LA Bird wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:What I'm trying to get across here is an achievement based perspective. It's great to say that the Embiid-led team showed signs of being something far more impressive than merely being the 2nd round level team that we already know they could be without him. But in reality with him, the team never proved itself anything more than that. Embiid wasn't able to raise them to elite status in the regular season, and in the playoffs they lost where you'd expect them to, so why are we so excited about what he accomplished?
The +/- and raw WOWY numbers suggest they would at best be first round fodder without Embiid.
With Embiid: 43-21 (55.1 win rate, +4.8 MOV)
Without Embiid: 8-10 (36.4 win rate, -4.8 MOV)
+/- and raw WOWY certainly wouldn't predict how well Philly did last year when Embiid went down and Philly kept right on dominating, nevertheless, we saw it.
LA Bird wrote:
Besides, how is an "achievement based perspective" any different than something like ring counting? Maybe you have changed after your hiatus but I seem to recall you having Garnett top 4 all time before based in part on +/- stats. I am not saying Embiid is as good as Garnett but applying this "achievement based perspective", you would have to say KG didn't raise the TWolves to elite status either (outside of 2004) and that there is no reason to be excited about all the first round exits he accomplished in Minnesota. I don't want to derail this thread with KG discussion but your current stance on this team achievement based perspective seems to go against your previous views on +/- numbers.
So, what we're really talking about here is what it takes to move a player up a tier because of playoff performance.
Consider Giannis vs Kawhi for POY. Giannis was far ahead of Kawhi in the regular season, so what exactly would it take for Kawhi to surpass him based on a series between their two teams?
At a certain point in the series my assessment was "Kawhi's been better, but Giannis will still get the nod from me if his team wins". Why? Because one series against one opponent is not enough to make me ignore an 82 game season....unless it renders all advantages from the regular season moot. Now that Toronto has won while establishing itself as the stronger team, literally no one in the world cares that Milwaukee was better in the regular season. At that point it makes sense to just compare how the two players looked against each other, and since Kawhi came out ahead there, he gets the nod.
Embiid could have had arguments like Kawhi does now, but to my mind he doesn't. Why? Well, aside from the fact his team lost, he visibly wasn't play his best, and his production stats were far below normal. To elevate Embiid a tier based on his playoff run you basically have to ignore all these things and say "But +/-!!!!". And +/- just doesn't work like that.
It's a high noise stat. There's randomness, and there are the quirks of any given series with a particular set of improvised strategies. The reality is that it's completely unreasonable to the Embiid's Off numbers in the Toronto series actually are a fair assessment of how much talent he had on his team.
You bring up Garnett and of course the thing about Garnett was: His +/- argument wasn't for him to go up a tier in the playoffs because of how those numbers looked in one series.
LA Bird wrote: I think the reality is that much of the reason for the excitement are +/- scores from a single series during which Embiid couldn't get his team over the hump.
I'm not saying that it's either "win or bust" when evaluating accomplishments, but if you're going to essentially ignore the fact that the team never won anything it couldn't win without Embiid on the basis of small sample +/- impact, I think you're putting the cart before the horse.
Embiid has had double digit on/offs for all 3 regular seasons he has played in. The sample size for his high impact metrics is more than just 1 playoff series. If the 76ers without Embiid were a more reasonable -10 net instead of -50, they would have advanced to the ECF - does that mean Greg Monroe or Boban's performance dictate whether Embiid was good enough to lead his team over the hump? As much as you deny it, this is a "win or bust" approach. Your opinion of Embiid is decided by whether the 76ers could go to the ECF, which is heavily influenced by factors outside of Embiid's control (eg. how bad the bench is).
Embiid's general +/- numbers are already factored into our regular season assessment. While I warn people to not mistake +/- for true VORP, the reality is that if you already had him in your Top 5, I don't expect him to drop.
But when people go nuts about the +/- from a single series, they are making the case that he should rise a tier based on that specific small sample size theater, and that's what I'm really taking issue with.
Re: My opinion of Embiid is decided by...my ranking of him in the regular season, and a cautious assessment of how much to change that based on the playoffs. In the end, I've essentially opted to not have my opinion of his accomplishment significantly change after his team lost when it was expected to lose, and I saw Embiid struggling out there with both injury and sickness.
Is that really so crazy?
LA Bird wrote:
* Note: I am not saying Embiid is without fault. Part of the loss is on him for his inability to play heavy minutes outside of G7 which only exacerbated the bench problem. However, nowhere in your posts did you criticize his lack of durability. All you said was that Embiid wasn't impressive because he didn't advance past the second round which I think is rather reductionist.
Really, that's all I said? So you condense all of I've written into a couple sentences, use +/- like it's an absolute statement of impact, miss the nuance relating to the comparison with KG, and then call me the reductionist?
LA Bird wrote: I'm not going to let small sample size +/- make me forget that Embiid's team has Simmons - capable of leading a team to the 2nd round on his own - or Butler - a much more dependable star than Embiid.
There is no proof Simmons could lead a 2nd round team on his own. Unless you are referring to the 9-0 run at the end of the 2018 regular season when half of their opponents were tanking teams. Butler can more reliably create his own shot but that's about it. Overall 2-way play, Embiid is clearly the best and most impactful player on the team.
You're looking for reasons to pretend stuff that really happened doesn't matter while focusing on statistics that shouldn't be wielded as if they are the final say.
It's telling that your critique of what the Simmons-led team did isn't based on any specific statement about why it was flawed. You're just saying "End of season so doesn't count". In reality, what that team did was an outlier of the magnitude we rarely, then we saw it largely continue in the 1st round of the playoffs, and all of that served only to further back up the notion that if you've got a dominant physical presence with a tremendous gift for passing and you surround him with shooters, it works.
The formula for how to build the best possible team around Simmons is really simple - much simpler than Embiid. Does that mean Embiid isn't the guy to build around? No, I'd go with Embiid as well, but no conversation about Embiid is complete without acknowledging that it's not exactly obvious how to get the best fit around him, and until that fit is achieved, Embiid's teams are going to fall short of their talent levels.
Right now everyone thinks Philly is the most talented team in the East, but they won only 51 games and lost to the first higher seed they faced. I think it goes without saying they haven't reached their ceiling yet, and until they do, I'm going to be uncomfortable leaning on +/- too heavily here.
