Replying to a couple posters, though mostly to Doctor MJ. And Doc, let me preface by saying that you are one of my favorite and most-respected posters on this forum; like…EVER. If I come across as a bit defensive in spots, please just understand it’s because I am feeling a little under attack [or at least my methodology is]....
Doctor MJ wrote:You mention Wade's other all-star years, and I think that gets to something that's really at the heart of things:
If you voted for a guy with a lesser peak over Curry in the name of longevity, I think you need to ask yourself what exactly you're waiting for in order to elevate Curry ahead of that other player. I'll use Paul because to use anyone else would be to just ignore the elephant in the room?
Does Curry require more MVP seasons in order to surpass Paul? Better not, that would be silly.
Does Curry require more championships, finals appearances, conference finals as alpha appearances? Better not, that would be silly.
So what we're really talking about is the idea that if Curry has enough B-list seasons, he'll surpass Paul. And I would argue that that's a problem specifically because those B-list seasons won't matter to anyone who looks back on this era with objective distance. They won't change Curry's legacy at all. Once you're a 2 time MVP with 3 chips and 5 finals appearances, no one freaking cares if you lead a team to the 2nd round. Not the other players, not the writers, not management, and certainly not fans.
I would suggest that this type of "trying too hard to be smart" is one of the key pitfalls of the more granular approach statistically minded player rankers tend to fall into. You want an algorithm that tallies up accomplishment incrementally one good thing at a time, and when you do that it's easy to see how you could end up with a ranking that resembles the leaderboard for career Win Shares. But this is not how NBA accomplishment actually works.
Those seasons WILL matter to some people. Those seasons ARE mattering to some people in this project......that's why we're even having this discussion.
That these seasons won't matter [much] to [most] casual fans or media personalities [same thing, really] hardly matters to me. I'm sorry if that sounds like intellectual elitism or "trying too hard to be smart", but seriously, those people rarely see beyond the big OBVIOUS bullet points (e.g. Ringz!, MVP's, All-Stars, scoring champ, etc), and whatever mainstream media tells them they should think [e.g. where they were on other high-profile lists].
Being deferential to their judgment on player analysis seems a bit like deferring to any work-a-day slob about health and nutrition simply because
he eats daily.
ccameron wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:The first thing people are looking for is a sense of how high a level a player's prime is, because that's what's going to determine how likely you are to win championships with that player. Then, for the most part, we're only really looking at longevity as a way to break ties between guys on the same tier.
Well it sounds like you’re not big on longevity and are much more interested in peak and prime. I agree with you. I think the number of seasons a player can help you win a championship are what’s relevant. The number of seasons a player can help you win a championship as your best player are obviously the most relevant, but the number of years you can help a team win a championship as a number 2 or possibly number 3 player I don’t think are irrelevant.
How relevant a season is depends on how irreplaceable you are. Obviously, merely all-star level play is more easily replaceable than superstar level play, but again, not irrelevant.
wrt the bolded portion in Doc's quote.....
I get what you're going for, but I don't like the oscillating consideration of such seasons this methodology requires (which is the reason I personally choose not to use it for player ranking). I'll [try to] explain by way of a few hypotheticals (one unrealistic, for illustrative purposes):
Player A was GOAT tier for 8 years, and has nothing else in his career.
Player B was
near-GOAT tier for 8 years, and was a "B list" star for 5 other years.
Player B was as above.
Player C was also near-GOAT tier for 8 years, but then has nothing else to his career.
Player D was an MVP-tier [or very close to it] star for 8 years, decent role player [to maybe occasionally fringe All-Star] for 6 years.
Player E was a “B-list” star [which I’m taking to mean roughly All-NBA 2nd/3rd Team level, since you’ve sort of implied that’s what Chris Paul is recently]
for a century.
In a Player A vs Player B comparison, Player B’s “B-list” years don’t matter and are basically washed from the record, because he was a little behind Player A in that 8-year prime.
But in a Player B vs Player C comparison, now [suddenly] his years as a “B-list” star DO matter and ARE counted, because he’s being compared to someone with the same quality of 8-year prime.
In the Player D/E comparison, none of Player E’s
9+ decades of peri-prime “B-list” stardom matters, because he wasn’t
quite as good as Player D in that 8-year prime. He was slightly worse for 8 years, slightly BETTER for 6 years, and then continued to produce at a high level for nearly 9 decades more after Player D was out of the league…...but he’s still ranked lower because everything outside of that 8-year [or whatever your arbitrary bench-mark number of prime years is] is a moot point unless their primes are equal.
To MY way of thinking, either these other seasons count or they don’t. Period. None of this
sometimes they’re considered, sometimes they’re not for me. If they have value:
they have value, and they
always have value.
