Is West Trash (so far)?

[Mylie10]

That said, the bench lineups West tends to play in seem to have been extremely Durant iso heavy. To utilize West's skills more, I'd like to see them working in some Livingston-West pick and roll or put West at the elbow with the ball and run splits with Klay and Durant for 3 or cuts to the rim.

So I'm starting to see why the stats are the way they are. David West plays with starters and isn't used in garbage time at all.

West has played only 17 of his 121 minutes without Kevin Durant. Of those 17 minutes, 16 were with Draymond, 13 with Curry, 13 with Iguodala. (Klay 8, Clark 8 - all from his big game, McCaw 2, Livingston 7). In those 17 minutes though, West has 4 pts (2-5 shooting) 5 rebounds, 3 steals and a block. That's all very solid, except the steals, which is borderline amazing (and unsustainable, as is the 3 OREB).

But here's the telling part: In the 104 minutes he's played with Kevin Durant, Durant has shot an ungodly .710 TS% on 33% usage. When its Durant-Curry-West (21 minutes), Steph Curry - and this is not a joke - is shooting 1.041 TS% on 33% usage Steph is averaging 1.9 ppp, and 2.09 points per shot. Iguodala has been on the court with West-Durant-Curry for 88 of these 104 minutes.

Outlier identified. They should normalize over time, but the key here seems to be who he's playing with. If it works, it works, but stylistically West still should need to adapt to moving the ball faster

Very good points.

I still maintain that he needs another big (not Durant) alongside, but your mentioning the FACT that he hasn't had to play in garbage minutes or lineups is a really good point. It doesn't skew the data, but more clarifies his good defensive rating.

[likashing]

That said, the bench lineups West tends to play in seem to have been extremely Durant iso heavy. To utilize West's skills more, I'd like to see them working in some Livingston-West pick and roll or put West at the elbow with the ball and run splits with Klay and Durant for 3 or cuts to the rim.

So I'm starting to see why the stats are the way they are. David West plays with starters and isn't used in garbage time at all.

West has played only 17 of his 121 minutes without Kevin Durant. Of those 17 minutes, 16 were with Draymond, 13 with Curry, 13 with Iguodala. (Klay 8, Clark 8 - all from his big game, McCaw 2, Livingston 7). In those 17 minutes though, West has 4 pts (2-5 shooting) 5 rebounds, 3 steals and a block. That's all very solid, except the steals, which is borderline amazing (and unsustainable, as is the 3 OREB).

But here's the telling part: In the 104 minutes he's played with Kevin Durant, Durant has shot an ungodly .710 TS% on 33% usage. When its Durant-Curry-West (21 minutes), Steph Curry - and this is not a joke - is shooting 1.041 TS% on 33% usage Steph is averaging 1.9 ppp, and 2.09 points per shot. Iguodala has been on the court with West-Durant-Curry for 88 of these 104 minutes.

Outlier identified. They should normalize over time, but the key here seems to be who he's playing with. If it works, it works, but stylistically West still should need to adapt to moving the ball faster

How about other top rotation players like Zaza, Livingston, and Iguodala that don't usually play in garbage time?

Kerr nearly always have 2 of Steph/Klay/KD on the court anyway.

Does West benefit more by playing with our Big 4 than Zaza, Livingston, and Iguodala?

Where do you think West will normalize to? I think he is decent and will have good plus minus kind of like Iguodala while not spectacular in the box score.

nbawowy West on/off so far (nbawowy counts possessions differently):

on court:
offense = 115.0
defense = 99.4
net = +15.6

off court:
offense = 111.3
defense = 104.1
net = +7.2

[laika]

People are complaining about West? What about Pachulia, who has been horrendous?

Here's the bottom line- Pachulia has been horrific, singlehandedly dragging down possibly the greatest 1-4 lineup in NBA history. The Warriors have been incredibly good when West is in. I don't care if he's doing it by black magic. West should start and Pachulia should be benched.

