is chris paul to curry what garnett is to duncan?

[Doctor MJ]

in all those losses (2013, 2014,2015,2017) clippers dominated chris paul minutes by a ton while losing almost everyone else minutes

he had consistently the best or near best +/- in those series

griffin minutes were generally around neutral in spite of sharinf the court so much with paul

reddick, crawford and others starters consistently appear as absolute liabilities in +/-, again, in spite of all the minutes with paul

i put the numbers ln a posr above, they all essentially scream that clippers were awful without chris paul and the best team in the court when he played, but in average

in those 4 losses chris paul averages a +16 net rating (offensive rating - defensive rating for the series)

chris paul +16
(128 offense/112 defense, so clippers played like a -6 defense with a +22 offense when chris paul played, those team problems were depth and defense)

blake griffin -1
jamal crawford -17
JJ Redick -3
Deandre jordan -3

Okay, so first, you're bringing up more good stuff to consider, but not showing any indication that what I'm saying seems noteworthy to you. I mean, did you know these facts about Paul before I said it? If not, doesn't it give you pause that maybe I'm pointing to something significant you hadn't considered before?

On to your points, let's look at what those numbers look like in the front of the series compared to the back end.

I'll start by the very first SRS-upset in Paul's career, '07-08 against the Spurs. Those Spurs were an excellent team mind you, but just take a look:

'07-08 Spurs
First 3 games: +28
Last 4 games: -17

Next we move to the Clipper years:

'12-13 Grizzlies
First 3 games: -6
Last 3 games: -37

'13-14 Thunder
First 3 games: +28
Last 3 games: +19
(most impressive number of the bunch, but worse than it looks, because they lost the last 2 games by losing the 4th quarter in each, and in one of those games the lClippers had a 7 point lead with less than a minute to play and Paul was at the center of the criticism). This was actually where the "these Clippers are a bunch of chokers" meme really started, and it just kept building from there.

'14-15 Rockets:
First 3 games: +33 (note, these are Games 3-5 because Paul missed the first two with injury)
Last 2 games: -14

'15-16 Blazers
First 3 games: +37
Last 1 game: -7 (missed the last two with injury)

'16-17 Jazz
First 3 games: +17
Last 4 games: -12

And now for good measure:

'17-18 Warriors
First 3 games: -12
Last 2 games: -8 (missed the last two with injury)

'20-21 Bucks
First 3 games: +13
Last 3 games: -24

I think the trend is pretty clear:

Generally when Paul's team loses to a team with a worse regular season SRS, his team wins with him on the court the first 3 games, and loses it with him over the rest of the series, which means we are definitely not talking about a case of him beating these other teams generally but simply being unable to play every single minute. We're talking about a very real recurring phenomenon where Paul's team with him on the court becomes less effective against these team as they have longer to play against him, and this often flipping the series from a win to a loss.

Paul is not the only one with issues like this. The phenomenon of one side/player figuring out or being figured out by their opponents over the course of a series is a real thing, and to be clear, typically players have both types of series in their career. To point to a recent that goes in the opposite direction for Paul:

'20-21 Lakers
First 3 games: -12
Last 3 games: +46

(Incidentally if anyone wants to bring up more data like this - I'm starting to feel like I should start a thorough personal project about this - please do. And of course it's possible possible that further data will make Paul look less of an outlier in the negative direction here, or say something that argues against Curry or Garnett or other interesting folks.)

But note: Whether or not Paul is an extreme outlier, the fact remains that even when it looks like you can say "but his team won the Paul minutes!", these are basically always situations where Paul's team really is getting outplayed with him (and presumably even worse without him too to be fair) as his team loses the series, and this - I would argue - is often the real question.

Is a worse regular season team - whether by general capacity, health, or effort - figuring out how to get the better of you in a seven game series? In Paul's case, the answer is a yes.

[Doctor MJ]

What changed GSW was the emergence of Draymond.

GSW 2013-14
Passes per Game: 243.8 (#30 in the NBA)
AST%: 59.1 (#12)
ORTG: 106.3 (#12)

GSW 2014-15
Passes per Game: 306.6 (#9 in the NBA)
AST%: 65.9 (#2)
ORTG: 110.4 (#2)

That is Kerr's signature. Draymond's emergence has helped in numerous ways, including playing him as the main PF and our small-ball C (which was an innovation under Kerr, by the way). But the change from Jackson to Kerr is one of the most dramatic shifts in offensive strategy and approach that I can remember, and it propelled GSW into the upper echelon of teams. That is not something we can just take away from Kerr by explaining it away despite all the evidence to the contrary.

