The Stephen Curry Thread (2015-16 Pt. 1)

[therealbig3]

Also, the idea that you HAVE to break 30 ppg to be at ATG volume is silly. It's an arbitrary cutoff.

[mischievous]

I can think of multiple seasons that have been more impressive than this season from Curry.

Great; which ones, so we can discuss them.

A few of Lebron's seasons, a few of Mj's. I'd say Wilt has 1 or 2 in there. 2000 Shaq. This is just talking regular season though. Once the playoffs are in the books we will get a better idea of where he stands overall. I can see Duncan and Hakeem still having a better peak due to their extraordinary playoff runs and consistent elite defensive impact. Curry's season deserves to be mentioned with pretty much anybody, but the idea that his season is far and away the goat season should be put to rest, because it's no longer statistically the case.

[therealbig3]

I can think of multiple seasons that have been more impressive than this season from Curry.

Great; which ones, so we can discuss them.

A few of Lebron's seasons, a few of Mj's. I'd say Wilt has 1 or 2 in there. 2000 Shaq. This is just talking regular season though. Once the playoffs are in the books we will get a better idea of where he stands overall. I can see Duncan and Hakeem still having a better peak due to their extraordinary playoff runs and consistent elite defensive impact. Curry's season deserves to be mentioned with pretty much anybody, but the idea that his season is far and away the goat season should be put to rest, because it's no longer statistically the case.

Agreed, there are a few seasons that can be argued along with and over Curry now.

Nobody has said he's had the GOAT season far and away for quite a while now, once it became obvious that he didn't.

[mischievous]

Great; which ones, so we can discuss them.

A few of Lebron's seasons, a few of Mj's. I'd say Wilt has 1 or 2 in there. 2000 Shaq. This is just talking regular season though. Once the playoffs are in the books we will get a better idea of where he stands overall. I can see Duncan and Hakeem still having a better peak due to their extraordinary playoff runs and consistent elite defensive impact. Curry's season deserves to be mentioned with pretty much anybody, but the idea that his season is far and away the goat season should be put to rest, because it's no longer statistically the case.

Agreed, there are a few seasons that can be argued along with and over Curry now.

Nobody has said he's had the GOAT season far and away for quite a while now, once it became obvious that he didn't.

And whether or not they break the Bulls record doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I mean look when the Bulls set that record, that wasn't even Mj's best season. It wasn't his own best season let alone the GOAT season, so that's something to think about for those who think the record is a big deal. Not saying you're one of those though.

[MyUniBroDavis]

I can think of multiple seasons that have been more impressive than this season from Curry.

No offense, but you said that current lebron>current curry

[lorak]

Well, you can't really compare RAPM across seasons,

We can (and I wonder where misconceptiont that we can't come from). It's points per 100 poss above average player, so kind of like relative ortg/drtg.

everyone knows Green is primarily a defensive player,

Well, he is unique offensive player, PF/C with 3p shot and very good playmaking ability. Each of this skills alone make big man valuable, so no surprise two of them combined make him impressive on offense. I mean, he definietly is more than just primary defensve player. Mutombo, Wallace or even Zo and Dwight - they were primary defensive players, Drymond is much more.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Well, you can't really compare RAPM across seasons,

We can (and I wonder where misconceptiont that we can't come from). It's points per 100 poss above average player, so kind of like relative ortg/drtg.

everyone knows Green is primarily a defensive player,

Well, he is unique offensive player, PF/C with 3p shot and very good playmaking ability. Each of this skills alone make big man valuable, so no surprise two of them combined make him impressive on offense. I mean, he definietly is more than just primary defensve player. Mutombo, Wallace or even Zo and Dwight - they were primary defensive players, Drymond is much more.

My opinion on this is that when he says primarily defensive, he means that

Greens defense > greens offense. It's not a one way player but he is a dpoy level on one end.

But I think his rapm is so high because center lineups with green (especially the sbds) are pretty much, well, dependent on green.

Iirc, they are something like +530 and +20 per 48

Edit

+321 in 530 minutes so +29.1 per 48

Now, curry is Important to the green at center lineups as well, he and klays Gravity is a reason many/most pick and rolls end up with a 3 vs 2 situation. But he isn't more Important than green in these lineups.

onviously though, the Warriors are better offensively with green off the court and curry on it than vice versa. And curry's shooting directly effects the Warriors much more.

