Joey Wheeler wrote:Amare_1_Knicks wrote:I don't think there's a huge advantage either way, but there's a clear one for me, and it's in favor of Irving. For two similar players, that produce near identical stat lines, Irving's game has appeared to translate much, much easier to the postseason, historically. He's a tremendously high end postseason, big-game performer; so much so that is believable to think that he could capably step out of the shadow of a Lebron James, have a team built around him, and have success to the tune of 50+ win teams, deep playoff runs and what have you.
I don't know how one would make the case that "it isn't even close" when essentially every piece of evidence/statistics that we have at our disposal would directly suggest the opposite. I won't knock Lillard because maybe he could do the same, and maybe he could be a high-end, reliable first option with the right roster around him, but he hasn't looked stunning in any postseason run in his career thus far; & it's to the point that I believe he'd do better as a second option, ultimately, whereas I'd bank on Kyrie's ability as a first option based on what I've seen from him/them.
There's absolutely no evidence or even strong suggestion of this. If you're basing it on a few games where Kyrie torched Curry 1 vs 1 and scored big vs the Warriors, so has Dame in the playoffs, he averaged 32 vs them in 2016, 28 this year.
If any of these players has shown they can be a #1 option it's Dame, who has had success leading a good but not great Blazers roster to the playoffs every year and even to the second round twice, he has basically already done what you claim Kyrie can do. All Kyrie has done in his career without Lebron on the court is lose...
No, not at all. The parallel that I'm drawing here is that Irving is able to sustain his level of play, or raise it in the post season in regards to his scoring, efficiency, shooting, and overall level of play, while Lillard tends to tail off. We can't ignore how supremely impressive Irving's last two postseasons have been:
2016: 25/3/5 on 57%TS(44% 3 pt shooting)
2017: 26/3/5 on 57%TS(37% 3 pt shooting)
As for Lillard:
2016: 26/4/6 on .527%TS(.368%FG)
2017: 27/4/3 on 55%TS
(I don't want to delve too deeply into the stats, so just a quick look shows that they more or less put up the same numbers, but Irving was more consistent/efficient).
Irving looked extremely impressive and was efficient in his first playoff run as well, before he went down with injuries. What's more is that in the finals/conference finals, he's clearly played his best basketball. I'm not knocking Lillard; he's phenomenal, and is very much so cut from the same cloth as a Kyrie Irving, but I'll always roll with the guy who's shown what he can do on a championship stage.
It's like the early 2000's and we're comparing T-Mac vs Kobe. Individually, T-Mac may have the edge but there's no way anyone ignores what we see from a Kobe Bryant performing on a big stage, at a younger age, dominating conference finals and NBA finals.