And none of that even addresses the culture that Kerr has built and maintained since then, which not only affects the team but the entire organization, and all the great people that Kerr has hired – or embraced – and constantly credited without any apparent ego. So yeah, Kerr's arrival was without any doubt transformative and while none of the success would have been possible without the corresponding on-court talent, of course, we shouldn't take anything away from the incredible job Kerr has done for this franchise.

Kerr and Curry are similar to Pop and Duncan in the sense that the combination of both paved the way for sustained excellence and a dynastic run, that I don't believe is possible – or at least considerably less likely – without both their contributions in terms of leadership and culture-setting (although Draymond clearly also deserves a lot of credit for his contributions to this run both on and off the court).

Can't agree with this enough.

I think where people tend to think I'm saying "Kerr is a Genius!", what I'm really try to do focus the attention in the shift in how the coach is telling the players to play rather than trying to say something like "He made them all X% better!"

When a coach causes a strongly visible change in how a team plays - if we just took a time-lapse video of the ball in the half court for the Warriors for Jackson vs Kerr, it would look drastically different - he gets major responsibility for how that changes the effectiveness of the team as well as the specific players on the team. If it ends up being a good change, then that responsibility means credit.

And the scale of the Warrior improvement means Kerr deserved a lot of credit it regardless of how "good" his players were. He's not in competition with them, so a zero-sum game mentality of credit allocation - which gets used to weigh down basically everyone on the Warriors all the time - really doesn't fit.

[Doctor MJ]

what is up with chris paul threads and getting kinda heated lol

Good question. I'll put it like this:

- Paul's been around a long time as a prominent established superstar in the age of the internet, which means folks have had a lot of time to develop hard stances on him - or "polarize".

- In specific, he's been around a long time as a prominent established superstar in the intense, continuing culture of the RealGM PC Board so folks here have the same tendencies, but with even more force.

- People here have been in debates on the subject a long, and specifically with debates with each other for a long time, which can lead to a "nursing old grudges" mentality on the subject where it doesn't take all that much before irritation escalates quickly.

- Polarized people tend to be really reluctant to consider the possibility that they may have chosen wrong a long time ago, and that the person they've been arguing with was right all along.

And to be clear when I say all of this stuff:

I'm not saying I stand immune to any of this myself - I know I'm not. All I can say is that I really do want to be a person who doesn't get stuck being righteously wrong, even if I know I do sometimes.

[Bad Gatorade]

'07-08 Spurs
First 3 games: +28
Last 4 games: -17

From memory, Chris Paul did play worse in the last 2 games, so I'll concede this.

Next we move to the Clipper years:

'12-13 Grizzlies
First 3 games: -6
Last 3 games: -37

Blake was injured for the last couple of games, which would lend to the lessening scores.

'13-14 Thunder
First 3 games: +28
Last 3 games: +19
(most impressive number of the bunch, but worse than it looks, because they lost the last 2 games by losing the 4th quarter in each, and in one of those games the lClippers had a 7 point lead with less than a minute to play and Paul was at the center of the criticism). This was actually where the "these Clippers are a bunch of chokers" meme really started, and it just kept building from there.

It's one thing to say it's worse than it looks because of game 5, but it's another thing to ignore the huge swing that the Clippers had in game 4, where Paul was +17 in the 4th in a 2 point win, and ignore that CP3 went 6-7 for 14 points in the 4th of game 7.

'14-15 Rockets:
First 3 games: +33 (note, these are Games 3-5 because Paul missed the first two with injury)
Last 2 games: -14

In those last 2 games, the Rockets shot 40.3% from 3. Do you know what the Clippers shot (outside of Paul)? 23.4%. And it was even worse than that in game 5, where they shot 19.2% without him. Does Chris Paul being "figured out" lend to the Rockets supporting cast shooting well above their means, and the Clippers shooting by far worse than any other team in the league?

'15-16 Blazers
First 3 games: +37
Last 1 game: -7 (missed the last two with injury)

It's one game in which he played 24 minutes, so that's really not enough to ascertain any information.

'16-17 Jazz
First 3 games: +17
Last 4 games: -12

Blake missed the last 4 games with injury, and Gobert returned for those games. I'd be stunned if the swing didn't happen.

And now for good measure:

'17-18 Warriors
First 3 games: -12
Last 2 games: -8 (missed the last two with injury)

There's no "story" I have for this, but that's the exact same rate (-4 per game). Iggy also missed games 4 and 5 though, right? Also, I've gathered that you're taking the first 3 games of each series, but it's worth noting that this is more so "one bad game" on CP3's part, since he was +5 in game 4 and -13 in game 5.