Hopefully this slump doesent continue into the playoffs

But then again, they did say they were bored for a while which would make sense, since the Warriors in general weren't performing. But obviously I think this hurts some of his numbers (npi and rpm went down a lot it seems, compared to before)
(Well, to their levels)

[SideshowBob]

Well, you can't really compare RAPM across seasons, so I'm curious to see if someone can come up with a way to do that. But from what I understand, Curry and Green are 1 and 2, and I think you can make a good case that Green's is artificially inflated because of Curry. Almost like Green is "stealing" Curry's RAPM, because their numbers are pretty identical last I checked, even with regards to the offensive vs defensive split, which doesn't seem right to me...everyone knows Green is primarily a defensive player, so to see his offensive RAPM dominate his overall output, in a split that looks identical to Curry's, is a little weird.

Regardless, last I checked, Curry still beats everyone else, including Kawhi, Durant, Westbrook, and LeBron. And in terms of on/off and raw +/-, Curry trumps 09 LeBron pretty clearly.

Not entering into this discussion, but just want to clarify on the numbers.

Latest RAPM (2016 NPI Single-Year) has Draymond comfortably ahead of everyone. Curry/Leonard/James are about the same.

In On/Off 16 Steph is at +22.4 and 09 Lebron was at +21.2.

Raw +/- Steph has a substantial lead over James (but Draymond has a substantial lead over Steph. But that kind of makes sense, regardless of the level of either player - the 72 win team is more often than not going to be outscoring opponents better than the 66 win team when their best player is on the floor.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Another thing for the rapm, curry has been shooting ur characteristically bad during this stretch with draymond off the floor

TS was 60.6 with draymond off the floor up to March 6. Before lke
Le start saying "oh that proves he sucks without draymond" he shot way to low from 3 for it to be real (sub 40s)

And was scoring 45.7 per 100 possessions and 35.3 per 36 so his volume increased (45.6 was kobes in 06)

Because of volume, him going 5/14 without draymond from 3 and 50% from 2 hurt his overall numbers.


What's interesting in my opinion is that klay has a similar effect, but curry's scoring inside the arc drops dramatically. It was the same last year. Volume increases though. TS in that sample was still about the same overall, and volume increased to 49.26 per 100 possessions and 37.2 per 36 minutes (TS is 61.7%)

(For reference, Jordan was at 46.4 in his 37ppg season)


Not sure what to make of this.

Obviously, while curry being on the floor and draymond being off it is better than the opposite on offense, lineups kinda like, hide that I guess? (Basically a doc rivers lineup effect but this one is good coaching instead of bad coaching)

So the offense wi green is still solid. Curry can completely carry an offense on his own, to around what Chris Paul did with griffin off the floor, with draymond off the floor. Considering that curry's scoring goes down more than it should (sample size issues) this is impressive imo.

In fact, with both klay and Thompson off the floor, the Warriors offense if curry is on the floor is still a somewhat solid 110 ish, which is a bit higher than Paul with reddick and griffin off the floor last year at 108.2

(I'm comparing them because raw on-off and on court were similar)

Similar to the cavs with kyrie and love off the court but lebron on it (110.8) identical actually

48 minutes with draymond in the court and both steph and klay off it so not nearly enough sample size. Their offensive rtgks actually the highest seen at 115, but considering sleights, iggy, and Livingston all shoot low to mid 60s in TS and draymond himself is at 44 doesent seem like a thing that matters, especially since over 1/3 of their shots were mid range, which obviously usually isn't a good thing.

[Doctor MJ]

Curry now at:

29.8 / 5.5 / 6.7 on 66.5 % TS

Still the offensive RS GOAT peak for me, but not sure about overall anymore. Definitely still in the convo though. Have to think more on this.

Question:

Is it still the GOAT scoring season now, or does MJ 88 or Durant 14 have a case in your opinion?

