook whether it's a strength of Westbrook's, or a weakness.

Let's switch away from Westbrook because that's a sore spot between us and focus on Curry here. I'll fully grant that Curry is the primary player that the Warriors are built around, and that part of that means trying to find a place of value for him on defense. But the Warriors had the best defense in the league this year, that was at least as important as their offense to their success, and Curry is nothing like the main engine that makes that work. The fact that Curry is the offense's engine thus to me seems entirely insufficient when it comes to talking about the Warriors' success on the other end of the floor, and the ones who are truly responsible to me deserve a ton of credit. What of that do you object?

RE: Kawhi, I don't have the same feeling there. I see him borderline top 10, you can call him either way. Green I don't view nearly as highly as I think one you can build around, the other not.

On to the rest...

Again I'm not saying this about O vs. D, I'm saying this as a "again if you look at things as a whole other than "Well RAPM says this" then Green isn't nearly a top 10 player. So I ran some NBAWowy numbers using Green and Curry:

Both on: 17.4 net rating
Curry off: 6.2
Green off: 5.1

So I'm seeing the co-linearity issue come up here. Again, I'm not saying there's something wrong w/ Green, but he's not this player who you can build around, and I stand by the idea that if Korver had a better situation around him, we'd be doing the same. It seems odd to me that someone could be fooled by a metric, yet still believe this steadfastly in it, as I know how intelligent everyone here is. There's way too much noise to genuinely believe this. I'm saying you move Green and put him on say the Clippers, that he's not even in this discussion. He's not a guy you build around, he's a guy you build with. And again, Leonard isn't that.

[Texas Chuck]

This Green talk is interesting. One thing I take issue with is this idea that he was Golden State's secondary playmaker. Sorry, but I'm just not buying that. If we simply look at raw assist totals maybe, but when you look closer he's not more of a playmaker than Livingston or Iggy or even Bogut really. He moves the ball okay for a PF but people are over-reacting to his playoff assist numbers more than anything here. He still turns the ball over a lot.

The reason his FGA attempts and assist numbers are up in the playoffs is much more a reflection of how teams defended GSW and Curry in the playoffs. He found himself with the ball a lot more and not by Kerr's design, but by the design of the opposing coaches. And the reason for that is he's just not that great an offensive player.


Now defensively I agree he is among the handful of guys able to impact the game defensively the most. His strength, mobility, and defensive intelligence allow him to do so many things defensively. But in our rush to love the guy and explain why his RAPM numbers are off the chart, let's not make him into something he's not.

[bondom34]

This Green talk is interesting. One thing I take issue with is this idea that he was Golden State's secondary playmaker. Sorry, but I'm just not buying that. If we simply look at raw assist totals maybe, but when you look closer he's not more of a playmaker than Livingston or Iggy or even Bogut really. He moves the ball okay for a PF but people are over-reacting to his playoff assist numbers more than anything here. He still turns the ball over a lot.

The reason his FGA attempts and assist numbers are up in the playoffs is much more a reflection of how teams defended GSW and Curry in the playoffs. He found himself with the ball a lot more and not by Kerr's design, but by the design of the opposing coaches. And the reason for that is he's just not that great an offensive player.


Now defensively I agree he is among the handful of guys able to impact the game defensively the most. His strength, mobility, and defensive intelligence allow him to do so many things defensively. But in our rush to love the guy and explain why his RAPM numbers are off the chart, let's not make him into something he's not.

I missed this in all the conversation as well, yea I'm not buying it either. He's maybe a third/fourth playmaker, I'd put Klay ahead of him as well as Curry/Livingston/Iggy at the least, likely even Barnes.

[The-Power]

I see a couple of issues here which need to be addressed.

1) Defensive vs. offensive impact. Most people automatically value offense higher than defense for several reasons. I agree to an extent but this may not lead to undervaluing this aspect of the game. However, regardless of how you look at it, it seems important to me to make clear how you value these two poles relative to each other in general and why. If this basic problem isn't addressed there's no way to have a fruitful discussion.

2) Impact vs portability (hypothetical impact under different circumstances). There's the most blatant discrepancy the way I see it. Bondom argued that Green isn't the player you build around, thus he isn't as valuable as a player who is considered to be such a player. When we start debating about this notion, which is totally fine in my book, we have to be aware that we leave the path of pure impact-evaluation and start creating hypothetical scenarios with certain premises.

