Where does Curry rank on offense since 1980?

[Doctor MJ]

Curry is quite possibly one great post-season away from being my resounding choice for offensive GOAT.

Outstanding stuff. Thanks!

Where do you get all your plus minus data going back before 1996-1997?

Where do you get your advanced metrics you use most?

You're welcome ty!

nba.com actually has the raw +/- stuff going back to '96-97 at this point.

NBA Advanced Stats: Player, General, Traditional

basketball-reference has their own version of it, and I'll say I've long used that site more than anything else when doing the entirety of my analysis.

Here's a spreadsheet that has raw +/- for the regular season for the league going back to '93-94, and for the 76ers going back to the merger.

Ben Taylor's done a lot of stuff with game-by-game WOWY stuff in the deeper past.

In terms of what I use right at this moment, I don't have anything I strongly recommend. The "game" of analytics kinda passed me by, so I'm not up on what the coolest publicly available stats are. Last year I was using the LEBRON stat from BBallIndex as a good starting place, but I've actually never been a fan of stats that try to dump too much traditional box score into their player regressions. They are useful, but too much of a black box.

On the other hand, I really like the idea of Player Tracking Plus Minus. This is essentially what gets called "Box Plus Minus", but with a focus way outside the box score until we don't see tell tale signs of what I'll call "philosophical disagreement". (My go to example of this has always been steals. When you regress based on league-wide game box scores, steals tend to end up with a much bigger weight than I think they should, in part because there is no "attempted steals" stat. Steals are often super-valuable when you get them, but BPM stats tend to act as if every team should be trying to get steals all the time.)

If we can get to a point where what PTPM can approximate actual APM, then this opens up a ton of possibilities for feature identification with machine learning, and with an automated feature identifier, this ought to allow us to use these stats to really start predicting lineup potential within specific strategy types rather than trying to add up each player as if they simply have a scalar value of impact across all environments.

[Doctor MJ]

what about sample size? would one goat level offensive play off runs be enough to make up for the gap against guys who did it twice or more? (which there are not many but they exist)

of course if curry without durant does lead this warriors roster to the same level in the playoffs that may suggest he could have done it in 17-21 too if given the chance but it would be theorical compared to guys who proved it more times

similarly, how do we evaluate warriors underperformance with durant in the roster (2018 to a degree, 2019 regular season) when talking about curry? is a common criticism to other players cause is perceived as coasting but rarely brought up aa a criticism against curry

and as a last question. since you mention curry having the biggest +/- swings, how do you separate those from draymond (talking specifically about overall plus/minus here) since other players with huge +/- numbers like 2004 garnett or 2009 lebron didnt have teammates that looked just aa important as them (lebron or garnett plus/minus didnt seem so dependant on having cassel or mo Williams playing)

a minor point and more relevant to overall impact than purely offensive impact so not so important for this thread but i was curious on your thoughts on how to evaluate that when asigning "credit" for plus/minus impact

An understandable concern. Let me put it this way:

Put the Post-Season to the side for a moment.

If Curry is able to complete this regular season like he's started it - which is no given, but I don't see any reason to think he can't - what we're going to see is a continued trend of Curry being able to lead regular season teams that are considerably better than anyone else at least back to '96-97. And that means better than LeBron, who has gone from team to team to team to team chasing the ability to make the best possible teams around him, and yet still hasn't really even come close.

I think a lot of people need to stop there and get right with the idea that in the regular season at least, any notion of a ceiling people are putting on Curry is really just cognitive dissonance creating bias.

The mark against Curry is the playoffs, so then we have to ask ourselves what exactly that "mark" is.

I think for some folks, the mark functions by default as essentially "Curry became an MVP 7 seasons ago and still hadn't had a playoff run that matches his regular season best, therefore even if he has one now, he still has 7 post-seasons to make up for."

From this perspective, one such post-season is a small sample, and a sample that seems contradicted by a bunch of counter evidence.

My perspective? We didn't see Curry fail 7 times.

We saw him have a 5 year run where he won 3 titles and reached 5 finals, thus losing only twice the entire time.

In one of those two finals (2019), he had a team crippled by injury and put up the best scoring numbers of anyone in the series, despite going up against a monstrous defense that in the previous round had utterly stifled the MVP.

So when we talk about Curry actually failing in the playoffs, all we're really going by is the 2016 finals, where the Warriors lost Game 7 by 4 points. Literally, give the Warriors 5 more points in that game while keeping all other results the same, would we really be so critical of Curry's playoff performance?

I'd imagine the rebuttal that comes to mind is "But if they won they wouldn't have gotten KD!", which is likely true but doesn't actually rebut what I'm saying. I'm saying that there are vanishingly small players who have come as close to perfect team success as Curry has in the playoffs, and yet people seem to think that Curry's been experience hideous disappointment that he's failed to correct over and over again.

What I see instead with Curry is a young guy who developed to become the most valuable regular season player in the league, but as with most in that circumstance, he soon found that there were defensive tactics in playoff series that he wasn't sure the best way to react to. This uncertainty didn't keep him and his team from winning generally - they won 7 straight series and were up 3-1 in the 8th with Curry like this, before a quick 3 game run from one opponent finally actually cut a chink in legacy - and so it's not reasonable to think that Curry should have been desperately looking to try something different in that time frame.

'16-17 would have been a key acid test for him had the team not gotten Durant. Then we'd have expected Curry to come in knowing exactly what was coming when the Warriors faced the Cavs again, and we'd see what he improved on from before. But they did get Durant, and this ended up allowing people's perceptions of Curry's ceiling to calcify, when they should have been keeping their assessment open.

As such, we're essentially approaching the 2022 playoffs the same way we would have been approach 2017, and had Curry in 2017 had a monster performance against the Cavs, no one would have been assuming that 2017 was the fluke. They would have seen Curry as getting more seasoning, and now understanding the optimal approach to the Cavs defensive tactics.