'20-21 Bucks
First 3 games: +13
Last 3 games: -24

Yup, this did happen. I think CP3 played very well in the series on the whole, but yeah, this did happen.

Of the 8 series listed, 2 can be immediately vetoed thanks to Blake's injuries (2013, 2017). Spurs 2008 does commit to your thesis, yes. The Rockets series in 2015 can be explained by severe disparities in 3 point shooting from the role players (ergo I don't think that's got anything to do with being "figured out"). The Thunder series is technically a decrease, but I'd note that the +/- remains quite high throughout, so I'd ignore that. The Blazers series "back end" sample is half a game from CP3, and probably isn't noteworthy. The Warriors series is really just a "bad game 5", which did happen from him, because game 4 was actually a +5 rating from him (so it's one game, but I suppose it holds). The Bucks series doesn't really have a simple explanation (i.e. an injury, or outlier shooting), but I don't really have an explanation that he was "figured out", either.

I support the idea of looking into this as a trend, but I'm not sure that the conclusions you're reaching are as promising as you're inferring, especially since the explanations are framed in a fairly unfair way. For example, using games 4-6 as the back end of the OKC sample and saying it's "worse than it looks" because of a choke in game 5, but also not giving credit to the comeback in game 4, or not saying, "this happened vs the Jazz, but it's not as bad as it looks, because Griffin got injured and Gobert game back."

What's the element of CP3's game that is causing him to get "figured out?"

[tsherkin]

What's the element of CP3's game that is causing him to get "figured out?"

Being 6 feet tall, I expect.

[Texas Chuck]

[

I'm not saying I stand immune to any of this myself - I know I'm not. All I can say is that I really do want to be a person who doesn't get stuck being righteously wrong, even if I know I do sometimes.

This is incredibly hard to do. And I consider myself open-minded and willing to admit my blind-spots and biases and when to just say I was wrong. And yet, so often I'm really not. any of those things. I'm stubborn and ignorant, and shutting off brilliant insight. I remember many a thread of arguing with drza years ago, but when I would stop getting upset he thought KG was the greatest thing ever, a conclusion I disagreed with, and instead focus on all the analytic gold he was giving me that was leading to his conclusions, I was able to learn an absolute ton of stuff.

I think these threads have gotten heated also in large part due to perceived double standards for players one favors versus players one doesn't. And it goes to show even for our most statisitcally driven posters, who we like stylistically gets a huge benefit of the doubt to players we don't. And that gets really frustrating for me.

It's why I continually harp on it doesn't how matter how a player is great, just that he is. But sadly, most do not feel this way and it makes certain players, Paul certainly being one of them, never getting a fair shake.

[tsherkin]

This is incredibly hard to do. And I consider myself open-minded and willing to admit my blind-spots and biases and when to just say I was wrong. And yet, so often I'm really not. any of those things. I'm stubborn and ignorant, and shutting off brilliant insight. I remember many a thread of arguing with drza years ago, but when I would stop getting upset he thought KG was the greatest thing ever, a conclusion I disagreed with, and instead focus on all the analytic gold he was giving me that was leading to his conclusions, I was able to learn an absolute ton of stuff.

Sometimes, it's possible to pivot your opinion after a great argument. Sometimes, a great argument will lead you down a path which reaffirms your thought process but teaches you some new stuff in the process. Both of those are pretty cool moments! They are not easy to do, though. Our brains are wired to lean into confidence so that we don't suffer from the paralysis of choice and end up dithering, right? So it's sort of a weird pitfall where we need assurance in our opinions but have to somehow also be flexible enough to accept new input.

[falcolombardi]

'07-08 Spurs
First 3 games: +28
Last 4 games: -17

From memory, Chris Paul did play worse in the last 2 games, so I'll concede this.

Next we move to the Clipper years:

'12-13 Grizzlies
First 3 games: -6
Last 3 games: -37

Blake was injured for the last couple of games, which would lend to the lessening scores.

'13-14 Thunder
First 3 games: +28
Last 3 games: +19
(most impressive number of the bunch, but worse than it looks, because they lost the last 2 games by losing the 4th quarter in each, and in one of those games the lClippers had a 7 point lead with less than a minute to play and Paul was at the center of the criticism). This was actually where the "these Clippers are a bunch of chokers" meme really started, and it just kept building from there.

It's one thing to say it's worse than it looks because of game 5, but it's another thing to ignore the huge swing that the Clippers had in game 4, where Paul was +17 in the 4th in a 2 point win, and ignore that CP3 went 6-7 for 14 points in the 4th of game 7.

