Doctor MJ wrote:Have you looked in depth at the spreadsheet I compiled on the subject which includes a sheet completely devoted to player trajectory? You're essentially telling me what I should expect and quite frankly, you've almost certainly spent a small fraction of the time I have thinking on this very stuff.
Now, I'm saying I'm surprised so I certainly can't claim that I can always predict the minds of others. But when I say something is a discrepant event here, I think folks would be wise to listen.
To add to your commentary for the years in question:
2018: Durant comes back from the first title unhappy and touchy. He plays less in the Warriors system, holding the ball more for himself. Curry and the rest of the team allow him to take on an even higher primacy as they work to keep him happy. Curry also misses time to injury. Despite this, Curry leads the league in all-season +/- with a sizable edge over Durant who played roughly 1000 minutes more. The team is succeeding by all standard team estimates, winning yet another title, and Curry is displaying an all-time level humility for a 2-time MVP who also happens to be clearly the most impactful player on the roster yet has to tolerate another player's splintering ego.
2019: The same trends continue with Durant's behavior moving from "touchy" to abusive. He insults and yells at teammates, coaches, and beat reporters with a repeating pattern of accusing others of favoring Curry. Through it all, Curry never seems to do anything to fire back. He's nice and polite, goes out there in his beta role so that Durant can play alpha. Then when Durant goes down, Curry rips off 8 30 point games in the final 11 of the playoffs to lead the team past Houston & Portland and give Toronto an awful scare. He leaves absolutely zero doubt that even a top tier defense like Toronto can't stymy him the way they did Giannis, as well as making clear that his move to beta next to Durant really had nothing to do with him having diminished capabilities.
2020 is a wash, obviously, and theoretically shouldn't matter, though I'd venture that Curry would have ranked higher a year ago.
The more important thing is holistic.
The skepticism around Curry focuses on the fact that he didn't play great against Cleveland in 2016, but his numbers really weren't that bad in the first place, and if he later shows himself able to put up big numbers against a top defense like the Raptors getting zero in exclusively on him, what exactly are we still skeptical about? and how much should it really be messing with us?
Yeah, I probably have spent a fraction of the time you have analyzing Curry's 2018 season. Please give a link to the spreadsheets you are referring to, I will take a look. I was aware of his good on/off numbers that year, but I'm probably selling him short. I will re-look at his 2018 season.
My point was not to diminish Curry, but my point is this: If he didn't have a very good team around him (and regardless of the on/off, that was a good team, a team that really was built around him, not Durant, who was kind of an add on), and so his injuries meant they get bounced in the first or second round – how much would that season matter to anyone? My point in bringing up Wade’s 2007 season illustrates exactly that point --- nobody cares about his 2007 season, despite his incredible play. I’m not equating them, 2007 Wade is likely not able to sustain any playoff push in his condition after he came back, but if Curry has a worse team and get’s bounced his season might not matter that much either.
Doctor MJ wrote:Both Paul and Harden need to be damned to some degree for their personalities at this point. It's not a question of either/or, it's a question of why their relationship blew up.
And that's not actually a question, because we know the answer. Paul decided he wanted to go play with Harden, Paul then wouldn't shut up about how he thought Harden should play until Harden got fed up and got him shipped out. I've been pretty open about how I'm criticizing Harden for his attitude, but that doesn't excuse Paul because it was Paul's job to make his new boss happy, and he didn't do it.
I've got a relative. Incredibly smart. Reading from the age of 3. Can hear a song on the radio and instantly set down and perform it on the piano, both music and lyrics. He instantly recognizes and remembers all the music and lyrics, and generally has this command with anything. But his career really didn't go that well and everyone in the family has a sense of why: Because he wasn't the boss, and he didn't ingratiate himself to his bosses, he just told them what they should be doing repeatedly, insistently, and condescendingly.
When you're not the 600 lb gorilla in the room and you act like you are, bad things happen to you.