So, if that's what we see in 2022, that's how I'm going to see things.

Now, say in 2022 he has a monster playoffs but in 2023, someone comes up with a new counter that makes the entire Curry-ball approach seem like a gimmick that can never win the title again. What will I think then? It would certainly hurt Curry a good deal.

My assessments will continue to be updated as new events play out and we'll just see what happens. I'm not making any kind of prediction like "Curry's going to be unstoppable against all defenses now". Rather what I'm saying is that if Curry does have a monstrous run in the 2022 playoffs, I'm not going to see it as a fluke.

[ty 4191]

You're welcome ty!

Can you break down Curry's value statistically (versus the other top 5 offensive players since 1980)? I'd love to see specifics.

Thank you for all the resources.

I was aware of everything post 1997; does +/- on/off based data exist on this Forum, or elsewhere, for prior to that?

That's what we need to evaluate him compared to all players since 1980, no?

[Doctor MJ]

You're welcome ty!

Can you break down Curry's value statistically (versus the other top 5 offensive players since 1980)? I'd love to see specifics.

Thank you for all the resources.

I was aware of everything post 1997; does +/- on/off based data exist on this Forum, or elsewhere, for prior to that?

That's what we need to evaluate him compared to all players since 1980, no?

I think what I'd say is this:

We don't have all the data we'd like to be able to evaluate players from the past with as good a precision as we do with current players.

However even if we did, when I do player rankings, I do so through a process of one on one holistic comparisons. Sometimes that lends itself to apples-to-apples stat comparisons, but sometimes it doesn't.

I should also say: I used to be much more stats-focused than I am now. The seeds sewn from those years continue to be baked into my basketball schema, but at this point I have high-level feature "shapes" in my head for these players careers and it's a more of a comparison between these shapes.

If all that seems hopefully wishy-washy, I understand. I think I'm pretty proven to be able to go into detail within given debates when I'm specifically engaged, but it's a hard thing to put into words as we speak in a more generalized context.

I'll also say that this is where Ben Taylor has been the best analyst I know of. He's been able to take stuff like this and turn it into stats, diagrams, videos, etc. With me, to get to what's accessible you need to find the right prompt, and if I knew exactly what that was in all circumstances, I'd probably be producing more basketball content.

[ty 4191]

You're welcome ty!

Can you break down Curry's value statistically (versus the other top 5 offensive players since 1980)? I'd love to see specifics.

Thank you for all the resources.

I was aware of everything post 1997; does +/- on/off based data exist on this Forum, or elsewhere, for prior to that?

That's what we need to evaluate him compared to all players since 1980, no?

I think what I'd say is this:

We don't have all the data we'd like to be able to evaluate players from the past with as good a precision as we do with current players.

However even if we did, when I do player rankings, I do so through a process of one on one holistic comparisons. Sometimes that lends itself to apples-to-apples stat comparisons, but sometimes it doesn't.

I should also say: I used to be much more stats-focused than I am now. The seeds sewn from those years continue to be baked into my basketball schema, but at this point I have high-level feature "shapes" in my head for these players careers and it's a more of a comparison between these shapes.

If all that seems hopefully wishy-washy, I understand. I think I'm pretty proven to be able to go into detail within given debates when I'm specifically engaged, but it's a hard thing to put into words as we speak in a more generalized context.

I'll also say that this is where Ben Taylor has been the best analyst I know of. He's been able to take stuff like this and turn it into stats, diagrams, videos, etc. With me, to get to what's accessible you need to find the right prompt, and if I knew exactly what that was in all circumstances, I'd probably be producing more basketball content.

Who are your top 5 players offensively since 1980? How do you rank them, and why?

[Doctor MJ]

Who are your top 5 players offensively since 1980? How do you rank them, and why?

This was my original post in the thread:

Since the 3pt line was introduced in 1980, how many players have been better at offense than Steph Curry? By which I mean if you transported every player since then to the league today, how many would be better on offense than Curry?

So the thing with Curry with me remains in the same limbo:

He's the best regular season offensive player in history.

To this point, he's not had a post-season run that lives up to that high-end performance in the regular season, which makes it hard to put him at #1.

I'll shout it to the rafter that people drastically overstate the degree of his fall off in the playoffs, but that doesn't mean there isn't a kernel of truth in what they say.

I'll also say that I think people need to better understand what I call the Hustler principle, after the movie The Hustler (1961). In a nutshell:

There's a common trend of athletes (and other performers) reaching the peak of their physical prowess before they have had the proverbial kitchen sink thrown at them, which allows a window of time where older, savvier competitors can still find a vulnerability and beat them. Once they go through that gauntlet though, the can reach a "bulletproof" status where they know what to do against every possible counter, and this is when they are actually toughest to defeat.

One example of this is LeBron James who hit his impact peak in 2009, hit his all around 2-way physical capacity around 2013, but who didn't really get bulletproof offensively until around 2016.

I think that because after 2016 Durant came to GS, we missed seeing Curry coming back more bulletproof in the same role, and people have essentially from there on out assumed that the vulnerability he showed in 2016 represents something fundamental about his limitations, when I'd say the much more likely scenario is that he was just going through the normal trials and tribulations of a nascent megastar.

In terms of what my main candidates would be to the prompt:

Magic
MJ
Nash
LeBron
Curry
Jokic

I'm honestly not sure who I'd pick from this bunch.

Feel free to ask some specific question for me to expand upon here, but as you can see, I don't have a hard & feast list right now.

I'd say in general I've tended to side with Magic's offense above MJ's, but can definitely see arguments otherwise.

I've been reluctant to put LeBron ahead of Magic because there are some advantages I like about Magic, but it's hard to dispute LeBron's results.

I think Nash had more offensive impact per minute than any of those guys, but I'd feel more comfortable championing him if I'd actually seen his teams win titles - even as I will continue to protest the idea that it was in any way proven that they couldn't do this.