'14-15 Rockets:
First 3 games: +33 (note, these are Games 3-5 because Paul missed the first two with injury)
Last 2 games: -14

In those last 2 games, the Rockets shot 40.3% from 3. Do you know what the Clippers shot (outside of Paul)? 23.4%. And it was even worse than that in game 5, where they shot 19.2% without him. Does Chris Paul being "figured out" lend to the Rockets supporting cast shooting well above their means, and the Clippers shooting by far worse than any other team in the league?

'15-16 Blazers
First 3 games: +37
Last 1 game: -7 (missed the last two with injury)

It's one game in which he played 24 minutes, so that's really not enough to ascertain any information.

'16-17 Jazz
First 3 games: +17
Last 4 games: -12

Blake missed the last 4 games with injury, and Gobert returned for those games. I'd be stunned if the swing didn't happen.

And now for good measure:

'17-18 Warriors
First 3 games: -12
Last 2 games: -8 (missed the last two with injury)

There's no "story" I have for this, but that's the exact same rate (-4 per game). Iggy also missed games 4 and 5 though, right? Also, I've gathered that you're taking the first 3 games of each series, but it's worth noting that this is more so "one bad game" on CP3's part, since he was +5 in game 4 and -13 in game 5.

'20-21 Bucks
First 3 games: +13
Last 3 games: -24

Yup, this did happen. I think CP3 played very well in the series on the whole, but yeah, this did happen.

Of the 8 series listed, 2 can be immediately vetoed thanks to Blake's injuries (2013, 2017). Spurs 2008 does commit to your thesis, yes. The Rockets series in 2015 can be explained by severe disparities in 3 point shooting from the role players (ergo I don't think that's got anything to do with being "figured out"). The Thunder series is technically a decrease, but I'd note that the +/- remains quite high throughout, so I'd ignore that. The Blazers series "back end" sample is half a game from CP3, and probably isn't noteworthy. The Warriors series is really just a "bad game 5", which did happen from him, because game 4 was actually a +5 rating from him (so it's one game, but I suppose it holds). The Bucks series doesn't really have a simple explanation (i.e. an injury, or outlier shooting), but I don't really have an explanation that he was "figured out", either.

I support the idea of looking into this as a trend, but I'm not sure that the conclusions you're reaching are as promising as you're inferring, especially since the explanations are framed in a fairly unfair way. For example, using games 4-6 as the back end of the OKC sample and saying it's "worse than it looks" because of a choke in game 5, but also not giving credit to the comeback in game 4, or not saying, "this happened vs the Jazz, but it's not as bad as it looks, because Griffin got injured and Gobert game back."

What's the element of CP3's game that is causing him to get "figured out?"

the two contention points seem to be
a) does paul and his teams play better early and worse late in a series
b) have chris paul clutch time mistakes costed his teams key games

so i want to ask, and i am completely serious, bad gatorade, doc, anyone else in the thread who wants to answer

why does it matter?

i am completely serious here btw, is playing great early and badly late in the series any better than plsying bad early and playing great late?

i am not as good as other posters at expressing my point with beatiful rethoric (some posters in the board have impressive writing tbh) so i will use 3 examples to ilustrate what i mean

1996 finals: sonics were the "anti chris paul"here per doc point they got better as the series went on and ended locking down jordan in the second half of the series, jordan was chris paul in this situation, getting worse as the series went on

for all it was a incresible effort to come back, it was too late and bulls clutched it out, had they played that impressive basketball and defense on mike the first 3 games instead maybe they would have won (or got further at least)

meanwhile with jordan i once fought...i mean had a friendly debate with vanwest (i miss having good convos with him, but i disgress) that 2010 lebron vs boston was as good as jordan vs the sonics.

both of them were dominating the first 3 games (with surprisingly similar stats too) and both got lockes down in the next 3, the difference? bulls supporting cast was better helping jordan get a 3-0 where lebron efforts only got him a 2-1, and when jordan struggled rodman and pippen could win a game without him which mo williams couldnt do (or chris paul teammates couldnt do when cp3 had weaker games)


the result is that two similar series (look them up, thet are eerily similar) get a completely different narrarive based on the play of their teammates

example number 2, lebron james in 2016 finals

imagine that lebron, kyrie and the cavs brought their absolute A game for the first half of the series, took a 3-1 lead, then grinded it in game 7 after slowing down in the second half

while this would ironically make the victory less impressive narratively (no 3-1 comeback) it would be a equally close victory

jordan in 96 helped his team win by dominating the first 3 games, lebron in 2016 helped his team win by dominating the last 3, end result was the same

of course ideally you want to play at your best start to finish, but when that is not possible i would go as far as saying that -starting- hot may be better thsn -finishing- hot, as taking a 2-0 or 3-1 lead early gives you a bigger error margin and may demoralize the rival

that is it for the early vs late dominance discussion

my other point is more controversial about the importance of clutch: is a mistake in the last minute really THAT much worse than a mistake in the first minute?