Some people suffer this simply because circumstances happen to them, but that's not what happened with Paul. He chose this specifically and chose it after creating an uptight, uncomfortable, fragile-in-the-playoffs environment on his previous team. He did this to himself, and while Harden deserves play, Paul has no one to blame but himself.
I don’t know, maybe you’re right. I’m not really privy to all of the locker room stuff, I'm sure Paul is not easy to deal with, I’m just looking at the on court stuff, and there is a possibility that if he plays for a better run team he doesn't have those problems. If you want to take into account how he hasn't worked out with what appear to be dysfunctional teams to begin with, I have no objection. It's not exactly the same thing as "longevity," though, but I can see your point.
Doctor MJ wrote:I would suggest you actually go and look to compare Wade to other contemporary superstars' longevities if you're skeptical. I don't think it's actually a debate as to whether Wade's longevity is hurting him here.
On the 2003 draft class specifically, I'll note a few players:
1. Carmelo Anthony has now had a considerably longer career than Wade despite before a far lower BBIQ player with a far worse prime, and Wade not really having injury as an excuse for his falloff. I frankly wouldn't even call Melo's longevity an outlier at this point, it's just what we expect from guys who don't get hurt.
2. Draftmate and Teammate Chris Bosh had clearly been anointed the team's new focus after LeBron left rather than Wade, and while Bosh was younger than Wade, I really think it was clear to everyone at the time that Bosh's game was aging better than Wade's.
3. Kyle Korver has been more in demand than Wade for a while now. Why? Because great shooters age well.
I have never said Wade’s longevity doesn’t hurt him, in comparison to most of the guys who have made it in already in this project, it does, especially Lebron. Compared to Curry right now? Not really. You keep talking about how much of a leader Curry was and how he handled another star and his humility. I’m not sure that helps the longevity argument, but if you’re playing that game, look at Wade’s whole career. Somehow outshining Shaq in a way that didn’t rub Shaq the wrong way, teaming up with Lebron and showing absolutely zero bitterness that Lebron cost him a FMVP in 2011 (probably his last chance at that), and instead immediately after taking a step back and completely reinventing his game around Lebron in order to free up Lebron mentally to reach his full potential (reinventing his game so that Lebron didn’t have to), and then in 2018 voluntarily taking a bench role to lead second units (more on this below). You have never brought any of this up for Wade, but you have waxed pretty eloquent on all of this for Curry.
I don’t know how much clearer I can make this point, which is not that Wade had great longevity – it is that you keep insisting that Wade by necessity couldn’t be effective later in his career because he just naturally aged terribly – my point is you’re overstating that, and overlooking the extent to which it was simply injuries that cut short his prime. He in fact adjusted his game as he aged, and although he was never going to have longevity like Dirk or Duncan because his game was just built differently (yes – athleticism), the natural arc of his career
would have been fairly normal length for a superstar. It's a moot point almost. I don’t know how I can make this any clearer than by pointing to 2013– healthy 32 year old Wade is making that Heat team unbeatable; Injured 32 year old Wade is arguably dragging that team down. That is my point, and nothing else. But you keep repeating that 30 year old Wade was incapable of superstar play. You realize he turned 30 in the middle of the 2011 season? And as I've repeated, clearly capable of superstar play beyond that (interrupted by injuries -- yes). You seem to consistently just cut things a little more negative than they actually are with Wade, and I don't know why.
You mention Bosh as someone who by 2015 was being looked at as probably the number one option. All indications were, when they played together in 2015 and 2016, it was 1A and 1B for those two years. Bosh was pretty much still at his prime, whereas Wade hade come down from a higher level. He was also older. And I’ll state the obvious: Bosh’s last full prime year in the league was 2014. It was cut short by injuries.
