Better Supprting Cast - Kobe's '06 Lakers or Curry's '21 Warriors?

[Liam_Gallagher]

Which star player had the better supporting cast?

'06 Lakers - 45-37 (.549%)
'21 Warriors - 33-32 (.508%)

[Up-And-Coming]

For the Lakers I would put Luke Walton instead of Mihm. With that said I put the Warriors as a better cast but I can see them as about the same.

[SeanieWard]

I voted too soon. I forgot how bad that Lakers roster was

Warriors would be terrible without Steph..worst team in the league bad but Lakers without Kobe that year would of been even worst

Kobe's 2nd best player, Lamar Odom, is better than Steph's 2nd best player in Draymond imo

But Wiggins and Oubre are better than anyone else on the Lakers roster after Odom

But take nothing away from Steph..he's playing with a limited roster and has been without Wiseman, Paschall, and now Oubre for a significant amount of games and he's been balling but that Laker team was awful lol

[Peregrine01]

I think the '21 Warriors cast are better. The biggest difference between the two teams though is that the Lakers knew what they had to do to get wins going into the season - give the ball to Kobe and let him score. The Warriors didn't really figure that out until April.

[clyde21]

lol...it's actually hella close, Bryant had Odom and Steph has Dray, other than that the rosters are essentially G League level for both players...both only had 2 guys above 0 in BPM (Odom/Smush and Dray/JTA)...terrible.

[MindState]

Its easier for bigger players to carry teams. Kobe was elite on defense and offense and was 6'6.

Curry is only average on defense and is a 6'3 point guard. Its harder for him to carry a team on both ends of the floor because of that.

Both teams had garbage talent outside of their top 2 though. Curry has lost 3 starters and 1 bench rotation player to season ending injuries also this year. Have to take that into account.

[Warriors Analyst]

I voted too soon. I forgot how bad that Lakers roster was

Warriors would be terrible without Steph..worst team in the league bad but Lakers without Kobe that year would of been even worst

Kobe's 2nd best player, Lamar Odom, is better than Steph's 2nd best player in Draymond imo

But Wiggins and Oubre are better than anyone else on the Lakers roster after Odom

But take nothing away from Steph..he's playing with a limited roster and has been without Wiseman, Paschall, and now Oubre for a significant amount of games and he's been balling but that Laker team was awful lol

To be quite honest, I think that those three players missing games has been a big reason Steph has gone ballistic. I'd argue that those three guys playing significant minutes made the Warriors a significantly worse team than they should have been this year. Of course, in the grand scheme of things missing three bodies is going to hurt the Warriors and I really wouldn't be surprised to see them just lose steam physically in the playoffs. The point I'm trying to make here is that the multiple things can be true A. Oubre, Wiseman, and Paschall, mostly hurt the Warriors this year and B. they can still miss those guys simply because they lack bodies and NBA rotation players in the dregs of their roster.

[Mujahydeen]

The league as a whole is much more talented now than it was in 2006, so these players have to be judged relative to their contemporaries first rather than compared directly.

I think Lakers have the best player of this bunch (Odom), while Warriors have the 2nd and 3rd best (Dray and Wiggins).

Lakers also had less glaring holes as a team and some continuity from the previous season.Warriors have zero size due to injuries, barely any playmaking outside Curry.

[cpower]

06 Lakers is so much better...they are better than today's mavs

06 Lakers: 2.53 SRS
Kobe: 7.6 BPM
Odom: 2.7 BPM
Parker: 0.1 BPM
George: -0.8 BPM
Mihm: -1.9 BPM
Cook: -0.1 BPM

21 Warriors: 0.006 SRS
Curry: 8.1 BPM
Green: 1.1 BPM
Wiggins: -0.8 BPM
Oubre: -2.1 BPM
Wiseman: -5.4 BPM
Looney: -1.4 BPM

lakers had 4 players that higher than 15 PER. Warriors : only Stephen.

[JXL]

How dare you besmirch the name of Kwame Brown?! (or as Stephen A Smith says:)

Watch on YouTube

But yeah, it's Steph's team, but even I wouldn't say its *that* much better. Kobe went supernova and dragged his roster of mulch to the playoffs, and took the Suns to 7. If Steph can do that, he'll surpass him.

[Liam_Gallagher]

The league as a whole is much more talented now than it was in 2006, so these players have to be judged relative to their contemporaries first rather than compared directly.

I think Lakers have the best player of this bunch (Odom), while Warriors have the 2nd and 3rd best (Dray and Wiggins).

Lakers also had less glaring holes as a team and some continuity from the previous season.Warriors have zero size due to injuries, barely any playmaking outside Curry.

A whole lot of lying in this post. The 06 Lakers had absolutely no continuity from the 05 team, the 05 team didn’t even have Phil or Smush, Kwame, etc.

And Warriors have no playmakers outside of Curry? Green is a darn good one, and Wiggins can create his own shot.

To put things into perspective, Smush Parker was out of the league before and after his Lakers stint, and Kwame was a bust before his as well.

[Roger Murdock]

It’s close between talent.bigger change is NBA meta game.

The major difference is the 2006 style of play was far more favorable to the Lakers than the 2021 style of play is for the Warriors

In 2006 the fastest paced team took 96 possessions and the slowest 86

In 2021 the fastest paced team takes 104 possessions and the slowest 97. The slowest team today plays faster than the fastest team in 2006.

The means if you are a bad team today it means you are playing 10% more possessions. When you are at a talent gap you want fewer possessions to increase variance and keep games tighter.

