falcolombardi wrote:young players like gary payton ll can always make a leap and put it all together, specially someone like him who even before the season i remember some commenting on his athletism and defensive upside (zack lowe i think was fairly bullish on him)
which is why i dont like attributing the improvements of these players to their team stars
cause if i give curry the credit for gary payton ll play...i would have to be consistent and give curry the Blame for Kelly oubre struggles with warriors (a player who per media and popular recognition had much more potential)
and if i thought that the diffence between non curry/dray players in 2021 and 2022 was not significative i would have to Blame curry and dray for 2021 warriors being so much worse
i would rather give the credit for gary payton ll play to gary payton ll and the Blame for Kelly oubre play to Kelly oubre
I appreciate you laying out your thinking like this.
Big thing I want to say in response:
I think it's important to focus first on what actually happened, and only from there try to evaluate player in a rank-oriented fashion.
In the case of Oubre, my best estimation of what happened is that he didn't figure out how to play in concert with the Warriors. He was a clear individual talent, but he didn't know how to adapt to how the team around him was playing, in part because he really needed to see himself a role player, and he even though he still is in effect a role player-tier player in Charlotte, we see the way he eagerly takes on the role of volume scorer in a heartbeat.
In the case of Payton, well, that's more on point because we're seeing a much more stark positive change. Failure may not actually be an orphan, but success does indeed have many fathers, and great success tends to shine a bright line on things for us.
Defense - Everyone's always known he was a great defensive talent, but now he plays on the Warriors who are a team with incredible defensive communication coming from the interior. It's not just Draymond Green that's telling Payton where to focus, it's Curry, it's Iggy, it's Wiggins, it's basically everyone because that's how the Warriors play together. This is allowing Payton to be as aggressive as he wants to be focusing more optimally on his attack - and I'd expect costing the defense less when his gambits fail, while also making him less likely to fail.
Offense - I think we know what's happening here don't we? He hasn't turned into a clearly better shooter. He's not actually coming into his own as a "point guard". He's on a team with the strongest gravity pulling away from him in the history of the game, and he's being assisted on considerably higher portion of his shots compared to what he was when he was younger. He's being left open, and his teammates are passing to him for the easy bucket. I mean, I haven't looked into comparing % of 2P Ass'ted, but .796 seems remarkably high for a 6'3" dude.
Now, if any of that makes you think I'm saying "So don't be impressed by Payton!", that's really not how I feel at all. I love what he's doing, and might even end up drafting him on the upcoming project Ryoga is setting up. I'm not trying to tear down Payton - who I think is clearly proving to be an effective NBA player that I expect will now stick in the league for a good while (and I'm really happy for him!)
But notice how big of a deal the specifics of the context were. All that contextual impact, it's hard to know where to attach it on a player-by-player level, but that's okay. We just do our best. The most important thing, other than actually looking to understand the broader basketball context first and foremost, is to come to be able to see the value of it as a tangible thing that needs to neither be allocated entirely toward him nor entirely away from him.