Carmelo is the one I already mentioned as basically the only player still in the league, and I agree with you -- But it’s not clear that Carmelo’s game
aged better, what's clear is that he didn't deal with the same injureis that Wade did (and he's younger). In fact, Wade adjusted far more than Carmelo did, who found himself out of the league for a while because he wouldn't adapt. But I’m still not arguing Wade’s longevity was better than Carmelo’s – as I already mentioned, he’s the
one guy I could think of from Wade’s draft class other than Lebron that is still in the league.
I’m going to bring up Kyle Korver in response to your next point.
Doctor MJ wrote:Wade had 5 superstar years. His last one came at age 29. Look around at guys other modern guys who we'd even consider comparing to Wade, they probably had superstar years after that.
Re: BBIQ. I'm not looking to call him dumb, but this stuff matters when people keep saying that he'd magically lead elite offenses if he just had better shooters around him. You cannot simply assume that he'd have been able to run an offense like them.
Now you're using age 29 for the optics, again cutting things shorter than they are, but I addressed that already. I have 6 prime seasons, with stretches of prime play across several other seasons which we don't have to count for the sake of argument (but no other "complete" prime seasons). Let's agree to disagree on the number of prime seasons.
As to the elite offenses, you’ve backed me into a corner unfairly here. You know very well that there is no possible way for me to come up with any numbers that would back this up, it is entirely hypothetical. But you're in the same corner. Really, it’s you who is banking on hypotheticals here.
I’m not saying to attribute to him things he didn’t accomplish – I’m saying you can’t hold against him what he didn’t accomplish if he wasn’t given that opportunity. I don’t understand why you can’t acknowledge that this is a real factor, Wade has never played on an offensively minded team catered to his talents. That's NOT hypothetical. But take the hypothetical situation in reverse. Put Curry or Harden on the 2009 Heat instead of Wade. For the sake of argument, let them bomb away from 3, even though surely that would never have happened at that time. Do you really think they lead the same offense they do today? Of course they don’t. So why do you hold it against Wade, as if to affirmatively assert that he could not lead an elite offense, when you know very well their circumstances were completely different? You’re projecting here, too. All you know is, given what he actually had to work with, he got results.
Back to Korver: This is going to probably be of almost no interest to anyone, this discussion doesn’t really enter into the all-time rankings because Wade is well removed from his prime at this point, but interestingly, they played together on a second unit in 2018. This is getting a bit off the rails, and isn’t the crux of any argument here, but I’ll say it anyways because it illustrates the point. I don’t know how to look up numbers for bench units, and the numbers are not available to me now, and I don’t have the time to do this. But I know what happened, look this up if you are able and interested if you want to confirm for yourself. Korver was part of a bench unit in Cleveland in 2017 that was among the worst in the league. If I remember correctly, like bottom 2 or 3. In 2018, Wade joins the Cavs. After a few games where Wade doesn’t feel he fits in with the starting lineup, he decides he wants to go to the bench to lead the second unit. That Cavs second unit became top 2 or 3 in the league. Nobody seems to remember this, because all that everyone remembers is that once Isaiah Thomas came back from injury and was inserted into the starting lineup, Derrick Rose was sent to the bench unit, all the lineups got reconfigured, things stopped working and went south, and then everyone got traded. But before that happened, Wade was leading one of the best second units in the NBA. I watched every game, and it was a strange story every single game – The starting lineup, with Kyrie gone, would get into big holes, and Wade and the second unit would get them back in the game and take the lead. The starting lineup would come back out, get into another whole, the second unit would bring them back again, and then Lebron would close out the game strong to finish. For that stretch of games when Wade started coming off the bench, and before Isaiah Thomas coming back restructured everything, the Cavs second unit was their real weapon. Now remember that the only difference in the bench from the year prior was the addition of Wade and Jeff Green. Wade was getting 6th man of the year mentions before Isaiah Thomas came back and the bench was restructured. Although I can’t look up numbers, a google search of articles during that time looked like this:
https://kingjamesgospel.com/2017/11/09/cleveland-cavaliers-dwyane-wade-kyle-korver-paying-dividends/Wade constantly deflected praise to Korver, who was a great shooter (and great fit with Wade). But Korver was on the second unit the year before, when the second unit was one of the worst in the league, and Korver himself said Wade was the difference maker in the bench unit that year. For that stretch of games, though forgotten and overshadowed by the later restructuring, aging Wade had a second unit cast that was pretty well constructed around him, and he really brought out the best in Korver (who benefited greatly from Wade setting him up). It was kind of like a mini-version of the teams Lebron had constructed for himself in the second half of his career – surround him with shooters and give him space. I remember thinking at the time, I don’t think Wade in his career really had a cast that was shaped around his talents offensively. Wade played with great shooters in his last couple years of the big three era in Miami, but those shooters were there mostly to space Lebron – Wade was used often as an off-ball cutter, so he didn’t get the full advantage of that.