In addition the slower pace affects MpG. Kobe played 41 minutes/game and Odom 40. The league leader this year is Randall at 37 and he plays for the slowest team in the league.

If Curry played at a slower pace and got 6 more minutes/game that’s 6 less minutes a complete scrub is on the floor. Likewise, Kobe and Odom could keep god awful players on the bench.

Also in general talent in league today is wayyyyy higher than 2006 nba which had some of the worst talent in recent history.

I think Kobe’s teammates were worse in a vacuum while Stephs teammates are worse for the reality of the league they played in

[Peregrine01]

Looking at how bad the rest of the Warriors are, it's rather criminal that Curry's usage rate isn't higher than it is. Check it out, compared to his teammates with >800 minutes played:

Curry: 34%
Poole: 25%
Wiseman: 23%
Wiggins: 22%
Bazemore: 17%

Here's the 06 Lakers (>1500 mins played):

Kobe: 39%
Odom: 18%
Smush: 17%
Mihm: 19%
Cook: 18%
Kwame: 14%

The Warriors are probably too egalitarian (and Curry probably too unselfish) in a way that hurts their overall team success while Kobe wasn't passing to guys like Smush or Mihm.

[Mujahydeen]

The league as a whole is much more talented now than it was in 2006, so these players have to be judged relative to their contemporaries first rather than compared directly.

I think Lakers have the best player of this bunch (Odom), while Warriors have the 2nd and 3rd best (Dray and Wiggins).

Lakers also had less glaring holes as a team and some continuity from the previous season.Warriors have zero size due to injuries, barely any playmaking outside Curry.

A whole lot of lying in this post. The 06 Lakers had absolutely no continuity from the 05 team, the 05 team didn’t even have Phil or Smush, Kwame, etc.

And Warriors have no playmakers outside of Curry? Green is a darn good one, and Wiggins can create his own shot.

To put things into perspective, Smush Parker was out of the league before and after his Lakers stint, and Kwame was a bust before his as well.

Lakers had Kobe, Odom, Mihm, George, Cook, Walton and Vujacic coming back (7 out of 9 players with highest minutes). Warriors had Curry, Green, Looney and a bunch of new imports, who needed like a third of the season to get a grip on the offense.

Green is not a good playmaker, he can't run an offense on his own. He's a good passer who delivers passes to places where Curry broke down the defense, but a very subpar option as the second best player on the offense.

Just taking a look at 2006 rosters, and it's trash everywhere, Grizzlies won 49 games with Pau Gasol, Mike Miller and Eddie Jones.

[IgorK]

People are overrating Odom and underrating Draymond+Wiggins.

[nikster]

The league as a whole is much more talented now than it was in 2006, so these players have to be judged relative to their contemporaries first rather than compared directly.

I think Lakers have the best player of this bunch (Odom), while Warriors have the 2nd and 3rd best (Dray and Wiggins).

Lakers also had less glaring holes as a team and some continuity from the previous season.Warriors have zero size due to injuries, barely any playmaking outside Curry.

A whole lot of lying in this post. The 06 Lakers had absolutely no continuity from the 05 team, the 05 team didn’t even have Phil or Smush, Kwame, etc.

And Warriors have no playmakers outside of Curry? Green is a darn good one, and Wiggins can create his own shot.

To put things into perspective, Smush Parker was out of the league before and after his Lakers stint, and Kwame was a bust before his as well.

You think Andrew Wiggins is a playmaker???

[JJ_PR]

That Lakers team without Kobe was historically bad. The Warriors have a significantly better supporting cast next to Steph.

[Doranku]

Smush Parker
Chris Mihm
Kwame Brown
Devean George
Brian Cook
Luke Walton
Sasha Vujajic
Laron Profit

These are the players who played 10+ mpg on that Lakers team outside of Kobe and Odom. The only one of these players who was somewhat able to survive the league without Kobe was Devean George who lasted 3 years in Dallas.

The rest of them couldn't even last one full season with another team. Smush Parker played all 164 games for LA in the '06 and '07 seasons. After leaving, he lasted 28 games in the league without Kobe.

[dhsilv2]

It's close but I agree with others that you have to grade vs the league around them not just compare them straight up. The league's just way more talented today. Overall, I tend to see Curry having a bit more top end help though Dray vs Odom might not be that far off and while Wiggins is still awful...I think he's better than Smush. But say the big man grouping that Kobe had while awful, wasn't Wiseman awful.

Rotation guys who were awful for the lakers based on box metrics (lakers went 9 deep). Brown, George, Walton, and Vujačić (thank you copy and paste).

Rotation guys who were awful for the warriors. Bazemore, Looney, Poole, Oubre and then the real problem...Wiseman. No player on either team has such just truly god awful metrics.

The next issue is that we see the laker's support was clearly better offensively while the warriors are clearly better defensively. How do we really account for that? I haven't a clue.

Then we get to the warriors have had 13 guys play at least 600 minutes, 65 vs 82 games while the laker's 10th guy played 338. Partially again an era difference with kobe and odom playing more minutes but they had 5 rotation guys play 80 or more games (including kobe) while other than Wiggins the next best warriors are Dray and Curry who both have missed 8 games. So in terms of health ignoring the kobe vs curry gap, kobe had a healthier team. For me I think this is why I'd put the lakers ahead as having had the better support, but both teams were awful.

[eminence]

If Wiseman hadn't played this season I'd go Warriors, but with a ton of development minutes given to him this season I'll go Lakers.