Curry I've been talking about.

Jokic is probably the guy here I'd be most likely to drop from my Top 5, but he's so unique I'm hesitant to feel I have any sense of his ceiling.

[falcolombardi]

what about sample size? would one goat level offensive play off runs be enough to make up for the gap against guys who did it twice or more? (which there are not many but they exist)

of course if curry without durant does lead this warriors roster to the same level in the playoffs that may suggest he could have done it in 17-21 too if given the chance but it would be theorical compared to guys who proved it more times

similarly, how do we evaluate warriors underperformance with durant in the roster (2018 to a degree, 2019 regular season) when talking about curry? is a common criticism to other players cause is perceived as coasting but rarely brought up aa a criticism against curry

and as a last question. since you mention curry having the biggest +/- swings, how do you separate those from draymond (talking specifically about overall plus/minus here) since other players with huge +/- numbers like 2004 garnett or 2009 lebron didnt have teammates that looked just aa important as them (lebron or garnett plus/minus didnt seem so dependant on having cassel or mo Williams playing)

a minor point and more relevant to overall impact than purely offensive impact so not so important for this thread but i was curious on your thoughts on how to evaluate that when asigning "credit" for plus/minus impact

An understandable concern. Let me put it this way:

Put the Post-Season to the side for a moment.

If Curry is able to complete this regular season like he's started it - which is no given, but I don't see any reason to think he can't - what we're going to see is a continued trend of Curry being able to lead regular season teams that are considerably better than anyone else at least back to '96-97. And that means better than LeBron, who has gone from team to team to team to team chasing the ability to make the best possible teams around him, and yet still hasn't really even come close.

So when we talk about Curry actually failing in

My assessments will continue to be updated as new events play out and we'll just see what happens. I'm not making any kind of prediction like "Curry's going to be unstoppable against all defenses now". Rather what I'm saying is that if Curry does have a monstrous run in the 2022 playoffs, I'm not going to see it as a fluke.

thanks for the detailed answer and a small apology for forgetting to answer, got busy and forgot to respond

i have some issues with some of your arguments

you mention that lebron never reached curry teams heights without mentioning that arguably no player ever did over a 5 years~ consecutive stretch, this warriors were truly special and almost half of it came in the defensive end

now, i dont think curry is a bad defender, but he probably is not a needle mover over that 2015-2019 period, small positive to neutral ish imo, so i would argue we should praise him for the dominance offensively...and the thingh is, contrary to what many would think.... curry warriors didnt dominate offensively more than other offense all timers teams

you also mention that curry teams kept winning and that the perception on him would be a lot diferente if klay made a couple more 3's in game 7 of 2016 finals, which is true but only shows the ring bias that exists in basketball

winning game 7 wouldnt change how much (relatively speaking to an alltimer) curry struggled in 2016 finals, just like winning in 2018 doesnt change how much they underperformed offensively relative to their talent.

i actually think their winning covered a lot of how...not goat level their offense was despite goat tier offense talent and curry supposedly being the ultimate ceiling raiser as the reason for his goat offensive player case

even if we restrict it to 5 year stretches and focus on regular season, both of which are favorable to curry he doesnt leap over the "pack" (pack being offense goat tier players) look at these offensive stretches in regular season and the comparision to playoofs relative offensive rating


Curry: notice how even with durant they only have one truly trascendent play off offense and their regular seasons offense is mostly just great instead of alltimer with durant on (yet nobody diminishes curry for coasting in regular season or underperforming relative to offensive cast like ir happens with other players)
2015 +4 (RS) +4.1(PS)
2016 +7.9(RS)+5.7(PS)
2017 +6.8(RS)+11.6 (PS)
2018 + 5.0(RS)+6.5(PS)
2019 + 5.5(RS)+5.4 (PS)
average: 5.85 (RS) 6.6(PS)
combined average: +6.2

compare with chris Paul regular season best stretch, a guy who nobody ever put on their goat list for offense because of lack of team success

2013 + 4.7 (RS) +8.3(PS)
2014 +5.4 (RS) +11.0(PS)
2015 +6.8 (RS)
2016 +1.9 (RS)
2017 +3.9 (RS)
2018 + 6.1 (RS)
average (13-17) +4.5(RS)
but if i switch 16 which is an outlier low where griffin esaentially missed the season
average (13-18*) +5.4(RS)

looking at regular season doesnt look too different from curry does it ? in spite of less talent and more games missed in reg season

are we sure if they switched teams and injury luck wouldnt be chris Paul who would have the better case for offensive goat? he gets almost the same results with imo less talent around him and more missed games
* i couldnt find the playoffs ratings of his teams and this post was already taking too long to write for me to calculate manually, My apologies there

but what i could find was excellent

what about others ?

Lebron
2013 +6.4 (RS) +7.2 (PS)
2014 +4.2 (RS) +10.6 (PS)
2015 +5.5(RS) +5.5 (PS)
2016 +4.5(RS) +12.5 (PS)
2017 +4.8 (RS) +13.7 (PS)
Average +5.1(RS) +9.9 (PS)
combined average: +7.5

notice that lebron has 3 different +10 playoffs offenses (with bosh/older wade and kyrie/love) as where curry only had 1 (with durant and klay that i consider better) and how much bigger the playoffs gap is than the relatively small regular season Gap

here is jordan* (i had to use his first 5 championship seasons)
1991 +6.7(RS) +11.7 (PS)
1992 +7.3(RS) +6.5 (PS)
1993 +4.9 (RS) +9.8 (PS)
1996 +7.6 (RS) +8.6 (PS)
1997 +7.7(RS) +6.5(PS)
average +6.85 (RS) +8.6(PS)
combined average:+7.7

so curry doesnt actually seem to have the goat stretch of team regular season offense either and he is pretty far from the playoffs one
jordan beats him in both

here is nash, another guy whose best 5 year stretches beat curry in both áreas, * Used 2010 instead of 2009 cause playoffs missed