He's also terrible, but via the eye test he's doing very little differently than West. We just start out slow for whatever reason, and his raw data gets crushed, while West's get inflated. West has been marginally better on an individual level, but he's also playing against 2nd stringers most of the time. RAPM would be a great tool to have now but lord knows where it is these days... I'm so out of the loop with that stuff now

West vs Pachulia is pretty close to definitive proof that you can't trust the eye test. The Warriors start out slow because Pachulia is in. They do great as soon as he is on the bench. Also, West rarely plays with Curry and Durant which actually hurts his numbers some. In the small sample of Curry/Durant/West so far the Warriors were impossibly good.
NBA.com is the best website out there. Among other things they have detailed lineup numbers for all combinations.

The disparity is so great that it is actually a little shocking. I wouldn't have even though it was possible that a random player could drag the Warriors starters down that much, but Pachulia is proving me wrong.

http://stats.nba.com/team/#!/1610612744/onoffcourt/?sort=PLUS_MINUS&dir=1

Curry/Durant/West- plus 44.9
Curry/Durant/Pachulia- plus 4.0

[FNQ]

People are complaining about West? What about Pachulia, who has been horrendous?

Here's the bottom line- Pachulia has been horrific, singlehandedly dragging down possibly the greatest 1-4 lineup in NBA history. The Warriors have been incredibly good when West is in. I don't care if he's doing it by black magic. West should start and Pachulia should be benched.

He's also terrible, but via the eye test he's doing very little differently than West. We just start out slow for whatever reason, and his raw data gets crushed, while West's get inflated. West has been marginally better on an individual level, but he's also playing against 2nd stringers most of the time. RAPM would be a great tool to have now but lord knows where it is these days... I'm so out of the loop with that stuff now

West vs Pachulia is pretty close to definitive proof that you can't trust the eye test. The Warriors start out slow because Pachulia is in. They do great as soon as he is on the bench. Also, West rarely plays with Curry and Durant which actually hurts his numbers some. In the small sample of Curry/Durant/West so far the Warriors were impossibly good.
NBA.com is the best website out there. Among other things they have detailed lineup numbers for all combinations.

The disparity is so great that it is actually a little shocking. I wouldn't have even though it was possible that a random player could drag the Warriors starters down that much, but Pachulia is proving me wrong.

http://stats.nba.com/team/#!/1610612744/onoffcourt/?sort=PLUS_MINUS&dir=1

Curry/Durant/West- plus 44.9
Curry/Durant/Pachulia- plus 4.0

I'm sorry that's utter horsecrap.. the W's do not start off shooting poorly because of the substitution of West for Zaza. They have just not started off hitting shots well. There's not going to be a linear reason for everything, they just start cold and work their way into the game.

And no, West doesn't rarely play with Curry and Durant, I literally just told you how much they play together. NBA.com is NOT the best website out there.. NBAwowy is worlds and worlds better.

[FNQ]

That said, the bench lineups West tends to play in seem to have been extremely Durant iso heavy. To utilize West's skills more, I'd like to see them working in some Livingston-West pick and roll or put West at the elbow with the ball and run splits with Klay and Durant for 3 or cuts to the rim.

So I'm starting to see why the stats are the way they are. David West plays with starters and isn't used in garbage time at all.

West has played only 17 of his 121 minutes without Kevin Durant. Of those 17 minutes, 16 were with Draymond, 13 with Curry, 13 with Iguodala. (Klay 8, Clark 8 - all from his big game, McCaw 2, Livingston 7). In those 17 minutes though, West has 4 pts (2-5 shooting) 5 rebounds, 3 steals and a block. That's all very solid, except the steals, which is borderline amazing (and unsustainable, as is the 3 OREB).