I don't really see how current Curry is having a better regular season than 09 LeBron for example. LeBron posted a higher PER, BPM, WS/48, and only a marginally worse ORTG (124 vs 122, though that gap might be even smaller after tonight). Furthermore, he was undoubtedly a much more impactful defender than Curry, since the aforementioned metrics don't emphasize defensive contributions as much. I'm pretty sure LeBrob's superior in basically every rendition of RAPM, as well. And he led his team to what will be about 6 less wins than this Warriors team will get, despite Curry having at least 3 players (Draymond, Klay, Iggy) around him better than the next best player LeBron had on his team. Curry's team is also much better coached than LeBron had with Mike Brown if that means anything. Finally, James played about 350 more minutes than Curry will end up playing. Seeing how Curry has worn down as the season has progressed, negatively affecting his numbers, you have to give LeBron credit for that kind of endurance and the ability to sustain his superior numbers over a larger sample size/minutes load.

I think too often when a really good team rolls around people will use backwards logic and try to formulate an argument why Player A, the best player on Team A, has to be the better than Player B, the best player on Team B, based off of Team A being better than Team B. It only seems just... Basically what I'm trying to say is that I've noticed a tendency here of wanting to "reward" the player on the better team, and sometimes it goes overboard. For instance, guys like Kevin Love will never be given due credit for his 2014 season because the Wolves only won 40 games. People choose to ignore his supporting cast and the bad late game luck that went the team's way. The logic is the Wolves weren't a playoff team, so there's no way Kevin could have had the kind of impact his stats suggested. Yet, if you threw a guy like Durant on that team, and the Wolves won 60+ games while Love had the exact same season as far as production and impact, he would've been seen in a much better light and no one would've questioned how good he was.

Now this is all coming from someone who still has Curry's 2016 season as one of the top 10 regular seasons of all time. Hell, maybe top 5. I just want to see people make fair comparisons instead of automatically placing Curry's season as the GOAT season simply because he might lead the Warriors to 73 wins. I'm not saying people don't give evidence to support their arguments either; I just think there's a bias created where people will go into the comparison with the goal of finding numbers and logical reasons why the guy on the better team - in this case, Curry - has to be the better player/have had the better season, rather than keeping an open mind and considering the support for both sides.

With the ubiquitous caveat up front about the jury still being out on Curry, I did want to respond to this:

I think that it was a lot easier to defend '09 LeBron a couple years back than it is now. To some degree that's unfair, given that the thing lowering my opinion of LeBron is behavior from future years that was in reaction to things that happened to LeBron in the meantime, but it has an impact regardless.

LeBron in '09 can point to many different things to indicate quite frankly he's the greatest player who ever lived. His actual impact is off the charts, and the Cavs at their best that year were certainly a championship caliber team. If they win the title that year, it sets LeBron and the Cavs on a completely different path where it's easy to imagine myself totally in his corner when we have GOAT discussions.

But because things went as they did, we've learned more things about LeBron, and while for a while they were primarily good, now they aren't. Doesn't mean he's not legendarily good because he is, but the fantasy that LeBron was a Magic/Bird-type of basketball brain has been put to bed, and concerns about his ability to play his max-impact way while still reliably being able to max-impact his star teammates are basically just facts at this point...and Curry just doesn't have the same issues.

If you personally weigh LeBron's ability to do more with less enough, I get why you'd rate him ahead of Curry, but the quality of Golden State - if it all holds up - I honestly don't know how I'd match that with LeBron.

Re: backwards analysis. Yeah, that's a thing, and there are people falling prey to that right now, but the case for Curry's superior portability based on how his attack works compared to LeBron just makes a ton of sense.

[Doctor MJ]

Well, you can't really compare RAPM across seasons, so I'm curious to see if someone can come up with a way to do that. But from what I understand, Curry and Green are 1 and 2, and I think you can make a good case that Green's is artificially inflated because of Curry. Almost like Green is "stealing" Curry's RAPM, because their numbers are pretty identical last I checked, even with regards to the offensive vs defensive split, which doesn't seem right to me...everyone knows Green is primarily a defensive player, so to see his offensive RAPM dominate his overall output, in a split that looks identical to Curry's, is a little weird.

ftr, this is precisely what my RAPM spreadsheet do.

To the extent that we can assume that RAPM only distorts scale rather than turns it into something utterly non-linear, then a simple approach is to take the standard deviation of the players, divide RAPM by that deviation, and then multiply it by something you consider an undistorted scale. The scale I'm using as "undistorted" is from APM, which doesn't distort the same way.