First of all: how many players are worth to build your team around today. We don't care about future at this point because this topic isn't about potential impact. First we have to define at what point it's worth to build around a player. As I see it, the ultimate goal is to win a championship and a player is only worth to build around if you have a realistic chance to win it all with a team you can realistically assemble. Applying this standard there are only a few players left. 5? 6? 8? Even if you value all of these players higher than a player you can't build your team around, there is room for players in the mold of Green.

But let's get back to the impact vs. portability point. How do we rank a player with considerable impact on a team with a offensive star player compared to someone who is the offensive star player on another team but with less or comparable overall impact? The former player might very well be less impactful in the shoes of the latter one, but this might very well be true vice versa. Let's use an example, one that is frequently mentioned, directly or subtle, in this thread. Westbrook and Green. Let's switch both players and assume Durant is injured like he was at the end of this year. It's very likely that OKC has less success because Green can't be the offensive anchor OKC needs. What about Golden State? I think it's fair to assume that Green is more valuable to this team than Westbrook could be. One can dispute it, but we have certain data points which indicate that Green has a tremendous impact on this team and the eye-test as well as rational reasoning (Golden State's defense is the best in the business and their versatility on that end astounding - both aspects can heavily attributed to Green; he also complements Curry very well on offense, unlike a ball-dominant alpha-dog for instance) support this notion. Thus, the criticism, as I understand it, is more directed at the circumstances in which certain players can thrive rather than that they can't have a huge impact in certain situations.

I want to stop talking about two players at this point since this shouldn't determine the discussion about a general topic, it wouldn't end as well as it could I assume. Now, it's up to everyone to decide: what do I value higher, I player who can't thrive in many systems but happens to provide tremendous lift on an already good team or a player who lifts any team in the league but never reaches the overall impact of the former player has in the right situation under any circumstances? And there is no right or wrong to this answer, but everyone should make it clear on which side he stands when he talks about ranking players or giving votes in the POY discussion because otherwise there's the risk to talk past each other all the time.

I wrote a post a few months ago, I think, in which I elaborated on a similar topic. Basically, it was about how much credit we can give to a player who didn't have superstar-like impact until the whole system was adjusted according to his strengths. Nash is the prime example here, but Curry is another example albeit to a lesser extent. The argument was: in another situation player X wouldn't have as much success as player Y, this makes X inferior to Y although player Y didn't have the impact of player X on his team. I found this way of arguing weird, but it's something we can read quite often. My answer to this basically was: we shouldn't evaluate a player based on his performance under bad or suboptimal circumstances if the player proved to be able to push his team into the highest spheres when it's built around his strengths - unless said player does need a team around him you can't realistically assemble. It's not fair - to use some hyperbole for illustrative purposes - to take the ball out of Nash's hands, to forbid Curry to shoot 3's or to force Shaq to play outside the painted area, look at the results and say: see, your impact isn't otherworldly, you can only thrive in the right system which makes your actual value questionable. This example isn't congruent with what we're talking about here, but it illustrates the difference in evaluation when it comes to impact in certain situations vs. hypothetical impact across the league.

I'll end this post with a simplified example: Player A has an impact of +5 on any team in the league, regardless of the roster. Player B has an average impact of +3 around the league, but there are five teams in the league in which his impact is +7 because he can be used the way he's most effective there. Who is more valuable in general? Who has to be ranked higher in POY-rankings if Player B happens to play for one of those five teams? Pick your place.

[The-Power]

I missed this in all the conversation as well, yea I'm not buying it either. He's maybe a third/fourth playmaker, I'd put Klay ahead of him as well as Curry/Livingston/Iggy at the least, likely even Barnes.

Barnes isn't even remotely close to Green as a playmaker. Green is miles ahead of Barnes in this regard and this is not an overstatement.

[RSCD3_]

This Green talk is interesting. One thing I take issue with is this idea that he was Golden State's secondary playmaker. Sorry, but I'm just not buying that. If we simply look at raw assist totals maybe, but when you look closer he's not more of a playmaker than Livingston or Iggy or even Bogut really. He moves the ball okay for a PF but people are over-reacting to his playoff assist numbers more than anything here. He still turns the ball over a lot.

The reason his FGA attempts and assist numbers are up in the playoffs is much more a reflection of how teams defended GSW and Curry in the playoffs. He found himself with the ball a lot more and not by Kerr's design, but by the design of the opposing coaches. And the reason for that is he's just not that great an offensive player.