But here's the telling part: In the 104 minutes he's played with Kevin Durant, Durant has shot an ungodly .710 TS% on 33% usage. When its Durant-Curry-West (21 minutes), Steph Curry - and this is not a joke - is shooting 1.041 TS% on 33% usage Steph is averaging 1.9 ppp, and 2.09 points per shot. Iguodala has been on the court with West-Durant-Curry for 88 of these 104 minutes.

Outlier identified. They should normalize over time, but the key here seems to be who he's playing with. If it works, it works, but stylistically West still should need to adapt to moving the ball faster

How about other top rotation players like Zaza, Livingston, and Iguodala that don't usually play in garbage time?

Kerr nearly always have 2 of Steph/Klay/KD on the court anyway.

Does West benefit more by playing with our Big 4 than Zaza, Livingston, and Iguodala?

Where do you think West will normalize to? I think he is decent and will have good plus minus kind of like Iguodala while not spectacular in the box score.

nbawowy West on/off so far (nbawowy counts possessions differently):

on court:
offense = 115.0
defense = 99.4
net = +15.6

off court:
offense = 111.3
defense = 104.1
net = +7.2

Zaza starts the game and plays little after that, and the Warriors just shoot ice cold to start games these days. West is not the cause, he's the benefactor.

And yes, West would benefit more than Livingston and Iguodala because our rebounding would take a substantial hit if you replace a big with a small. Until we get a legitimate 'death squad' smallball unit again, I would expect that to be the case. As it stands now, we don't have that one dominant smallball unit we used to... yet. But also keep in mind that Iguodala is right behind him in net +/-.. and he hasn't been playing well either.

If West continues in this current role of 9-10mpg playing with starters against 2nd units, there's no real reason why he shouldn't maintain a decent +/-. Will it be earned, like in the case of Iguodala? I don't think so, and I do think as Durant and Curry regress towards their means, West's +/- will stabilize. But like I said before I'm not a big believe in +/- raw in limited amounts, especially if it looks and smells like an outlier. In this case, it certainly does.

As far as where he normalizes to.. its hard to tell. He's a halfcourt player in an uptempo team. It can go a lot of ways. I personally would rather see Looney in those minutes, because even though West is better now, Looney's ability to move the ball quicker and flat out move around quicker lends itself to have more potential than West.

[laika]

He's also terrible, but via the eye test he's doing very little differently than West. We just start out slow for whatever reason, and his raw data gets crushed, while West's get inflated. West has been marginally better on an individual level, but he's also playing against 2nd stringers most of the time. RAPM would be a great tool to have now but lord knows where it is these days... I'm so out of the loop with that stuff now

West vs Pachulia is pretty close to definitive proof that you can't trust the eye test. The Warriors start out slow because Pachulia is in. They do great as soon as he is on the bench. Also, West rarely plays with Curry and Durant which actually hurts his numbers some. In the small sample of Curry/Durant/West so far the Warriors were impossibly good.
NBA.com is the best website out there. Among other things they have detailed lineup numbers for all combinations.

The disparity is so great that it is actually a little shocking. I wouldn't have even though it was possible that a random player could drag the Warriors starters down that much, but Pachulia is proving me wrong.

http://stats.nba.com/team/#!/1610612744/onoffcourt/?sort=PLUS_MINUS&dir=1

Curry/Durant/West- plus 44.9
Curry/Durant/Pachulia- plus 4.0

I'm sorry that's utter horsecrap.. the W's do not start off shooting poorly because of the substitution of West for Zaza. They have just not started off hitting shots well. There's not going to be a linear reason for everything, they just start cold and work their way into the game.

And no, West doesn't rarely play with Curry and Durant, I literally just told you how much they play together. NBA.com is NOT the best website out there.. NBAwowy is worlds and worlds better.

According to NBA.com West has only played 17 minutes with Durant/Curry. Are you seriously suggesting that NBA.com is publishing completely false numbers? In all likelihood you are completely wrong about everything, but I won't press it further since you are the moderator.

[likashing]

So I'm starting to see why the stats are the way they are. David West plays with starters and isn't used in garbage time at all.