As much as you’re trying to tell me and others with similar philosophies that we’re
doing it wrong, at least I can say I’m considering ALL years ALL the time, no matter who is being compared to whom, and weighing each season THE SAME at ALL times.
I haven’t arbitrarily selected a number of prime years that matter [is it 5? 7? 8? 1?] and ignored the rest [except when a tie-breaker is needed].
As to the bolded portion of ccameron’s, that’s more or less how I consider each season of a player’s career.
If you’re a roughly replacement-level player, the name itself even seems to suggest you are easily replaced, that you’re a run-of-the-mill NBA player (in a 30-team league there are dozens, if not hundreds, of these). They’re exceedingly easy to find, and cheap to acquire. Thus, a season at roughly the level of a replacement level player (from this past season, think of players like Abdel Nader, Troy Brown Jr, maybe even Thaddeus Young) or worse has no “positive value added” to me.
But if someone is BETTER than a mere replacement, that season is adding positive value, although realistically the value added by a completely league-average player-season [“average” being marginally better than “replacement level”] is pretty negligible.
As I get WAY far out on my all-time list (I keep a roughly ordered one that goes out to around 340 or so), the value of an additional average season may be the difference between the guy at #325 and the guy at #327 or something like that (again: because my criteria does NOT change at arbitrary spots no matter how far down the list I go); but for the purposes of a top 100, such seasons are of negligible meaning.
A “fair starter-level” season begins to add more value [though still pretty small]. As you edge into “fringe or borderline All-Star” territory, those years move the needle by a more relevant degree [you can’t just find another top 25(ish) player around every corner]. And so on….
So to circle back to Doc’s sort of peevish questions: “Does Curry need [to be ranked ahead of Chris Paul] more MVP’s? More titles?”
No. He merely needs “some” more good(ish) seasons. How many more sort of depends on HOW good they are. If it’s another year like ‘15 or ‘16…..I think just the one would do it for me. Merely a “fair/decent starter-level”?.....probably would need at least a half-dozen or so of those [idk exactly, just talking off the cuff].
Doctor MJ wrote:I mean, I feel like I can take the same arguments made for Paul over Curry and put Larry Bird's name in place of Curry's. If longevity matters that much to you, are you really being consistent here?
Let’s be careful here. For one, you’re sort of implying that Curry = Bird in quality. And while that may be something YOU believe [not an untenable position, btw], not everyone is going to go along with you on that.
Secondly, for those of us who use a total career value [above replacement] and/or CORP type principle in ranking players, Curry’s longevity/durability is still notably behind even Bird’s: Curry’s ENTIRE CAREER is 699 rs games and about 24k minutes. Bird ‘80-’88 ALONE has 12 additional games and 3,373 more rs minutes (he’d also already played significantly more playoff games and minutes).
After which Bird still had three MORE seasons after his injury year [180 more games, almost 6,900 more minutes] in which---although greatly diminished---he was still at least a fringe All-Star level player for some fairly good teams.
So this isn’t near as apples to apples as you’re implying; not for us. You may just see “ok here are two superstars who had injury issues”, and therefore they’re basically the same to you [apparently].
But to those of us who actually do utilize this type of criteria, we [or at least
I] don’t group things that slipshod.
ccameron wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:For perspective here, let's compare Curry through 2020 to LeBron through 2011.
LeBron had 2.523 MVP Shares then, Curry now has 2.207.
LeBron had 3.692 POY Shares then, Curry now has 2.957 (which would be considerably higher if not for final-form LeBron).
LeBron had played 29,183 minutes, Curry 28,233.
Curry's teams while he's been on the floor have outscored opponents 5444, while LeBron's had done so by 3224.
Curry has 3 titles and 5 finals appearances, and played unimpeachably great in one of those two finals losses.
Curry also led a team to 73 wins.
LeBron had 0 titles and 2 finals appearances, and really didn't play great in either finals appearance, plus had the weirdness of the Boston series.
I'll add specifically that in 2011 LeBron had just had his worst moment against Dallas in the finals. Here's what his numbers look like in their respective bad finals:
LeBron in 2011: 17.8 PPG, 54.1% TS, +/-: -36.
Curry in 2016: 22.6 PPG, 58.0% TS, +/-: -14.
Now I want you to consider:
What if Curry came first?
If we were ranking LeBron in 2011 in comparison to Curry-through-2020, with LeBron having just come off that awful series, do you think we would have elevated LeBron ahead of Curry?
I would suggest to folks we wouldn't have.
Yet back then we placed LeBron at 18, and here we placed Curry at 24. That's quite the reversal.
I’m not sure there is any inconsistency here. First, the comparison of stats is a little weird to me since, correct me if I’m wrong, your taking 10 years of Curry compared to 8 years of Lebron.