Now, what we're getting from this year is NPI rather than PI, and to my knowledge we don't have NPI numbers from '08-09, so that's an issue beyond the extra noise that NPI has. But since I can do these adjustments, I did, here are the scaled numbers I get for the NPI this year:

Draymond Green +13.5
Kawhi Leonard +10.8
Steph Curry +10.8
LeBron James +10.4
Kevin Durant +8.4

And now here are scaled PI numbers from noteworthy years:
LeBron James '09 +12.4
LeBron James '10 +13.7 (note that PI will tend to favor years preceded by already comparable years)

Kevin Garnett '04 +12.7
Shaquille O'Neal '00 +10.7

So on the face of it the numbers would imply that Green actually is flirting with the biggest impact we've ever seen, which was by LeBron, and Curry (along with Kawhi & LeBron) are having among the best impacts we've ever seen other than LeBron & Garnett.

However the caveats, some already mentioned:

1) NPI is not PI.

2) Green & Curry being on the same team means we should be really careful about using this data to say things about them individually compared to other guys with historically huge numbers here.

3) Aside from noise issues, we always have to remember that impact occurs within context. LeBron is probably the player most capable of max RAPM impact we've seen in the data era, but that impact occurred in a context where he didn't undermine other great players' impact. Meanwhile, while our Curry/Green combo is having as good a synergy effects as you'll ever see and doing it on a team that appears to be about as good as you'll get, they are of course doing it in each other's context, and we may never feel all the confident in how to separate what exactly each guy is doing impact-wise separately from the other.

[PearGreatness]

Curry now at:

29.8 / 5.5 / 6.7 on 66.5 % TS

Still the offensive RS GOAT peak for me, but not sure about overall anymore. Definitely still in the convo though. Have to think more on this.

Question:

Is it still the GOAT scoring season now, or does MJ 88 or Durant 14 have a case in your opinion?

I don't really see how current Curry is having a better regular season than 09 LeBron for example. LeBron posted a higher PER, BPM, WS/48, and only a marginally worse ORTG (124 vs 122, though that gap might be even smaller after tonight). Furthermore, he was undoubtedly a much more impactful defender than Curry, since the aforementioned metrics don't emphasize defensive contributions as much. I'm pretty sure LeBrob's superior in basically every rendition of RAPM, as well. And he led his team to what will be about 6 less wins than this Warriors team will get, despite Curry having at least 3 players (Draymond, Klay, Iggy) around him better than the next best player LeBron had on his team. Curry's team is also much better coached than LeBron had with Mike Brown if that means anything. Finally, James played about 350 more minutes than Curry will end up playing. Seeing how Curry has worn down as the season has progressed, negatively affecting his numbers, you have to give LeBron credit for that kind of endurance and the ability to sustain his superior numbers over a larger sample size/minutes load.

I think too often when a really good team rolls around people will use backwards logic and try to formulate an argument why Player A, the best player on Team A, has to be the better than Player B, the best player on Team B, based off of Team A being better than Team B. It only seems just... Basically what I'm trying to say is that I've noticed a tendency here of wanting to "reward" the player on the better team, and sometimes it goes overboard. For instance, guys like Kevin Love will never be given due credit for his 2014 season because the Wolves only won 40 games. People choose to ignore his supporting cast and the bad late game luck that went the team's way. The logic is the Wolves weren't a playoff team, so there's no way Kevin could have had the kind of impact his stats suggested. Yet, if you threw a guy like Durant on that team, and the Wolves won 60+ games while Love had the exact same season as far as production and impact, he would've been seen in a much better light and no one would've questioned how good he was.

Now this is all coming from someone who still has Curry's 2016 season as one of the top 10 regular seasons of all time. Hell, maybe top 5. I just want to see people make fair comparisons instead of automatically placing Curry's season as the GOAT season simply because he might lead the Warriors to 73 wins. I'm not saying people don't give evidence to support their arguments either; I just think there's a bias created where people will go into the comparison with the goal of finding numbers and logical reasons why the guy on the better team - in this case, Curry - has to be the better player/have had the better season, rather than keeping an open mind and considering the support for both sides.

With the ubiquitous caveat up front about the jury still being out on Curry, I did want to respond to this:

I think that it was a lot easier to defend '09 LeBron a couple years back than it is now. To some degree that's unfair, given that the thing lowering my opinion of LeBron is behavior from future years that was in reaction to things that happened to LeBron in the meantime, but it has an impact regardless.