West has played only 17 of his 121 minutes without Kevin Durant. Of those 17 minutes, 16 were with Draymond, 13 with Curry, 13 with Iguodala. (Klay 8, Clark 8 - all from his big game, McCaw 2, Livingston 7). In those 17 minutes though, West has 4 pts (2-5 shooting) 5 rebounds, 3 steals and a block. That's all very solid, except the steals, which is borderline amazing (and unsustainable, as is the 3 OREB).

But here's the telling part: In the 104 minutes he's played with Kevin Durant, Durant has shot an ungodly .710 TS% on 33% usage. When its Durant-Curry-West (21 minutes), Steph Curry - and this is not a joke - is shooting 1.041 TS% on 33% usage Steph is averaging 1.9 ppp, and 2.09 points per shot. Iguodala has been on the court with West-Durant-Curry for 88 of these 104 minutes.

Outlier identified. They should normalize over time, but the key here seems to be who he's playing with. If it works, it works, but stylistically West still should need to adapt to moving the ball faster

How about other top rotation players like Zaza, Livingston, and Iguodala that don't usually play in garbage time?

Kerr nearly always have 2 of Steph/Klay/KD on the court anyway.

Does West benefit more by playing with our Big 4 than Zaza, Livingston, and Iguodala?

Where do you think West will normalize to? I think he is decent and will have good plus minus kind of like Iguodala while not spectacular in the box score.

nbawowy West on/off so far (nbawowy counts possessions differently):

on court:
offense = 115.0
defense = 99.4
net = +15.6

off court:
offense = 111.3
defense = 104.1
net = +7.2

Zaza starts the game and plays little after that, and the Warriors just shoot ice cold to start games these days. West is not the cause, he's the benefactor.

And yes, West would benefit more than Livingston and Iguodala because our rebounding would take a substantial hit if you replace a big with a small. Until we get a legitimate 'death squad' smallball unit again, I would expect that to be the case. As it stands now, we don't have that one dominant smallball unit we used to... yet. But also keep in mind that Iguodala is right behind him in net +/-.. and he hasn't been playing well either.

If West continues in this current role of 9-10mpg playing with starters against 2nd units, there's no real reason why he shouldn't maintain a decent +/-. Will it be earned, like in the case of Iguodala? I don't think so, and I do think as Durant and Curry regress towards their means, West's +/- will stabilize. But like I said before I'm not a big believe in +/- raw in limited amounts, especially if it looks and smells like an outlier. In this case, it certainly does.

As far as where he normalizes to.. its hard to tell. He's a halfcourt player in an uptempo team. It can go a lot of ways. I personally would rather see Looney in those minutes, because even though West is better now, Looney's ability to move the ball quicker and flat out move around quicker lends itself to have more potential than West.

I think we just need to re-visit later. 9-10 mpg is not a small sample once we have played 20-40 games.

Once ESPN updates their RPM we will find out more too. I would expect him to be ~#6 on our team in terms of RPM

[FNQ]

West vs Pachulia is pretty close to definitive proof that you can't trust the eye test. The Warriors start out slow because Pachulia is in. They do great as soon as he is on the bench. Also, West rarely plays with Curry and Durant which actually hurts his numbers some. In the small sample of Curry/Durant/West so far the Warriors were impossibly good.
NBA.com is the best website out there. Among other things they have detailed lineup numbers for all combinations.

The disparity is so great that it is actually a little shocking. I wouldn't have even though it was possible that a random player could drag the Warriors starters down that much, but Pachulia is proving me wrong.

http://stats.nba.com/team/#!/1610612744/onoffcourt/?sort=PLUS_MINUS&dir=1

Curry/Durant/West- plus 44.9
Curry/Durant/Pachulia- plus 4.0

I'm sorry that's utter horsecrap.. the W's do not start off shooting poorly because of the substitution of West for Zaza. They have just not started off hitting shots well. There's not going to be a linear reason for everything, they just start cold and work their way into the game.