2005 suns. +8.4(RS) +17 (PS)
2006 suns +5.3(RS) +9.5 (PS)
2007 suns +7.4(RS)+7.6 (PS)
2008 suns. +5.8(RS) + 3.1 (PS)
2010 suns +7.7(RS) +13.4 (PS)
Average +6.9(RS) + 10.1 (PS)
combined average: +8.5

along with lebron another guy who stands out in postseason offense and beats curry in reg season too

what about shaq

1998 +6.9(RS), +10.1(PS)
1999 +5.4(RS), +4.7(PS)
2000 +3.2(RS), +9.3(PS)
2001 +5.4 (RS) +13.6(PS)
2002 +4.9(RS), +6.4 (PS)
Average +5.2(RS) +8.8(PS)
combined average: +7

comparable to lebron numbers but worse in playoffs, another guy with a big edge on curry warriors offensively during the playoffs

here is bird, another great player who sometimes is rsnked about contempraneus offensive all timers (bird over magic, curry over lebron or paul) based in big part on the idea that their portability will lead to a higher ceiling in offense among talented rosters. yet i dont think the results agree

1984 +3.3 (RS) +6.4 (PS)
1985 +4.9 (RS) +3.9 (PS)
1986 +4.6 (RS) + 8.3 (PS)
1987 +5.2 (RS) + 8.7 (PS)
1988 +7.4 (RS) +4.2 (PS)
average +5.1(RS) +6.3(PS)
combined average: +5.7

another ultra portable ceiling raiser who falls a bit short in results to other theorically worse ceiling raisers, both players with some similar criticisms about their production being often slowed down in postseason, curry results are slightly ahead

for comparision here is magic who is functionally closer to lebron as a "helio" player

1986 +6.1(RS) +6.7
1987 +7.6 (RS) +10.7
1988 +5.1(RS) +8.3
1989 +6 (RS) +9.3
1990 +5.9(RS) +8.4
Average +6.1(RS), + 8.7 (PS)
combined average: +7.4

Another guy whose teams beat curry warriors offensively in both playoffs and regular season (if slightly only in the latter)

so if the argument for curry is based om team dominance i would disagree since half of that was the defense of Iggy, klay and specially draymond

and if we use offensive dominance curry doesnt stand out, jordan, nash and to a degree magic all beat him in regular season stretches

while jordan, magic, shaq and specially nash and lebron have a big advantage in playoffs offense

and where curry 15-19 warriors have the team results advantage is not by huge margins

so if he is not the best in regular season offense, and is very clearly behind others in playoffs offense, all while arguably having the most offensive talent or close to it in their offensive peaks

what is actually the case for curry based on offensive team success? are we even sure his offensive results are better than chris Paul when accounting for teammates?

now i am not using team results as the only criteria, but i dont agree that team succes has curry as the offensive goat

[Doctor MJ]

what about sample size? would one goat level offensive play off runs be enough to make up for the gap against guys who did it twice or more? (which there are not many but they exist)

of course if curry without durant does lead this warriors roster to the same level in the playoffs that may suggest he could have done it in 17-21 too if given the chance but it would be theorical compared to guys who proved it more times

similarly, how do we evaluate warriors underperformance with durant in the roster (2018 to a degree, 2019 regular season) when talking about curry? is a common criticism to other players cause is perceived as coasting but rarely brought up aa a criticism against curry

and as a last question. since you mention curry having the biggest +/- swings, how do you separate those from draymond (talking specifically about overall plus/minus here) since other players with huge +/- numbers like 2004 garnett or 2009 lebron didnt have teammates that looked just aa important as them (lebron or garnett plus/minus didnt seem so dependant on having cassel or mo Williams playing)

a minor point and more relevant to overall impact than purely offensive impact so not so important for this thread but i was curious on your thoughts on how to evaluate that when asigning "credit" for plus/minus impact

An understandable concern. Let me put it this way:

Put the Post-Season to the side for a moment.

If Curry is able to complete this regular season like he's started it - which is no given, but I don't see any reason to think he can't - what we're going to see is a continued trend of Curry being able to lead regular season teams that are considerably better than anyone else at least back to '96-97. And that means better than LeBron, who has gone from team to team to team to team chasing the ability to make the best possible teams around him, and yet still hasn't really even come close.

So when we talk about Curry actually failing in

My assessments will continue to be updated as new events play out and we'll just see what happens. I'm not making any kind of prediction like "Curry's going to be unstoppable against all defenses now". Rather what I'm saying is that if Curry does have a monstrous run in the 2022 playoffs, I'm not going to see it as a fluke.

thanks for the detailed answer and a small apology for forgetting to answer, got busy and forgot to respond

i have some issues with some of your arguments

you mention that lebron never reached curry teams heights without mentioning that arguably no player ever did over a 5 years~ consecutive stretch, this warriors were truly special and almost half of it came in the defensive end

now, i dont think curry is a bad defender, but he probably is not a needle mover over that 2015-2019 period, small positive to neutral ish imo, so i would argue we should praise him for the dominance offensively...and the thingh is, contrary to what many would think.... curry warriors didnt dominate offensively more than other offense all timers teams

you also mention that curry teams kept winning and that the perception on him would be a lot diferente if klay made a couple more 3's in game 7 of 2016 finals, which is true but only shows the ring bias that exists in basketball

winning game 7 wouldnt change how much (relatively speaking to an alltimer) curry struggled in 2016 finals, just like winning in 2018 doesnt change how much they underperformed offensively relative to their talent.

i actually think their winning covered a lot of how...not goat level their offense was despite goat tier offense talent and curry supposedly being the ultimate ceiling raiser as the reason for his goat offensive player case

even if we restrict it to 5 year stretches and focus on regular season, both of which are favorable to curry he doesnt leap over the "pack" (pack being offense goat tier players) look at these offensive stretches in regular season and the comparision to playoofs relative offensive rating