Now defensively I agree he is among the handful of guys able to impact the game defensively the most. His strength, mobility, and defensive intelligence allow him to do so many things defensively. But in our rush to love the guy and explain why his RAPM numbers are off the chart, let's not make him into something he's not.

I missed this in all the conversation as well, yea I'm not buying it either. He's maybe a third/fourth playmaker, I'd put Klay ahead of him as well as Curry/Livingston/Iggy at the least, likely even Barnes.

Then why have the curry pick and rolls involved draymond so much. Yeah you could say the 4 on 3 helps lift his total up but wouldn't that mean Kerr trusts him a lot so that's why he puts him there

RS passing stats per 100

Draymond green

5.7 APG 2.6 TOPG

290-76 assist to bad pass ratio = 3.82

Klay Thompson

4.4 APG 3.0 TOPG

222-68 assist to bad pass ratio = 3.26

Harrison Barnes

2.4 APG 1.5 TOPG

116-27 assist to bad pass ratio = 4.29

Playoff stats TBC...

[bondom34]

This Green talk is interesting. One thing I take issue with is this idea that he was Golden State's secondary playmaker. Sorry, but I'm just not buying that. If we simply look at raw assist totals maybe, but when you look closer he's not more of a playmaker than Livingston or Iggy or even Bogut really. He moves the ball okay for a PF but people are over-reacting to his playoff assist numbers more than anything here. He still turns the ball over a lot.

The reason his FGA attempts and assist numbers are up in the playoffs is much more a reflection of how teams defended GSW and Curry in the playoffs. He found himself with the ball a lot more and not by Kerr's design, but by the design of the opposing coaches. And the reason for that is he's just not that great an offensive player.


Now defensively I agree he is among the handful of guys able to impact the game defensively the most. His strength, mobility, and defensive intelligence allow him to do so many things defensively. But in our rush to love the guy and explain why his RAPM numbers are off the chart, let's not make him into something he's not.

I missed this in all the conversation as well, yea I'm not buying it either. He's maybe a third/fourth playmaker, I'd put Klay ahead of him as well as Curry/Livingston/Iggy at the least, likely even Barnes.

Then why have the curry pick and rolls involved draymond so much. Yeah you could say the 4 on 3 helps lift his total up but wouldn't that mean Kerr trusts him a lot so that's why he puts him there

RS passing stats per 100

Draymond green

5.7 APG 2.6 TOPG

290-76 assist to bad pass ratio = 3.82

Klay Thompson

4.4 APG 3.0 TOPG

222-68 assist to bad pass ratio = 3.26

Harrison Barnes

2.4 APG 1.5 TOPG

116-27 assist to bad pass ratio = 4.29

Playoff stats TBC...

Again though, as Chuck said, assists aren't playmaking.

[bondom34]

And also, to the above portability point, I'd argue that one could replace Westbrook w/ a replacement level player and see a much greater drop than that seen w/ Green. That's what I'm saying, and that's why to me he has no spot here. Impact is not equal to RAPM data, nor is player ranking. Nobody's putting Korver in the top 10, though he was talked that way a month ago, why? Because his team lost and people realized that he wasn't portable, and wasn't as impactful as they believed due to it. The same works w/ Green. That doesn't mean they're any less of a player, it just means they aren't really belonging here. Unless of course you believe Green does (which I don't), in which case I expect you would rank Korver similarly, along w/ others previously mentioned.

[Texas Chuck]

Then why have the curry pick and rolls involved draymond so much.

Because of who is defending Draymond primarily. They obviously want to involve a big defensively(like every team) so they aren't going to use their perimeter players. The only other choice really is Bogut, but obviously Draymond's ability to shoot from distance makes him the better option plus of course Bogut plays so many fewer minutes.

I'm not saying he's a bad offensive player or a horrible decision maker. But he's not really the playmaker people are making him out to be either. I mean do people honestly watch the Warriors play and think Green is a better playmaker than Iggy or Livingston? Because I do not. And that's why I think much of this talk is a direct result of his inflated assist numbers this post-season.

Now I feel differently from bondom in that I think you can start to make a case that Green had one of the 10 best seasons this year. I probably wouldn't put him quite that high myself, but I think its a very reasonable position. But let's talk about the player he actually is. And playmaking just isn't a big part of that.

[The-Power]

Nobody's putting Korver in the top 10, though he was talked that way a month ago, why? Because his team lost and people realized that he wasn't portable, and wasn't as impactful as they believed due to it.