And no, West doesn't rarely play with Curry and Durant, I literally just told you how much they play together. NBA.com is NOT the best website out there.. NBAwowy is worlds and worlds better.

According to NBA.com West has only played 17 minutes with Durant/Curry. Are you seriously suggesting that NBA.com is publishing completely false numbers? In all likelihood you are completely wrong about everything, but I won't press it further since you are the moderator.

I'm not the mod here first, and if I'm wrong (I'm not, easy to tally on Evan's comprehensive website), please tell me. But I'm not. It likely does not have the Denver game added yet - Evan's does - and as I explained before:

West has played only 17 of his 121 minutes without Kevin Durant.
the 104 minutes he's played with Kevin Durant
When its Durant-Curry-West (21 minutes)
Iguodala has been on the court with West-Durant-Curry for 88 of these 104 minutes

NBAwowy is flat out the best site for statistics. Bar none. NBA.com included. Zaza's peripherals do not indicate someone who is capable of dragging down the team 40 points. It is a small sample size, and more indicative of the W's starting out shooting poorly and then warming up. Unless somehow Zaza is at fault for teams getting loose from 3 early on, and the Warriors shooting abnormally poorly from 3 early on.. how does that work?

[The-Power]

RAPM would be a great tool to have now but lord knows where it is these days... I'm so out of the loop with that stuff now

Too early in the season, the used prior would be way too influential - or else the data would be too unreliable anyway. Basically the same reason why RPM hasn't been out yet. But access to good RAPM data has gone south regardless since JE's site was shut down and he started working for ESPN along with the inactivity of some other sites.

[likashing]

RAPM would be a great tool to have now but lord knows where it is these days... I'm so out of the loop with that stuff now

Too early in the season, the used prior would be way too influential - or else the data would be too unreliable anyway. Basically the same reason why RPM hasn't been out yet. But access to good RAPM data has gone south regardless since JE's site was shut down and he started working for ESPN along with the inactivity of some other sites.

Yup, it took a while last year too. They need enough possessions to tear down the raw plus/minus affected by teammates/opponents.

[laika]

I'm not the mod here first, and if I'm wrong (I'm not, easy to tally on Evan's comprehensive website), please tell me. But I'm not. It likely does not have the Denver game added yet - Evan's does - and as I explained before:

West has played only 17 of his 121 minutes without Kevin Durant.
the 104 minutes he's played with Kevin Durant
When its Durant-Curry-West (21 minutes)
Iguodala has been on the court with West-Durant-Curry for 88 of these 104 minutes

NBAwowy is flat out the best site for statistics. Bar none. NBA.com included. Zaza's peripherals do not indicate someone who is capable of dragging down the team 40 points. It is a small sample size, and more indicative of the W's starting out shooting poorly and then warming up. Unless somehow Zaza is at fault for teams getting loose from 3 early on, and the Warriors shooting abnormally poorly from 3 early on.. how does that work?

I don't know where in the world you are getting that 121 minutes figure. NBA.com, espn.com, basketball reference and probably every other site agree that West has played 90 minutes this year. I disagree with everything else in your post also, but I don't have time to get into it right now.

[FNQ]

RAPM would be a great tool to have now but lord knows where it is these days... I'm so out of the loop with that stuff now

Too early in the season, the used prior would be way too influential - or else the data would be too unreliable anyway. Basically the same reason why RPM hasn't been out yet. But access to good RAPM data has gone south regardless since JE's site was shut down and he started working for ESPN along with the inactivity of some other sites.

I thought Jeremiah had it his newest version (in 2014, lord knows what it is now) where it would roll-up based on 2-3 years of data.. So 10 games into this season, it would pull all of last season (or 2 seasons), and 72 games of the 'first' season.