I only bring this up as to say over-the-hill well-past-prime Wade, with the right cast around him, worked pretty well, and it was a shame this kind of offense really wasn’t there for him when he was in his prime. Who knows what he could have done. Again, I’m not the one projecting – I’m saying you can’t hold against him what he wasn’t given the opportunity to do.
Doctor MJ wrote:Re: shot sucked. For comparison here, here's Wade's career shot percentages at various non-3 point ranges:
0-3: .655
3-10: .457
10-16: .384
16-3P: .386
Here's KG:
0-3: .674
3-10: .459
10-16: .451
16-3P: .454
You see the difference?
Now if you want to come back to me with more comparisons along these lines and slot people into a greyscale that's fine. Maybe I'll end up concluding that Wade needs to be given a label other than "sucks", but I think it's pretty obvious that Wade's bread and butter came 10 feet and in, and that's not the sort of thing that ages well when you're an explosion-based guard.
Re: Can't speak to what we didn't see. I'd argue that the only way to get anywhere with this is if you try your best and accept that your knowledge will always be incomplete.
Garnett is an elite midrange shooter, I already knew that. That’s why I never called Wade an elite midrange shooter. I said he was a reliable midrange shooter.
Please tell me, does Lebron James shot “suck”? I’m pretty sure you haven’t said that. Here’s Lebron’s shooting in the same space:
0-3ft: 0.734
3-10ft: .417
10-16ft: .367
16ft-3P: .386
Lebron’s not an elite shooter, but I’m pretty sure you don’t go around saying that Lebron shot “sucks,” and Wade seems to be exactly the same or slightly better in the midrange. And note Lebron is still in his prime at this point, whereas Wade has a lot of non-prime years in his career average. If we were to limit this to prime years, I’m guessing he probably has a bit more of an advantage.
Just for fun, let's look at Harden's career shot percentage within the 3pt line (who also is in the middle of his prime, and isn't bogged down by 6-7 years of non prime play like Wade:
0-3ft: 0.638
3-10ft: .367
10-16ft. .424
16ft-3P: .379
Sorry, but Harden isn't blowing Wade away with his shooting inside the arc. And by the way, here's strange stat I can throw out without any context, Wade has better career 3P% in the playoffs than James Harden (before you try to tell me all the context of why that is so, I know it already).
It just seems like you’ve really parsed out Curry’s career but you’re making 1/10th the effort into looking at Wade’s career -- cutting his prime shorter than it actually was, saying he was incapable of superstar play at 30 when that is literally in the middle of a prime season and he was clearly capable of prime play for two years later (although interrupted by injuries), saying his shot "sucked" when you probably don't apply the same standard to other players, and assuming that he couldn't be the focal point of an elite offense because, when for his whole career he has played on defense first-teams. Everything is in the negative direction when it comes to Wade where it doesn't seem like you do that with other players. He's my favorite player, so I'm trying to be conscious of how much it just bothers me when someone isn't as high on him as I am, but it seems to me you are not paying sufficient attention to Wade's context, when clearly you can do this for other players.