Technically it’s
11 years of Curry being compared to 8 of Lebron. I’m finding it curious that you’re citing various
cumulative measures (particularly the individual sort like minutes, total +/-, etc) given a) it took Curry
longer to accumulate those things, and b) you are arguing AGAINST cumulative measure of career.
Perhaps you’re suggesting that’s what we [those who value total career value added or CORP] do: just add up the totals. It’s not quite that simple, though.
Also the citing of TEAM accomplishments (3 titles, 5 finals appearances) creates a bit of a squint coming from someone who voted Kevin Garnett at #5. If we’re to put much stock in TEAM accomplishments, that could very easily push Garnett right out of the top 20.
But we know Garnett had a crap cast for almost all of his prime.
Thing is: Curry in each and every year from ‘15-’19 had a better supporting cast than Lebron had in each of those first 8 seasons, with the possible exception of ‘11. Certainly ‘11 Wade/Bosh is better than ‘15/’16 Green/Thompson (though I suppose eminence might disagree on ‘16, as he’s awfully bullish on ‘16 Draymond); but otoh Iggy/Bogut/Barnes/Livingston/Barbosa/Speights/Ezeli is better extended depth than Chalmers/Joel Anthony/Haslem/James Jones/Mike Miller/33-year-old Bibby [which is why I’d hedge toward the Warriors cast being better, at least in ‘16, with peak Draymond].
And once Durant is on-board, there’s no contest (especially in ‘17 and ‘18 when they still had good extended depth, too). So that’s minimum of three seasons (and arguably as many as five) where Curry had a better cast than ANYTHING Lebron had in his first eight seasons [or anything in the last 9, for that matter].......which sort of makes a comparison of TEAM accomplishments a dubious tool in this instance (just like it is with Garnett vs almost any other all-timer except maybe Hakeem).
As to the other measures…..well you noted Lebron had a small [or small-to-moderate] lead in MVP shares and POY shares; he would have also had at least a small-to-moderate lead in advanced metrics fwiw (both rate metrics [at higher mpg, too] and cumulative [like VORP and WS]), his impact metrics are comfortably better (even something like best 5 years or best 7 years, despite Curry having more years to draw from in these respective samples).
So given he has at least a small-to-moderate lead in basically everything except team success, it seems rather natural to me that he’d have a small-to-moderate lead in rank/placement. Not really seeing the inconsistency with this. Again, unless we’re putting great stock in team accomplishments [as the measure of impact]; but that would naturally draw a lot of “walk the talk” skepticism about the objectivity of someone who voted Garnett #5 (if you are indeed suggesting that’s what we SHOULD do).
Doctor MJ wrote:In the grand scheme of things, these rankings don't matter, and one spot really doesn't matter. I need to remember that because I know better. But there's a negative wind blowing against Curry right now that just really disturbs me in a way that skepticism toward my actual homer crush (Nash) just doesn't.
I can’t speak for how others feel about Curry, about whether they’ve downgraded their opinions about him in recent years. All I can say is
I haven’t. And that’s why I’m on the defensive here.
You’re frustrated [your words]. Well,
I’m frustrated.
I’m frustrated with [
repeatedly over the last few days] being told [by you] that I am either a) biased, or b) flat wrong in methodology, simply because I disagree with you. I really resent that implication [it’s been more of accusation, really] because I’ve laid out the principles of my criteria in detail, and I think it’s a perfectly valid way of doing things.
You can criticize my “trying too hard to be smart”, or leaning too hard on the numbers in ranking players…...but I’ll state at least this much for my approach: it’s fairly immune to whatever narratives or “foul winds” may be blowing around. It facilitates a fairly cold/dispassionate assessment of players.
Additionally, it doesn’t leave ANYONE or any player-season off the table (which is important when ranking players out to ~350 [where you run into a lot of mere good role players]). Nor does it require me to change the standards players are being measured against part way thru the list (i.e. shifting the goalposts as I go). I can apply the same criteria and method to the player I’d have at #500 as I did for the player I have at #1. I’m not sure how many other posters can claim the same.
I’d implied Curry may only need a couple seasons playing at a level lower than what he’s recently been (like a couple “B list” star seasons) to move into my low 20’s ahead of Paul. You might be inclined to say “well, we KNOW he’s
going to do at least that much…...so why not just put him there now?”
No. I don’t do it that way. It may be a foregone conclusion, but
when he’s actually done it, then I’ll move him......NOT before.
And you’re right, the rankings ultimately don’t much matter. Truly, I found it a little ironic that on the SAME DAY that you were complaining of Curry NOT getting #23, you created a thread about Ben Taylor’s peak project encouraging people to not focus on the rank/order, but rather just appreciate the method and material he presents. You called the rankings merely a “thematic hook” to draw interest. It’s really no different here.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