Yeah ever since the appspot site went defunct it really is tough to find

[FNQ]

I'm not the mod here first, and if I'm wrong (I'm not, easy to tally on Evan's comprehensive website), please tell me. But I'm not. It likely does not have the Denver game added yet - Evan's does - and as I explained before:

West has played only 17 of his 121 minutes without Kevin Durant.
the 104 minutes he's played with Kevin Durant
When its Durant-Curry-West (21 minutes)
Iguodala has been on the court with West-Durant-Curry for 88 of these 104 minutes

NBAwowy is flat out the best site for statistics. Bar none. NBA.com included. Zaza's peripherals do not indicate someone who is capable of dragging down the team 40 points. It is a small sample size, and more indicative of the W's starting out shooting poorly and then warming up. Unless somehow Zaza is at fault for teams getting loose from 3 early on, and the Warriors shooting abnormally poorly from 3 early on.. how does that work?

I don't know where in the world you are getting that 121 minutes figure. NBA.com, espn.com, basketball reference and probably every other site agree that West has played 90 minutes this year. I disagree with everything else in your post also, but I don't have time to get into it right now.

Actually my bad, you're right, the 121 included preseason minutes. Evan's java is laggy

Here's the new data:

73 minutes with Durant - Durant shooting .725 TS%
17 minutes with Curry/Durant - Curry shooting 1.014 TS%
21 minutes with Durant/Clark - Clark shooting .714 TS%

17 minutes without Durant:
- (16) Draymond TS% - .833
- (13) Curry TS% - .714 on 50.9% usage
- (13) Iguodala TS% - .682
- (8) Clark, on his hot night TS% - 1.500

These are wildly unsustainable. The even implication that a low usage C could affect shooting %s anywhere close to this is just flatly outside the stratosphere of possibility. When you find time to prove it, you'll have time to prove the earth is flat because you don't see the curve.

[FNQ]

also side note: West without Durant is shooting .364 as far as TS%.. so we have either the widest gap in the history of intangibles between Zaza and West, or there's some other correlation that's being missed. As a gambler.. I find it hard to bet against the 99.9% likely outcome.

[FNQ]

Comparison's sake, here are the Zaza splits:

Zaza is shooting .679% TS
Draymond is shooting .460
Curry is shooting .641
Durant is shooting .546

Only one Warrior regular - Klay - is shooting better with Zaza on the court, and its by .017. And I think its a safe bet that 2 days ago before Klay buried the Mavs in the 1st, he would have been below as well. Clark is shooting in the .700s again (seriously.. is he this good?)

[The-Power]

RAPM would be a great tool to have now but lord knows where it is these days... I'm so out of the loop with that stuff now

Too early in the season, the used prior would be way too influential - or else the data would be too unreliable anyway. Basically the same reason why RPM hasn't been out yet. But access to good RAPM data has gone south regardless since JE's site was shut down and he started working for ESPN along with the inactivity of some other sites.

I thought Jeremiah had it his newest version (in 2014, lord knows what it is now) where it would roll-up based on 2-3 years of data.. So 10 games into this season, it would pull all of last season (or 2 seasons), and 72 games of the 'first' season.

Yeah, multi-year RAPM (however the exact timeline is set) is certainly the most reliable but it obviously fails to identify changes (good for outliers but it thereby cannot take actual changes in impact (different teams, regressions, progressions etc.)).

[gold0259]

I think your asking him to play a role at being the 5 and that is not what he is. He works better when he mixes it up in the paint, and that is usually with another big front court player i.e Duncan, say Mcgee could mesh well with him and allow him to play more of the 4

[likashing]

I'm not the mod here first, and if I'm wrong (I'm not, easy to tally on Evan's comprehensive website), please tell me. But I'm not. It likely does not have the Denver game added yet - Evan's does - and as I explained before:



NBAwowy is flat out the best site for statistics. Bar none. NBA.com included. Zaza's peripherals do not indicate someone who is capable of dragging down the team 40 points. It is a small sample size, and more indicative of the W's starting out shooting poorly and then warming up. Unless somehow Zaza is at fault for teams getting loose from 3 early on, and the Warriors shooting abnormally poorly from 3 early on.. how does that work?