Curry: notice how even with durant they only have one truly trascendent play off offense and their regular seasons offense is mostly just great instead of alltimer with durant on (yet nobody diminishes curry for coasting in regular season or underperforming relative to offensive cast like ir happens with other players)
2015 +4 (RS) +4.1(PS)
2016 +7.9(RS)+5.7(PS)
2017 +6.8(RS)+11.6 (PS)
2018 + 5.0(RS)+6.5(PS)
2019 + 5.5(RS)+5.4 (PS)
average: 5.85 (RS) 6.6(PS)
combined average: +6.2

compare with chris Paul regular season best stretch, a guy who nobody ever put on their goat list for offense because of lack of team success

2013 + 4.7 (RS) +8.3(PS)
2014 +5.4 (RS) +11.0(PS)
2015 +6.8 (RS)
2016 +1.9 (RS)
2017 +3.9 (RS)
2018 + 6.1 (RS)
average (13-17) +4.5(RS)
but if i switch 16 which is an outlier low where griffin esaentially missed the season
average (13-18*) +5.4(RS)

looking at regular season doesnt look too different from curry does it ? in spite of less talent and more games missed in reg season

are we sure if they switched teams and injury luck wouldnt be chris Paul who would have the better case for offensive goat? he gets almost the same results with imo less talent around him and more missed games
* i couldnt find the playoffs ratings of his teams and this post was already taking too long to write for me to calculate manually, My apologies there

but what i could find was excellent

what about others ?

Lebron
2013 +6.4 (RS) +7.2 (PS)
2014 +4.2 (RS) +10.6 (PS)
2015 +5.5(RS) +5.5 (PS)
2016 +4.5(RS) +12.5 (PS)
2017 +4.8 (RS) +13.7 (PS)
Average +5.1(RS) +9.9 (PS)
combined average: +7.5

notice that lebron has 3 different +10 playoffs offenses (with bosh/older wade and kyrie/love) as where curry only had 1 (with durant and klay that i consider better) and how much bigger the playoffs gap is than the relatively small regular season Gap

here is jordan* (i had to use his first 5 championship seasons)
1991 +6.7(RS) +11.7 (PS)
1992 +7.3(RS) +6.5 (PS)
1993 +4.9 (RS) +9.8 (PS)
1996 +7.6 (RS) +8.6 (PS)
1997 +7.7(RS) +6.5(PS)
average +6.85 (RS) +8.6(PS)
combined average:+7.7

so curry doesnt actually seem to have the goat stretch of team regular season offense either and he is pretty far from the playoffs one
jordan beats him in both

here is nash, another guy whose best 5 year stretches beat curry in both áreas, * Used 2010 instead of 2009 cause playoffs missed

2005 suns. +8.4(RS) +17 (PS)
2006 suns +5.3(RS) +9.5 (PS)
2007 suns +7.4(RS)+7.6 (PS)
2008 suns. +5.8(RS) + 3.1 (PS)
2010 suns +7.7(RS) +13.4 (PS)
Average +6.9(RS) + 10.1 (PS)
combined average: +8.5

along with lebron another guy who stands out in postseason offense and beats curry in reg season too

what about shaq

1998 +6.9(RS), +10.1(PS)
1999 +5.4(RS), +4.7(PS)
2000 +3.2(RS), +9.3(PS)
2001 +5.4 (RS) +13.6(PS)
2002 +4.9(RS), +6.4 (PS)
Average +5.2(RS) +8.8(PS)
combined average: +7

comparable to lebron numbers but worse in playoffs, another guy with a big edge on curry warriors offensively during the playoffs

here is bird, another great player who sometimes is rsnked about contempraneus offensive all timers (bird over magic, curry over lebron or paul) based in big part on the idea that their portability will lead to a higher ceiling in offense among talented rosters. yet i dont think the results agree

1984 +3.3 (RS) +6.4 (PS)
1985 +4.9 (RS) +3.9 (PS)
1986 +4.6 (RS) + 8.3 (PS)
1987 +5.2 (RS) + 8.7 (PS)
1988 +7.4 (RS) +4.2 (PS)
average +5.1(RS) +6.3(PS)
combined average: +5.7

another ultra portable ceiling raiser who falls a bit short in results to other theorically worse ceiling raisers, both players with some similar criticisms about their production being often slowed down in postseason, curry results are slightly ahead

for comparision here is magic who is functionally closer to lebron as a "helio" player

1986 +6.1(RS) +6.7
1987 +7.6 (RS) +10.7
1988 +5.1(RS) +8.3
1989 +6 (RS) +9.3
1990 +5.9(RS) +8.4
Average +6.1(RS), + 8.7 (PS)
combined average: +7.4

Another guy whose teams beat curry warriors offensively in both playoffs and regular season (if slightly only in the latter)

so if the argument for curry is based om team dominance i would disagree since half of that was the defense of Iggy, klay and specially draymond

and if we use offensive dominance curry doesnt stand out, jordan, nash and to a degree magic all beat him in regular season stretches

while jordan, magic, shaq and specially nash and lebron have a big advantage in playoffs offense

and where curry 15-19 warriors have the team results advantage is not by huge margins

so if he is not the best in regular season offense, and is very clearly behind others in playoffs offense, all while arguably having the most offensive talent or close to it in their offensive peaks

what is actually the case for curry based on offensive team success? are we even sure his offensive results are better than chris Paul when accounting for teammates?

now i am not using team results as the only criteria, but i dont agree that team succes has curry as the offensive goat

So I want to say first and foremost that this was a great post falcolombardi. So much good information in it.

Next thing I'd say is that I don't believe Curry at this point has a track record that justifies seeing him as the best playoff-offense guy of the bunch for reasons you go into.