think about my third example, clippers vs oklahoma infamous chris paul game 5

if chris had his series of mistake early in the game such that clippers got to the end of the fourth quarter being down in the scoreboard instead, then chris played the last minutes perfectly.... but durant went hot too and contested his baskets giving thunder a narrow win by keeping that lead

in this scenario the only thingh that changes is cp3 "choking" in the first quarter instead of the fourth, both scenarios mean a narrow clippers loss cp3 could have prevented by not making those same mistakes

yet, because it happened in the first quarter it would be forgotten smd cp3 reputation "intact", is that correct?

as much as we love clutch shots, a basket in minute 1 and minute 2 count the same, 2 points are 2 points (sorry lebron)

overly fixating in a few cp3 mistakes that happened in a single game is essentially nitpicking, players make mistakes in all games and parts of them, but only the "key" ones are remembered ,

great clutch play that leads to a comfortable 15 point win in what could have come down to a last shot coinflip otherwise is forgotten

costly mistakes in the second quarter of a one possesion loss irrelevant

and hitting a basket in the last possesion of a game you let get that close by missing all game long gets everythingh forgiven

i am ok in thinking like this?

[dygaction]

CP3 to Curry is more like TMac to Kobe

[Doctor MJ]

i am completely serious here btw, is playing great early and badly late in the series any better than plsying bad early and playing great late?

Important questions. I'll put it like this:

A playoff series is a tactical arms race.

Hence, if Team A has the advantage over Team B up front, but Team B makes an adjustment, comes back, and wins the series, the fact that it took them a while to figure it out - while it may be educational to understand - doesn't actually matter in the result of the series even if adding up all the points in the series Team A still ends up with the edge.

I'm not denying luck can play a part of course, but that's why early vs late matters in a series.

What about if you find a way to do better but still can't win? Well, there are a lot of sub-scenarios there, but what it means definitionally is that you didn't get so much the better of the matchup after your adjustments that you could guarantee you'd win every game. That's not meant as any kind of great insight though.

In the case of Bulls-Sonics, I think the reality is that there's no reason to think the Sonics actually figured out how to be the better team in the matchup, even if they found a way to handle the matchup better than they did at the start. If they came back from 0-3 down to win the series, that would be different. If they became the better team but just couldn't win 4 in a row, and then came back the next year, won the regular season matchup with the Bulls, and continued to look as dominant in the playoffs that would be different. But these things didn't happen.

However, while from a "Who won?" perspective it doesn't matter that the Sonics won a couple games, I think it is important to take note when it seems like a team got better over the course of the series even if it wasn't enough to turn the tide.

[JordansBulls]

Garnett was a bit younger than duncan, had comparable impact metrics of any kind and an approach generally less liked (garnett for not being a traditional post up big, paul for not beint agresssive enough im his passing) by the dogmas of its time

garnett and paul had serious injury issues and won very little in their primes despite impressove individual stats or impact numbers

curry and duncan were the centerpieces in really talented teams with other stars (including a impact metrics superstar in ginobili/draymond who got little mainstream recognition as such) that won a lot of rings and had strong continuity

it seems like a lot od the pro/against paul and garnett arguments are fairly similar

i an correct here?

In a sense because CP3 had to switch teams like KG to while Curry and Duncan won for the franchise that drafted them.

[Doctor MJ]

I support the idea of looking into this as a trend, but I'm not sure that the conclusions you're reaching are as promising as you're inferring, especially since the explanations are framed in a fairly unfair way. For example, using games 4-6 as the back end of the OKC sample and saying it's "worse than it looks" because of a choke in game 5, but also not giving credit to the comeback in game 4, or not saying, "this happened vs the Jazz, but it's not as bad as it looks, because Griffin got injured and Gobert game back."

What's the element of CP3's game that is causing him to get "figured out?"

I think you make good points and I think we're at a specific point with the evidence:

How much of continued trend do you have to see before you believe the trend represents something it would be unwise to dismiss?

If you look at all of that and still see it as luck, then I wouldn't expect my point to resonate with you, but I supposed I could say it's enough for me.

I will say though: The reality is that I've formed my assessment of this over time rather than by looking back at this data. I found this data because I was looking for it based on my impressions of the time and how they appeared to deviate from others here, not because the data came first. In that sense, I've been effectively operating with even less of a sample size.

