Good conversation here with a few things I want to say:
pandrade83 wrote:I wouldnt argue he played well in the 16 finals - but I’d say he was “fine”. Not the destroyer of worlds that he was but he still wasn’t a disaster as revisionist history has warped this into. Yes, the box was down but not BAD. They nearly won, they lost draymond for a game, Barnes took a massive dump all over the bed and klay was “meh”.
But that series was epic and was a virtual tie and i dont see that happening if Steph was BAD.
Well you vastly underestimate the rest of the Warriors then (which possibly explains why you're ranking him so highly).
Offensively Curry was definitely above average. Add in his bad defense and he was below average in that series or average at best. Replace him with a mid tier PG like Teague, Hill, Dragic, or Bledsoe and they'd probably play better than Curry did in that series and good enough for a win.
Steph shot extremely well in that series. Outside of that he was terrible (not just bad, but terrible). Turning over the ball constantly, fouling constantly on defense because he was getting picked on by the Cavs offense, blowing layups... He just wasn't good, and it's not only reflected in his pretty average PER and GmSc in that series but also in his pretty bad +/- in that series. The boxscore wasn't terrible (if you keep it to the basic slashline, ignoring turnovers) and that's really his only saving grace because he probably played as bad as if not worse than LeBron in 2011 but the difference is LeBron's greatness kind of overshadowed exactly how terrible Steph was.
For an easy example you can go look at those 5 plays I got from game 7. In such a close game mistakes like that are directly losing the game for your team. Not getting back on defense because you want a ghost call, having very dumb turnovers and letting Kyrie get out in transition up against guys he's always gonna make the layup on, letting Richard Jefferson take your cookies because you wanted to get flashy instead of protecting the ball... I can keep going but if you rewatch those games watching Curry more than you're watching Kyrie and LeBron (because it's hard to ignore LeBron having some of the best plays ever and Kyrie giving him a performance most dream their #2 could have) you'd notice exactly how bad he was at times in those games.
Mavericksfan wrote:Durant averaged 30 on 54% TS
I dont think there anyway to argue Durant was better
Btw such a small sample size for raw +/- doesnt tell us anything. Way too noisy
So you're right that his usage of those numbers wasn't really good. I also think he's vastly overestimating how KD played. That said Westbrook and KD still clearly outplayed Curry. I don't see that as too big a deal personally but that's because I rank 2016 Curry around where I rank 2013 KD and 2017 Westbrook. If I thought Curry was top 10ish all time level, getting outplayed like that by 2 players in one series, then getting outplayed by 3 players in the next series would be unacceptable.
At a certain point it comes down to one thing, do you value Curry's legitimate GOAT tier regular seasons or think his true level of play is more like his postseasons, which are great, but nowhere near top tier and neck and neck with guys in that 20-30 range. Some people like to take an average of both, which is why they're putting Curry here around 10, but that's kind of saying the regular season matters more than the postseason. Personally I see the regular season as a show of their play in low pressure situations but you can't win a ring only being low pressure and the regular season is only a prelude to the postseason. If you're consistently playing worse in the postseason it's a sign you have fundamental flaws in your game and I think that's an important thing when we're discussing an EXTREMELY one dimensional player like Curry.