Wait, only because Korver's impact isn't quite portable (from the Hawks to another team, from the RS to the PS) doesn't mean it didn't exist during the regular season. He likely had the impact some people like Dr Spacemen ascribed to him, he simply couldn't sustain it during the playoffs. Of course this is a major knock on him but let's not pretend like didn't have tremendous impact on his team during the regular season which justified former rankings. Anyway, Green's case and Korver's case are different for the reason that Green had tremendous impact during playoffs alone. The fact that you can't expect Green to have such an impact as the offensive anchor of a team doesn't mean his impact on his current team is worth less or just fluke. That's some weird reasoning.

[Dr Spaceman]

And also, to the above portability point, I'd argue that one could replace Westbrook w/ a replacement level player and see a much greater drop than that seen w/ Green. That's what I'm saying, and that's why to me he has no spot here. Impact is not equal to RAPM data, nor is player ranking. Nobody's putting Korver in the top 10, though he was talked that way a month ago, why? Because his team lost and people realized that he wasn't portable, and wasn't as impactful as they believed due to it. The same works w/ Green. That doesn't mean they're any less of a player, it just means they aren't really belonging here. Unless of course you believe Green does (which I don't), in which case I expect you would rank Korver similarly, along w/ others previously mentioned.

I want to address your other points when I have more time but you keep bringing up Korver and I want to be crystal clear about something:

There’s no doubt in my mind Korver was having that huge impact. The reason he falls for me is explicitly because defenses found a way to stop him in the postseason. That doesn’t in any way invalidate his regular season.

Further, the example just doesn’t work here because Green’s playoff impact was actually quite a bit superior to his regular season impact. Against playoff defenses, his stuff worked better.

Further, let’s say Korver develops a counter like a two dribble pull up that he can hit consistently. If that stops teams from blitzing him, and thus his impact can’t be stopped, I will absolutely vouch for him as a top player.

[bondom34]

Nobody's putting Korver in the top 10, though he was talked that way a month ago, why? Because his team lost and people realized that he wasn't portable, and wasn't as impactful as they believed due to it.

Wait, only because Korver's impact isn't quite portable (from the Hawks to another team, from the RS to the PS) doesn't mean it didn't exist during the regular season. He likely had the impact some people like Dr Spacemen ascribed to him, he simply couldn't sustain it during the playoffs. Of course this is a major knock on him but let's not pretend like didn't have tremendous impact on his team during the regular season which justified former rankings. Anyway, Green's case and Korver's case are different for the reason that Green had tremendous impact during playoffs alone. The fact that you can't expect Green to have such an impact as the offensive anchor of a team doesn't mean his impact on his current team is worth less or just fluke. That's some weird reasoning.

Though the difference is something I'm not seeing, other than the circumstance around them changed. Korver was still at a +14.7 net rating in the postseason even if his scoring became somewhat human, the entire Hawks bench just turned to stone. Korver showed that if a team focuses on him, he's what was many thought. Teams never focused on Green in the same way, so we never saw it.

[bondom34]

And also, to the above portability point, I'd argue that one could replace Westbrook w/ a replacement level player and see a much greater drop than that seen w/ Green. That's what I'm saying, and that's why to me he has no spot here. Impact is not equal to RAPM data, nor is player ranking. Nobody's putting Korver in the top 10, though he was talked that way a month ago, why? Because his team lost and people realized that he wasn't portable, and wasn't as impactful as they believed due to it. The same works w/ Green. That doesn't mean they're any less of a player, it just means they aren't really belonging here. Unless of course you believe Green does (which I don't), in which case I expect you would rank Korver similarly, along w/ others previously mentioned.

I want to address your other points when I have more time but you keep bringing up Korver and I want to be crystal clear about something:

There’s no doubt in my mind Korver was having that huge impact. The reason he falls for me is explicitly because defenses found a way to stop him in the postseason. That doesn’t in any way invalidate his regular season.

Further, the example just doesn’t work here because Green’s playoff impact was actually quite a bit superior to his regular season impact. Against playoff defenses, his stuff worked better.

Further, let’s say Korver develops a counter like a two dribble pull up that he can hit consistently. If that stops teams from blitzing him, and thus his impact can’t be stopped, I will absolutely vouch for him as a top player.

Just see above post. I'm tired at this point and know that I'm just talking to myself. I don't see it, and again, teams don't focus on Green like they do Curry or anyone else being talked about here. That's all I have remaining to say. My ballot is in, and I'll let everyone go after my rant was over. Sorry to bother everyone, I should have just let it be but apparently I'm on an island with this one, best in voting all.