Of course, the reality is that as I went along each year I wasn't making any grand statement about Paul being a playoff underperformer. I was just evaluating the players based on how I felt they accomplished by season's end, and I - like the vast majority of voters for these sort of awards whether here or in the NBA's official MVP - kept favoring what I saw from Curry.

Re: what was figured out? I don't want to make a definitive statement here because I cannot claim certainty, but one thing I'll say about these numbers:

They aren't Paul's box score, they are what the team is doing with him on the floor.

As such, it's not so much about Paul getting figured out necessarily, but the team playing as they were playing getting figured out.

I think you generally see this most often in the form of a very different type of star: The interior volume scorer. There you have this situation where the tough part of an offensive scheme focused on getting it to the interior scorer to score is the actual "getting it to the interior scorer" more so than the scorer being able to score once they get the ball in their sweet spot. Mikan's teams had issues, Wilt's teams had these issues, and honestly in the WNBA this is an epidemic that as far as I can tell much of their community hasn't quite understood the significance of yet.

Okay, what about Paul? Here are some non-analytic thoughts:

1. As tsherkin mentioned, Paul is small. With smaller players I'd argue that often they need a little bit more room to breathe in order to have the window they need to do their thing. A smaller player has more of his vision blocked when pressure is tighter, which effects both shooting and passing, and on the defensive end can get systematically bullied and worn down.

2. Sometimes the more expertly a team is quarterbacked during the regular season, it's a sign they are nearer to their peak capacity than other teams. As such, they might not actually get worse at basketball in the playoffs so much as other teams may have another gear.

3. Sometimes a team can lose their mojo if their leader is too negative. I'm with the many folks who feel like they saw the Clippers lose their mojo over a few years, and eventually it just felt like they were expecting the worst to happen, and while even if this happened it might have nothing to do with Paul, to me Paul for most of his career hasn't been what you'd call a "warm" presence along the lines of a Magic or a Nash. I don't think you need to have a warm leader to be effective necessarily, but I do think warmth from the leader can at times make the rest of the team more resilient when things do go wrong. (And a note here: People can change, and honestly Paul's vibe in Phoenix has seemed pretty positive to me, so whatever was true before isn't necessarily true now.)

Again want to emphasize that I'm not making any definitive statements. The question of "What would cause Paul's team to be figured out?" is a great one and worth a lot more thought...but I don't necessarily need to have an answer for how something comes into being before I see enough to believe it as probably real.

[Bad Gatorade]

I think you make good points and I think we're at a specific point with the evidence:

How much of continued trend do you have to see before you believe the trend represents something it would be unwise to dismiss?

If you look at all of that and still see it as luck, then I wouldn't expect my point to resonate with you, but I supposed I could say it's enough for me.

I understand where you're coming from - I do enjoy ruminating the philosophy behind what you're saying, and you're right - it's our interpretation of the data which is going to vary here. I'm actually more bullish on Paul than I used to be thanks to the data, but I think it's careful that we both don't suffer from confirmation bias here - I'm high on Paul, and so the data needs to "prove me wrong", and I don't think I've seen a sufficient quality/quantity of data. I'd say you're in the opposite camp, and so the data would say otherwise. I do think, however, the data should be cleaned before making a conclusion, e.g. the Jazz series is definitely a data point where there are two major swings (Blake and Gobert's availability) which would influence the numbers exactly as expected, and so I wouldn't look too deeply into a series such as that as a form of evidence. Once controls are set in (e.g. the 2008 Spurs series strikes me as an entirely "fair" series to look at), then I'm happier to look at the trends and see how far we get with our conclusions.

Of course, the reality is that as I went along each year I wasn't making any grand statement about Paul being a playoff underperformer. I was just evaluating the players based on how I felt they accomplished by season's end, and I - like the vast majority of voters for these sort of awards whether here or in the NBA's official MVP - kept favoring what I saw from Curry.

And that's a conclusion I'm fine with - although the consensus is that Curry > CP3, I'm okay with that, even if I don't think there's a definitive gap there. And I've seen good arguments both ways (as well as explored this quite heavily myself). The Garnett/Duncan dynamic between them feels really strong to me, even though I feel like Curry draws from both quite strongly in different ways, and CP3 draws essentially the opposite elements from them. However, yeah, I'm perfectly fine with somebody saying Curry is better.

I think you generally see this most often in the form of a very different type of star: The interior volume scorer. There you have this situation where the tough part of an offensive scheme focused on getting it to the interior scorer to score is the actual "getting it to the interior scorer" more so than the scorer being able to score once they get the ball in their sweet spot. Mikan's teams had issues, Wilt's teams had these issues, and honestly in the WNBA this is an epidemic that as far as I can tell much of their community hasn't quite understood the significance of yet.