I also specifically appreciate you mentioning Nash, because I have spent a million years trying to get others to see how strong his performances were in the playoffs, and yeah, he does have a more proven track record on this front than Curry (as well as many others).

My thoughts about Curry are shaped by the belief that there are specific things that held Curry back before that I don't think are intrinsic to his style of play, and that had the team not been so successful, we'd have already seen him learn what he needed to learn to largely continue his dominance in the playoffs.

Until he truly demonstrates it all the way through a playoff run, it most certainly counts as "unproven", and I want to make clear that I'm not using my beliefs to treat Curry's career as if he's already he achieved it. Nevertheless, if and when I see him do it, it's not going to feel like a small sample size to me.

I see it as similar to what I've seen from other guys whose playoff dominance peaks a bit after they've achieved their regular season dominance, and it's more a question of whether they can reach that bulletproofing stage or not. Once they've done it, they've done it.

But to reiterate: If Curry does it in '21-22 but then in '22-23 we see him get stymied, that will re-shape what I thought of '21-22, and not for the better.

I'm going to look at your post again a while later and see what else springs to mind. In particularly I feel like I need to address the Curry vs Paul comparison you made.

[eminence]

As long as all those same data points lead one to the belief that Hakeem can’t hold Draymonds jockstrap on defense

Edit: this is unfair of me, but I do feel frustrated by what I see as incosistently applied criteria.

[falcolombardi]

As long as all those same data points lead one to the belief that Hakeem can’t hold Draymonds jockstrap on defense

Edit: this is unfair of me, but I do feel frustrated by what I see as incosistently applied criteria.

fwiw i dont want to say team results are the only thingh to consider. i was just debating that specific criteria in regards to curry

i also dont think who reached a higher height in defense or offense is the only or more important criteria to use when it comes to team results

taking weak rosters to decency, decent rosters to goodness and good rosters to greatness are imo all different "skills" that need to be evaluated in their own curves
you cannot compare thw results of a "carryjob" effort with those of "ceiling raising an already strong team" effort

example: chauncy billups (with help of course from rip and rasheed) taking the pistons weaker offensive roster to decency in offense may not seem like much (literally neutral offense right around average)
but is the difference between pistons destroying thw lakers in the finals or losing to the nets in the east and their defense being a historial footnote

i am not completely familiar with hakeem rosters and their defensive talent (going off reputation i thinl only thorpe was considered really good)
but just because he didnt get his 2008 garnett moment (the season where he is given a ton of defensive talent to lead to trascendent defense) doesnt mean he is not an all timer in defense

hakeem didnt get that super strong defensive roster to test how high a defensive "superteam" led by him could reach

doesnt mean taking weaker defensive rosters to goodness is not valuable (just like garnett carryjobs of minnesota defenses were insanely valuable)

in fact this is one of my gripes with what i perceive of ben Taylor strong focus on "who fits better with great talent"
ability to raise a strong offense into a great one is not necesarrily much more important than ability to make a weak offense into a good one as far as championship odds go (same thingh applies with defense but even more so cause defense has less concerns about fit and portability imo)

and hakeem actually got strong defensive results

1990 -4.7 (league best)
1991 -4.0 (league 2nd)
1992 -0.2 (?, weird result, is this the year he had a conflict with houston FO?)
1993 -2.8
1994 -4.9(league 2nd)

draymond warriors for reference are this

2015 -4.2
2016 -2.6
2017 -4.8
2018 -1.0
2019 -0.9

so draymond does not actually look better even by team results, and then of course we would have to evaluate teammates and other circunstances, as well as evaluating by watching the players

almost nobody considers ewing a better defender than robinson or hakeem despite the big advantage in team defensive results and there are valid reasons for that too

just like draymond having stronger defensive results than hakeem (he doesnt have them as far as í have looked. maybe he does in individual plus minus stats?) wouldnt necesarrily make him better either

[eminence]

As long as all those same data points lead one to the belief that Hakeem can’t hold Draymonds jockstrap on defense

Edit: this is unfair of me, but I do feel frustrated by what I see as incosistently applied criteria.

fwiw i dont want to say team results are the only thingh to consider. i was just debating that specific criteria in regards to curry

i also dont think who reached a higher height in defense or offense is the only or more important criteria to use when it comes to team results

taking weak rosters to decency, decent rosters to goodness and good rosters to greatness are imo all different "skills" that need to be evaluated in their own curves
you cannot compare thw results of a "carryjob" effort with those of "ceiling raising an already strong team" effort

example: chauncy billups (with help of course from rip and rasheed) taking the pistons weaker offensive roster to decency in offense may not seem like much (literally neutral offense right around average)
but is the difference between pistons destroying thw lakers in the finals or losing to the nets in the east and their defense being a historial footnote

i am not completely familiar with hakeem rosters and their defensive talent (going off reputation i thinl only thorpe was considered really good)
but just because he didnt get his 2008 garnett moment (the season where he is given a ton of defensive talent to lead to trascendent defense) doesnt mean he is not an all timer in defense

hakeem didnt get that super strong defensive roster to test how high a defensive "superteam" led by him could reach

doesnt mean taking weaker defensive rosters to goodness is not valuable (just like garnett carryjobs of minnesota defenses were insanely valuable)

in fact this is one of my gripes with what i perceive of ben Taylor strong focus on "who fits better with great talent"
ability to raise a strong offense into a great one is not necesarrily much more important than ability to make a weak offense into a good one as far as championship odds go (same thingh applies with defense but even more so cause defense has less concerns about fit and portability imo)

and hakeem actually got strong defensive results

1990 -4.7 (league best)
1991 -4.0 (league 2nd)
1992 -0.2 (?, weird result, is this the year he had a conflict with houston FO?)
1993 -2.8
1994 -4.9(league 2nd)

draymond warriors for reference are this

2015 -4.2
2016 -2.6
2017 -4.8
2018 -1.0
2019 -0.9

so draymond does not actually look better even by team results, and then of course we would have to evaluate teammates and other circunstances, as well as evaluating by watching the players

almost nobody considers ewing a better defender than robinson or hakeem despite the big advantage in team defensive results and there are valid reasons for that too

just like draymond having stronger defensive results than hakeem (he doesnt have them as far as í have looked. maybe he does in individual plus minus stats?) wouldnt necesarrily make him better either

Dray's playoff results are where he separates himself from most (Hakeem's median series over that period was -2.5, Dray's -4.6).