LeBron in '09 can point to many different things to indicate quite frankly he's the greatest player who ever lived. His actual impact is off the charts, and the Cavs at their best that year were certainly a championship caliber team. If they win the title that year, it sets LeBron and the Cavs on a completely different path where it's easy to imagine myself totally in his corner when we have GOAT discussions.

But because things went as they did, we've learned more things about LeBron, and while for a while they were primarily good, now they aren't. Doesn't mean he's not legendarily good because he is, but the fantasy that LeBron was a Magic/Bird-type of basketball brain has been put to bed, and concerns about his ability to play his max-impact way while still reliably being able to max-impact his star teammates are basically just facts at this point...and Curry just doesn't have the same issues.

If you personally weigh LeBron's ability to do more with less enough, I get why you'd rate him ahead of Curry, but the quality of Golden State - if it all holds up - I honestly don't know how I'd match that with LeBron.

Re: backwards analysis. Yeah, that's a thing, and there are people falling prey to that right now, but the case for Curry's superior portability based on how his attack works compared to LeBron just makes a ton of sense.

I think I agree with this.

How I think of it, speaking strictly towards offense:

09 Lebron gives you a higher floor
16 Curry gives you a higher ceiling

I see ceilings as more important than floors when evaluating championship odds.

The thing somewhat pulling me back to Lebron in this specific comparison is defense, though. Back when Curry was at 31.5ppg on 68% TS, and it was close enough to the end of the season to imagine him finishing up there, it was clear in my mind. I never thought he'd fall so far, so quickly. I'm much more unsure now than I was then.

[SideshowBob]

The thing somewhat pulling me back to Lebron in this specific comparison is defense, though. Back when Curry was at 31.5ppg on 68% TS, and it was close enough to the end of the season to imagine him finishing up there, it was clear in my mind. I never thought he'd fall so far, so quickly. I'm much more unsure now than I was then.

But when was this? The last time he was above a 31.0 PPG average was 28 games into the season back before Christmas (through 12/23) on 68% TS (29/6/7 on 65% TS since). That's only a little over 1/3 of the season - it's been 4 months since then, is that really that quick of a dropoff?

[Doctor MJ]

I think I agree with this.

How I think of it, speaking strictly towards offense:

09 Lebron gives you a higher floor
16 Curry gives you a higher ceiling

I see ceilings as more important than floors when evaluating championship odds.

The thing somewhat pulling me back to Lebron in this specific comparison is defense, though. Back when Curry was at 31.5ppg on 68% TS, and it was close enough to the end of the season to imagine him finishing up there, it was clear in my mind. I never thought he'd fall so far, so quickly. I'm much more unsure now than I was then.

Yup, I'm basically with you. What I'd say though is that if Curry goes back to being max-dominant again in the playoffs, then it won't matter that he fell off late in the regular season because the answer will be pretty clear.

I think what will make it tricky though is that there's a possibility that team's uber-commit to stopping Curry which leads to him having pedestrian numbers while letting his teammates hit easy shots. So yeah, if the Warriors look like a GOAT team in the playoffs while working as they do because of the gravity of Curry, then I won't be all that focused on his specific box score numbers.

[Doctor MJ]

The thing somewhat pulling me back to Lebron in this specific comparison is defense, though. Back when Curry was at 31.5ppg on 68% TS, and it was close enough to the end of the season to imagine him finishing up there, it was clear in my mind. I never thought he'd fall so far, so quickly. I'm much more unsure now than I was then.

But when was this? The last time he was above a 31.0 PPG average was 28 games into the season back before Christmas (through 12/23) on 68% TS (29/6/7 on 65% TS since). That's only a little over 1/3 of the season - it's been 4 months since then, is that really that quick of a dropoff?

The way Curry stormed back into uber-dominant mode in February to me made it clear that no one had "figured him out". As such his fall off from March onward to me may well be simply because he was coasting.

[euliss]

The thing somewhat pulling me back to Lebron in this specific comparison is defense, though. Back when Curry was at 31.5ppg on 68% TS, and it was close enough to the end of the season to imagine him finishing up there, it was clear in my mind. I never thought he'd fall so far, so quickly. I'm much more unsure now than I was then.

But when was this? The last time he was above a 31.0 PPG average was 28 games into the season back before Christmas (through 12/23) on 68% TS (29/6/7 on 65% TS since). That's only a little over 1/3 of the season - it's been 4 months since then, is that really that quick of a dropoff?