That's pretty cool, and something worth exploring. I can see arguments either way - Hakeem/Duncan did fine without an elite point in their peaks, but philosophically, what you say makes a lot of sense here.

Okay, what about Paul? Here are some non-analytic thoughts:

1. As tsherkin mentioned, Paul is small. With smaller players I'd argue that often they need a little bit more room to breathe in order to have the window they need to do their thing. A smaller player has more of his vision blocked when pressure is tighter, which effects both shooting and passing, and on the defensive end can get systematically bullied and worn down.

Well, what I'd start off with here is that the playoff data tends to support the idea that CP3's teams were perfectly fine (really good, in fact) on offence for most part, and are more likely to lose on defence. I find that CP3 takes on more of a scoring role in the playoffs (and scales pretty well on this front, similarly to how he scales well on scoring in 4th quarters) and the team offence often remains stout - even in situations like 2013 where Blake was injured, and the Clippers still mustered a +8.0 rating vs the Grizzlies. Ergo, I wouldn't really say his size is an issue on offence. Defence is probably worth exploring a bit more. Without thinking too hard about it, I actually push his offence up in the playoffs slightly (elite mid range shooting helps, a bit of extra aggression) but scale his defence down a bit since I feel like there's less evidence of him crippling other guards, but it generally evens out for me.

2. Sometimes the more expertly a team is quarterbacked during the regular season, it's a sign they are nearer to their peak capacity than other teams. As such, they might not actually get worse at basketball in the playoffs so much as other teams may have another gear.

I generally have that sort of view too - I grown to not really consider most guys "worse" in the playoffs (except the most extreme cases, such as DeRozan, who seems to actually drop a tier) but I'm more inclined to give post-2013 LeBron, post-1986 Isiah, Draymond in general the benefit of the doubt as guys that lift their game.

Once again, where I'd say this might hold more weight is on the defensive end.

3. Sometimes a team can lose their mojo if their leader is too negative. I'm with the many folks who feel like they saw the Clippers lose their mojo over a few years, and eventually it just felt like they were expecting the worst to happen, and while even if this happened it might have nothing to do with Paul, to me Paul for most of his career hasn't been what you'd call a "warm" presence along the lines of a Magic or a Nash. I don't think you need to have a warm leader to be effective necessarily, but I do think warmth from the leader can at times make the rest of the team more resilient when things do go wrong. (And a note here: People can change, and honestly Paul's vibe in Phoenix has seemed pretty positive to me, so whatever was true before isn't necessarily true now.)

Do you think this manifests itself more as a series progresses? Genuinely interested here - I would expect that a team disintegrating would have more of an effect by the time the series starts, as opposed to "during" the series. For example, if it was a serial problem with the Clippers, I'd think that they'd have more regular season issues the next season. Blake is probably the telltale player here, and he played great in 2014/2015, and was injured the next couple of series. I'm not seeing it (not that Paul isn't hard to deal with, but more so that I wouldn't superimpose this quality upon a "series disintegration" year upon year), but I'd like to hear your perspective further.

[Doctor MJ]

Do you think this manifests itself more as a series progresses? Genuinely interested here - I would expect that a team disintegrating would have more of an effect by the time the series starts, as opposed to "during" the series. For example, if it was a serial problem with the Clippers, I'd think that they'd have more regular season issues the next season. Blake is probably the telltale player here, and he played great in 2014/2015, and was injured the next couple of series. I'm not seeing it (not that Paul isn't hard to deal with, but more so that I wouldn't superimpose this quality upon a "series disintegration" year upon year), but I'd like to hear your perspective further.

I think it can yes, though I'd agree it can also manifest over the course of a season or between seasons.

I think once a player or team starts to get anxiety when the stakes are high dreading another choke, they become more likely to choke.

[WestGOAT]

in all those losses (2013, 2014,2015,2017) clippers dominated chris paul minutes by a ton while losing almost everyone else minutes

he had consistently the best or near best +/- in those series

griffin minutes were generally around neutral in spite of sharinf the court so much with paul

reddick, crawford and others starters consistently appear as absolute liabilities in +/-, again, in spite of all the minutes with paul

i put the numbers ln a posr above, they all essentially scream that clippers were awful without chris paul and the best team in the court when he played, but in average

in those 4 losses chris paul averages a +16 net rating (offensive rating - defensive rating for the series)

chris paul +16
(128 offense/112 defense, so clippers played like a -6 defense with a +22 offense when chris paul played, those team problems were depth and defense)

blake griffin -1
jamal crawford -17
JJ Redick -3
Deandre jordan -3

Okay, so first, you're bringing up more good stuff to consider, but not showing any indication that what I'm saying seems noteworthy to you. I mean, did you know these facts about Paul before I said it? If not, doesn't it give you pause that maybe I'm pointing to something significant you hadn't considered before?