I don't know where in the world you are getting that 121 minutes figure. NBA.com, espn.com, basketball reference and probably every other site agree that West has played 90 minutes this year. I disagree with everything else in your post also, but I don't have time to get into it right now.

Actually my bad, you're right, the 121 included preseason minutes. Evan's java is laggy

Here's the new data:

73 minutes with Durant - Durant shooting .725 TS%
17 minutes with Curry/Durant - Curry shooting 1.014 TS%
21 minutes with Durant/Clark - Clark shooting .714 TS%

17 minutes without Durant:
- (16) Draymond TS% - .833
- (13) Curry TS% - .714 on 50.9% usage
- (13) Iguodala TS% - .682
- (8) Clark, on his hot night TS% - 1.500

These are wildly unsustainable. The even implication that a low usage C could affect shooting %s anywhere close to this is just flatly outside the stratosphere of possibility. When you find time to prove it, you'll have time to prove the earth is flat because you don't see the curve.

Obviously it will revert to mean. But what is the "mean" with West on the court?

The thread was started on the question he was "trash" like some on the game threads have claimed.

I guess the obvious conclusion is the current stats say no, so far.

And the upcoming 20-30 games need to be REALLY bad for his stats to fall to "trash" status.

In any case, I don't see him being worse than Speights which some here also claimed to "wish he was still here instead of West".

And you seem to think shooting .700+ ts% is not sustainable? Last season with Iguodala on-court, Steph shot .700 ts% for a full freaking season. Yes, Steph's average as .6xx ts% as well, but KD is capable of averaging .6xx ts% as well. .700 ts% with certain teammate on-court for a full season is not an outlier . But I agree 1.00+ is% is crazy.

[FNQ]

Obviously it will revert to mean. But what is the "mean" with West on the court?

The thread was started on the question he was "trash" like some on the game threads have claimed.

I guess the obvious conclusion is the current stats say no, so far.

And the upcoming 20-30 games need to be REALLY bad for his stats to fall to "trash" status.

In any case, I don't see him being worse than Speights which some here also claimed to "wish he was still here instead of West".

And you seem to think shooting .700+ ts% is not sustainable? Last season with Iguodala on-court, Steph shot .700 ts% for a full freaking season. Yes, Steph's average as .6xx ts% as well, but KD is capable of averaging .6xx ts% as well. .700 ts% with certain teammate on-court for a full season is not an outlier . But I agree 1.00+ is% is crazy.

The only current stats I would trust at this stage are individual, and no, not trash, but far from a success, and stylistically an odd piece. On a team where we have 3 dominant scorers and 4 dominant players, the auxiliary players will piggyback on their dominance in non-regularized formulas. So David West could literally be the worst player in basketball the next 30 games and walk away with a decent +/- score. Kendrick Perkins' perceived value is a great example of that - by non regularized standards, he was a defensive monster for Boston. He became roster fodder everywhere else, even though his peripherals remained mostly the same.

I would 10x10 times take Speights over him though, mainly because Speights is extremely underrated as a big-time offensive weapon off the bench, as well as a solid rebounder. West has provided the rebounding, and extra steals, but is a ways away from Speights scoring wise. But I expect West's outlandish steal #s to drop as well, to the mean.

I don't think .700 is crazy for Steph when that player is actually impacting it, but I don't see West directly impacting Steph to that point. Ditto with Durant - there are more signs that West is there when they get hot, not West being a cause of them getting hot.

But also, the usage is important - 50.9% usage.. that means Steph is terminating half the possessions AND hitting at an unreal rate. That is unsustainable, even for a demi-god like Steph. With a player like Iguodala - a ball-handler, a guy with great vision - it becomes more sustainable, but still very unlikely. He did that last year at 14% less usage, a significant amount less.

[Quazza]

I think he's been fine

*Shrug*