The way Curry stormed back into uber-dominant mode in February to me made it clear that no one had "figured him out". As such his fall off from March onward to me may well be simply because he was coasting.

Yeah, the teams played a lot poorer in first halfs now compared to the beginning of the year and even last year, forcing them to play more 4qs and causing closer and closer games with weaker teams

Before the All-Star break, the Warriors were +23.9 per 100 in first quarters. Since the ASG, they are +12.7.

Warriors in fourth quarters without Curry on the court: -13.5 per 100 Warriors in fourth quarters with Curry on the court: +27.6 per 100

So to me the dropoff in the team has been apathy mostly, you still see them playing fully engaged in stints but i'm sure it took a toll on them after the 24 win streak. Every game since november has basically been a playoff game for them since everyone is trying to give them their A++ game

Varejao has also been ungodly terrible since joining the team

[mischievous]

The thing somewhat pulling me back to Lebron in this specific comparison is defense, though. Back when Curry was at 31.5ppg on 68% TS, and it was close enough to the end of the season to imagine him finishing up there, it was clear in my mind. I never thought he'd fall so far, so quickly. I'm much more unsure now than I was then.

But when was this? The last time he was above a 31.0 PPG average was 28 games into the season back before Christmas (through 12/23) on 68% TS (29/6/7 on 65% TS since). That's only a little over 1/3 of the season - it's been 4 months since then, is that really that quick of a dropoff?

The way Curry stormed back into uber-dominant mode in February to me made it clear that no one had "figured him out". As such his fall off from March onward to me may well be simply because he was coasting.

The coasting claim for Curry seems like a bit of a cop out. I mean you don't go 7-22 in any given game because you're coasting.

[PearGreatness]

The thing somewhat pulling me back to Lebron in this specific comparison is defense, though. Back when Curry was at 31.5ppg on 68% TS, and it was close enough to the end of the season to imagine him finishing up there, it was clear in my mind. I never thought he'd fall so far, so quickly. I'm much more unsure now than I was then.

But when was this? The last time he was above a 31.0 PPG average was 28 games into the season back before Christmas (through 12/23) on 68% TS (29/6/7 on 65% TS since). That's only a little over 1/3 of the season - it's been 4 months since then, is that really that quick of a dropoff?

Could just be that my memory is off. What was he at in late February?

[Doctor MJ]

But when was this? The last time he was above a 31.0 PPG average was 28 games into the season back before Christmas (through 12/23) on 68% TS (29/6/7 on 65% TS since). That's only a little over 1/3 of the season - it's been 4 months since then, is that really that quick of a dropoff?

The way Curry stormed back into uber-dominant mode in February to me made it clear that no one had "figured him out". As such his fall off from March onward to me may well be simply because he was coasting.

The coasting claim for Curry seems like a bit of a cop out. I mean you don't go 7-22 in any given game because you're coasting.

Well, we'll see what happens in the playoffs, right?

I do get your perspective here, and it may well be the right one, but at the same time we know that it's not in the actual shot where the effort is, so much as the lead up to the shot.

I'll also say that to me the most likely thing about a player falling off in March is sometimes called "coasting" and sometimes "getting tired". They aren't the same thing, but it's hard to tell which is which a lot of the time. Whatever the reason, if Curry kicks it back up to gear in the playoffs, March won't matter much to me.

[mischievous]

The way Curry stormed back into uber-dominant mode in February to me made it clear that no one had "figured him out". As such his fall off from March onward to me may well be simply because he was coasting.

The coasting claim for Curry seems like a bit of a cop out. I mean you don't go 7-22 in any given game because you're coasting.

Well, we'll see what happens in the playoffs, right?

I do get your perspective here, and it may well be the right one, but at the same time we know that it's not in the actual shot where the effort is, so much as the lead up to the shot.

I'll also say that to me the most likely thing about a player falling off in March is sometimes called "coasting" and sometimes "getting tired". They aren't the same thing, but it's hard to tell which is which a lot of the time. Whatever the reason, if Curry kicks it back up to gear in the playoffs, March won't matter much to me.

Well i noticed that in a lot of the games that he didn't shoot well, he would make up for it with rebounds and assists so i don't think effort has been the problem.