On to your points, let's look at what those numbers look like in the front of the series compared to the back end.

I'll start by the very first SRS-upset in Paul's career, '07-08 against the Spurs. Those Spurs were an excellent team mind you, but just take a look:

'07-08 Spurs
First 3 games: +28
Last 4 games: -17

Next we move to the Clipper years:

'12-13 Grizzlies
First 3 games: -6
Last 3 games: -37

'13-14 Thunder
First 3 games: +28
Last 3 games: +19
(most impressive number of the bunch, but worse than it looks, because they lost the last 2 games by losing the 4th quarter in each, and in one of those games the lClippers had a 7 point lead with less than a minute to play and Paul was at the center of the criticism). This was actually where the "these Clippers are a bunch of chokers" meme really started, and it just kept building from there.

'14-15 Rockets:
First 3 games: +33 (note, these are Games 3-5 because Paul missed the first two with injury)
Last 2 games: -14

'15-16 Blazers
First 3 games: +37
Last 1 game: -7 (missed the last two with injury)

'16-17 Jazz
First 3 games: +17
Last 4 games: -12

And now for good measure:

'17-18 Warriors
First 3 games: -12
Last 2 games: -8 (missed the last two with injury)

'20-21 Bucks
First 3 games: +13
Last 3 games: -24

I think the trend is pretty clear:

Generally when Paul's team loses to a team with a worse regular season SRS, his team wins with him on the court the first 3 games, and loses it with him over the rest of the series, which means we are definitely not talking about a case of him beating these other teams generally but simply being unable to play every single minute. We're talking about a very real recurring phenomenon where Paul's team with him on the court becomes less effective against these team as they have longer to play against him, and this often flipping the series from a win to a loss.

Paul is not the only one with issues like this. The phenomenon of one side/player figuring out or being figured out by their opponents over the course of a series is a real thing, and to be clear, typically players have both types of series in their career. To point to a recent that goes in the opposite direction for Paul:

'20-21 Lakers
First 3 games: -12
Last 3 games: +46

(Incidentally if anyone wants to bring up more data like this - I'm starting to feel like I should start a thorough personal project about this - please do. And of course it's possible possible that further data will make Paul look less of an outlier in the negative direction here, or say something that argues against Curry or Garnett or other interesting folks.)

But note: Whether or not Paul is an extreme outlier, the fact remains that even when it looks like you can say "but his team won the Paul minutes!", these are basically always situations where Paul's team really is getting outplayed with him (and presumably even worse without him too to be fair) as his team loses the series, and this - I would argue - is often the real question.

Is a worse regular season team - whether by general capacity, health, or effort - figuring out how to get the better of you in a seven game series? In Paul's case, the answer is a yes.

Got to hand it to you Doc, I thought you were being harsh on CP3, but the Suns' meltdown against Dallas with CP3 starting off strong and then fading away is pretty much the proof in the pudding for what you have arguing against the general consensus on this subforum.

[Bad Gatorade]

.

So, whilst I'm not fully on board with all of the "chokes" being CP3's fault (since most of them have, IMO, entirely valid basketball reasons), this loss is an example of both CP3 playing bad basketball after game 2, and the Suns kind of followed suit by finishing the season on a horrendous level.

In other words, I think that your theory doesn't fully apply to the vast majority of his career, where the backdoor losses that didn't have an injury related reason either remained competitive (the Bucks series) or had ungodly shooting luck (the Rockets series). However, I think it does apply here. That was pretty bad, and the murmurs behind Ayton's angst on the bench would help support this - so yeah, I think for a season like this, I'd say your theory holds well.

I think that New Orleans played great, and that they needed every inch of CP3's amazing 4th quarters in order to get through, so I'd credit him greatly there, but he definitely deserves scrutiny behind what happened to Dallas. Is it enough to knock him down a peg? I don't know, because I think that his New Orleans series might knock him up a peg, but this would definitely knock him down to at least par relative to his regular season, if not slightly lower. On average, it's probably "par for the course" from him, especially since the Suns needed that excellent first round performance from him, but... I don't know.

I still think it's a valuable addition towards his career, because it's still a very impressive post-prime season on the whole for an ancient, small (well, he's taller than me since I failed to inherit that godly Balkan height ) point guard, but that ending does leave a sour taste in the mouth.