raleigh wrote:tsherkin wrote:ORTG, OWS and OBPM
Sorry, but ORTG is too dependent on pace, role, scheme, teammates, etc. to be a useful stat. (Look at the current leaders of ORtg and you'll see what I mean). Trae is now near the top of the league in OWS and OBPM, so that gap has already been closed.
Absolutely, as a singular measure of anything, each of these stats is very limited, which is why I tend to look at them all in a lump.
Just to reiterate, if you look at Dame's peak in OWS and OBPM, he popped 9.9, 9.7, 10.9 (league-high) and 9.6 in OWS. His OBPM peak was 7.0, 6.6, 8.3 (league-high) and 7.5.
By contrast, Trae's rocking 9.0 this year and 7.1 OBPM. So very much in the neighborhood, and at a younger age than Dame was doing that. We agree that he's no longer constrained by the idea of Dame as his "best case" and that if he continues to perform at this level, we're going to have a very different conversation about Young entirely. What I was saying is that Trae has to continue performing at this level and a little higher to properly line up with Dame's peak. He's already starting to get there, so we'll see where he goes from here, and it should be wild to do in the meantime.
Just to add to the discussion , I popped a search into stathead for 9.0+ OWS while qualified for PTS/g since 04-05. Trae's 77th on that list in his only entry, and Dame is on there 4 times. It's actually pretty wild company to keep. It's mostly a list where people pop in a couple times across a whole career, Lebron and Chris Paul notwithstanding. So again, remarkable stuff, and he's so young that he's got plenty of time to get back there.
Efficiency, for one. And he's already making strides there despite not playing with a 2nd option.
Peskiness on defense, for two. He should get more steals.
Defense would be a major upgrade, no question.
I don't see a LOT of upside in terms of efficiency. He was a 60% TS guy on 20 FGA/g. Since 04-05, there are 11 such seasons. Dame and Trae each have one, KD has 2, Steph has 2, Lebron has 1, Harden has 3 and Kyrie has 1. I don't really see Trae doing that on the regular. He's not enough of a freak physical specimen and his height REALLY works against him for that. He's certainly a wonderful shooter, but he isn't Steph (who also brings handles and more threat beneath the arc, plus somewhat better size). This is also Trae's first season above Lillard's career average in TS+, so we'll see how that breaks out over time.
I think he's comfortably got the chance to be a very good scorer for quite a while, of course, but my hesitancy comes from this idea that he'll improve his efficiency as a volume scorer. I realize I was picking at nits a little bit as far as that TS%/FGA/g threshold, but I wanted to throw his season into perspective, you know what I mean?
I'm guessing I'm missing the sarcasm? Otherwise this post is nonsense.