But yeah, my post was mostly made in the heat of the moment. I agree with nearly all of your thoughts and how you're evaluating things, so thanks for a very level headed reply. I do disagree with what feels like your baseline assumptions which leads to a lot of your points - Curry had good/great offensive casts. Prior to KD I'm not particularly high on the Warriors offensive cast at all (I'd easily take LeBrons 2nd Cavs or CP3 Clippers over them from the same era).

And shoutout to Chauncey for really being MrBigShot, was recently looking at career +/- per game for RS vs PO and of the big sample guys he's one of the higher guys. Only the Chauncey Pistons and the recent Warriors have prolonged periods of performing better by +/- in the playoffs than in the RS.

[falcolombardi]

As long as all those same data points lead one to the belief that Hakeem can’t hold Draymonds jockstrap on defense

Edit: this is unfair of me, but I do feel frustrated by what I see as incosistently applied criteria.

fwiw i dont want to say team results are the only thingh to consider. i was just debating that specific criteria in regards to curry

i also dont think who reached a higher height in defense or offense is the only or more important criteria to use when it comes to team results

taking weak rosters to decency, decent rosters to goodness and good rosters to greatness are imo all different "skills" that need to be evaluated in their own curves
you cannot compare thw results of a "carryjob" effort with those of "ceiling raising an already strong team" effort

example: chauncy billups (with help of course from rip and rasheed) taking the pistons weaker offensive roster to decency in offense may not seem like much (literally neutral offense right around average)
but is the difference between pistons destroying thw lakers in the finals or losing to the nets in the east and their defense being a historial footnote

i am not completely familiar with hakeem rosters and their defensive talent (going off reputation i thinl only thorpe was considered really good)
but just because he didnt get his 2008 garnett moment (the season where he is given a ton of defensive talent to lead to trascendent defense) doesnt mean he is not an all timer in defense

hakeem didnt get that super strong defensive roster to test how high a defensive "superteam" led by him could reach

doesnt mean taking weaker defensive rosters to goodness is not valuable (just like garnett carryjobs of minnesota defenses were insanely valuable)

in fact this is one of my gripes with what i perceive of ben Taylor strong focus on "who fits better with great talent"
ability to raise a strong offense into a great one is not necesarrily much more important than ability to make a weak offense into a good one as far as championship odds go (same thingh applies with defense but even more so cause defense has less concerns about fit and portability imo)

and hakeem actually got strong defensive results

1990 -4.7 (league best)
1991 -4.0 (league 2nd)
1992 -0.2 (?, weird result, is this the year he had a conflict with houston FO?)
1993 -2.8
1994 -4.9(league 2nd)

draymond warriors for reference are this

2015 -4.2
2016 -2.6
2017 -4.8
2018 -1.0
2019 -0.9

so draymond does not actually look better even by team results, and then of course we would have to evaluate teammates and other circunstances, as well as evaluating by watching the players

almost nobody considers ewing a better defender than robinson or hakeem despite the big advantage in team defensive results and there are valid reasons for that too

just like draymond having stronger defensive results than hakeem (he doesnt have them as far as í have looked. maybe he does in individual plus minus stats?) wouldnt necesarrily make him better either

Dray's playoff results are where he separates himself from most (Hakeem's median series over that period was -2.5, Dray's -4.6).

But yeah, my post was mostly made in the heat of the moment. I agree with nearly all of your thoughts and how you're evaluating things, so thanks for a very level headed reply. I do disagree with what feels like your baseline assumptions which leads to a lot of your points - Curry had good/great offensive casts. Prior to KD I'm not particularly high on the Warriors offensive cast at all (I'd easily take LeBrons 2nd Cavs or CP3 Clippers over them from the same era).

And shoutout to Chauncey for really being MrBigShot, was recently looking at career +/- per game for RS vs PO and of the big sample guys he's one of the higher guys. Only the Chauncey Pistons and the recent Warriors have prolonged periods of performing better by +/- in the playoffs than in the RS.

hakeem had such a heavy offensive load in those rockets during the playoffs that is hard to take the defensive performance at face value compared to draymond before we get into teammates or anythingh else

no hard disagreements about pre kd warriors, before kd i may agree that lebron offensive supporting cast in cleveland was a bit better, but in the aggregate i think it balances out with how stronger curry offensive cast was after adding kd

per raw offensive talent i think the (regular season) warriors underperformed with kd as much as the lebron/love/irving (regular season) did with it being mostly the playoffs where cavs imo lived up to their potential better than warriors did

[Raonak]

Curry's combination of inhuman accuracy from any distance (goat shooter)
plus the ability to play through multiple coverage.
plus the ability to play the gravity game to open up teammates (goat offball)

You could argue that there are players who are more consistently dominant,
but steph when he enters **** mode becomes untouchable in terms of impact.

It's becoming more and more apparent that he's a completely new kind of superstar.
I'm curious to see whether he will inspire a new generation of players, or will he just be a one-off unicorn.

[Doctor MJ]

you mention that lebron never reached curry teams heights without mentioning that arguably no player ever did over a 5 years~ consecutive stretch, this warriors were truly special and almost half of it came in the defensive end

Alright so getting around to this. This post will be more argumentative than the last one, so warnings up front.

So big thing on this first front:

When a team is balanced, it's not optimized for offense (or defense of course). As such the idea that Curry should get less credit because the team was great on defense, and Curry's role is offensively-focused, is something we need to be careful of.

Do Curry's teammates deserve credit for their defensive impact? Absolutely.

Does Curry's presence allow the Warriors to let other guys play who are offensively limited? Certainly.

Right now we're getting to see Gary Payton II absolutely thrive in the NBA after years of struggling despite being an incredible defensive prospect. Why? Because while the rest of the league has entered into territory were non-shooters largely can't get playing time, when Curry is on the court, a smart scheme will allow plenty of opportunities for other players to attack.

Still not the same as adding another elite offensive player on the floor in terms of what we get offensively, but it allows defense to thrive.

On the most general level I'd assume we all know this and thus know that merely looking at team ORtg is not enough to understand a player's offensive impact, but I'm as guilty as anyone of looking to see the team outliers are on stats like this and then trumpeting that without always placing similar emphasis on the other side of the equation.

you also mention that curry teams kept winning and that the perception on him would be a lot diferente if klay made a couple more 3's in game 7 of 2016 finals, which is true but only shows the ring bias that exists in basketball

I would suggest that we all fall prey to biases along these lines all the time and continue to fall prey to them until we reflect on the assumptions we made that lead to bias.

And I think the fact that people focus so much on the 2016 finals when evaluating a player that literally won every other series where his team had its stars healthy, is an example of that bias. Fine to bring that up, but a guy's worst moment isn't something that should be seen as THE thing to focus on to understand what he was.

Now, I'm sure that you and others don't feel like that's what you're doing. You probably feel like others (such as myself) are focusing too much on the good without thinking about the bad. I'll agree that some kind of a balance must be struck, but being the player who has been the MVP of the best 5-year team run of the millennium seems to me like it should induce less cynicism than it does.

Curry: notice how even with durant they only have one truly trascendent play off offense and their regular seasons offense is mostly just great instead of alltimer with durant on (yet nobody diminishes curry for coasting in regular season or underperforming relative to offensive cast like ir happens with other players)
2015 +4 (RS) +4.1(PS)
2016 +7.9(RS)+5.7(PS)
2017 +6.8(RS)+11.6 (PS)
2018 + 5.0(RS)+6.5(PS)
2019 + 5.5(RS)+5.4 (PS)
average: 5.85 (RS) 6.6(PS)
combined average: +6.2

For perspective here - speaking on "coasting in the regular season or underperforming relative to offensive cast", here are Curry's on-Court ORtgs in the Durant years according to bkref.

2017 121.4
2018 122.7
2019 120.8

I've said it a number of times, but I think it's really problematic when we get too focused on league relative ratings. The idea that the team should have been able to do more given their talent just doesn't make any sense when you see they were regularly breaking 120 and we have no historical track record for ceilings that go beyond that.

We can certainly argue that guys in the past with greater rORtg were more impressive, but no one should be looking at Curry's on-court ORtg in those years and concluding the offense was anything other than the most effective offense they've ever seen in their life.

Also, let's note that in the playoffs without Durant, during the Durant years, Curry led a +7.0 offense, and in general during the Durant years the Warriors have an outstanding record without Durant. Again, you can argue other players are more impressive, but looking at what happened in those years, I see plenty that looks really, really good with and without Durant.

compare with chris Paul regular season best stretch, a guy who nobody ever put on their goat list for offense because of lack of team success

2013 + 4.7 (RS) +8.3(PS)
2014 +5.4 (RS) +11.0(PS)
2015 +6.8 (RS)
2016 +1.9 (RS)
2017 +3.9 (RS)
2018 + 6.1 (RS)
average (13-17) +4.5(RS)
but if i switch 16 which is an outlier low where griffin esaentially missed the season
average (13-18*) +5.4(RS)

looking at regular season doesnt look too different from curry does it ? in spite of less talent and more games missed in reg season

are we sure if they switched teams and injury luck wouldnt be chris Paul who would have the better case for offensive goat? he gets almost the same results with imo less talent around him and more missed games

Regarding the regular season numbers, don't we have regressed data to look at here? If you can find data along those lines that favors Paul, you should post it, if not, then I don't think the worse supporting cast argument holds much water. I mean in general Paul was playing with a lot of talent around because he made sure of it. He wanted out of NO specifically because he wanted to play with talent, then he left the Clippers to play with talent. This is not a guy who has been playing with bad teammates his whole career.

I get really skeptical about claims of Curry have an insane supporting cast when we've now see repeatedly that people underrate Curry's teams until they start beating everybody. When a supporting cast doesn't impress anybody up front, but then later gets used to tear down the star of the team, it smacks of cognitive dissonance to me. (Note: Obviously when KD came no one was skeptical, but I think we'd all agree that's a different story.)

Re: if they switched teams. Curry & Paul don't play at all the same way so this doesn't make sense to me. What is Draymond Green doing on a Chris Paul team? I don't think you're crazy if you think Paul could do something just as great if he only had the right supporting cast for him, but Paul would absolutely make the Warriors a lot worse than Curry, because the Warriors are a team built around motion offense and the best player on the team other than Curry really needs motion offense where he can be the team's fulcrum to be valuable as an offensive player.

More broadly, given that the Warriors have been the best team in the league with an offensive scheme that really deviates from most everyone else, it's strange to me that people either seem to treat that offense as a gimmick or treat Curry like a traditional point guard. The Warriors have accomplished incredible things with Curry as the key ingredient, and I'm really reluctant to assume others are likely to do something similar "if only" when so few in history actually do this despite every year there being a handful of contenders with plenty of exciting talent that never even advance far in the playoffs.

And you might call that a form of "winning bias" I understand, but just know that I'm not saying the guys on more successful teams are definitively better players, only that I think it's incredibly hard to have dynastic success and in general I'm cautious about elevating those who haven't ahead of those who have, particularly when I don't see any close analogues in style of play.