2022-23 NBA Season Discussion

[OhayoKD]

A) I would certainly agree with the base that there are arguments against Jokic being that high as well. I was just trying to voice that I could see him having an argument to be in that high end discussion.

B) Depending on ‘top group’ meaning Dirk is very much in that area for career impact type numbers.

C) Personally I’m not a fan of playoff impact data aggregating like that. It’s small sample, very specific, and just not something I have much faith in. For individual series it can be used to see which player/players were driving a series win, but that’s about all I really want to do with it.

I would put less stock in the playoff on/off if it wasn't the 3rd-straight postseason where it happened. His 3-year RAPM also trails embid in multiple sets and the gap is much bigger there than it is between peak Steph(who scored higher than embid) and 30+ Lebron using the rapm stuff you linked.

Even 1-year, taking rs without at face-value, taking a bad team to a championship is something retiree player-coach Russell has done against better competition.

Would still take Jokic as a top-10 peak ever and entertain arguments for him against players with similarly flawed portfolios(shaq, jordan, magic, duncan, hakeem) but top 2-3 is hard to justify with a purely era-relative lens. Uncertainty opens the door, but it does not actually constitute a strong positive case inofitself.

I'm not one to bag on Embiids level of play. I think he's nearly always been quite excellent when he can play. Availability... not so great. His fragility is surpassed only by Walton.

We've been over '69 Russell a time or two. Let's not.

Alright but that puts 3 3-year stretches ahead of Jokic from the last 10-years. Luck-adjustment flips things but it feels wrong to be using that for larger samples.

[ShaqAttac]

I already said I think Jokic's peak can stand toe to toe with LeBron and Jordan...I think you can make a good case that he's just a more unstoppable offensive force. And defensively, I don't know about you guys...but I thought he was fantastic in these playoffs. A lot of that has to do with who he has around him, he's got some really high quality defenders, especially Gordon.

I think I would take current Jokic over the likes of Duncan/KG/Wilt/Russell/Bird/Magic/Hakeem/Shaq/Kareem. But obviously, I have LeBron and Jordan higher than anyone else, which people may disagree with. I think depending on what you value, Hakeem/Shaq/Wilt/Kareem can also have arguments for GOAT peak, although I would disagree.

how ppl still be puttinn mj on the lvl with bron as if bron dont got way better d n clown him in "impaact"

[parsnips33]

Gotta give some love to Oakland's own Aaron Gordon

Shot over 50% from the field and 40% from 3 in the last 3 rounds of the playoffs, all while guarding KD, Bron, and Jimmy Buckets

Integral part of a championship team

We all had to pretend like he was some nameless scrub last year to give Jokic an excuse for losing in round 1

[ceiling raiser]

I think I have to put him in my top 5 peaks (with Jordan, LeBron, Shaq, Curry).

[ceiling raiser]

I already said I think Jokic's peak can stand toe to toe with LeBron and Jordan...I think you can make a good case that he's just a more unstoppable offensive force. And defensively, I don't know about you guys...but I thought he was fantastic in these playoffs. A lot of that has to do with who he has around him, he's got some really high quality defenders, especially Gordon.

I think I would take current Jokic over the likes of Duncan/KG/Wilt/Russell/Bird/Magic/Hakeem/Shaq/Kareem. But obviously, I have LeBron and Jordan higher than anyone else, which people may disagree with. I think depending on what you value, Hakeem/Shaq/Wilt/Kareem can also have arguments for GOAT peak, although I would disagree.

how ppl still be puttinn mj on the lvl with bron as if bron dont got way better d n clown him in "impaact"

Absence of evidence <> evidence of absence.

Jordan's on/off in the playoffs isn't as good as LeBron's, but it isn't significantly worse. The limited sample RAPMs we have from Squared2020 suggest Jordan could be on that top tier.

In terms of career I think Jordan's case is much weaker.

[HeartBreakKid]

Gotta give some love to Oakland's own Aaron Gordon

Shot over 50% from the field and 40% from 3 in the last 3 rounds of the playoffs, all while guarding KD, Bron, and Jimmy Buckets

Integral part of a championship team

We all had to pretend like he was some nameless scrub last year to give Jokic an excuse for losing in round 1

I don't think anyone had to pretend he was a scrub to give Jokic an excuse. The team lost because they did not have Murray and Porter.

[OhayoKD]

I already said I think Jokic's peak can stand toe to toe with LeBron and Jordan...I think you can make a good case that he's just a more unstoppable offensive force. And defensively, I don't know about you guys...but I thought he was fantastic in these playoffs. A lot of that has to do with who he has around him, he's got some really high quality defenders, especially Gordon.

I think I would take current Jokic over the likes of Duncan/KG/Wilt/Russell/Bird/Magic/Hakeem/Shaq/Kareem. But obviously, I have LeBron and Jordan higher than anyone else, which people may disagree with. I think depending on what you value, Hakeem/Shaq/Wilt/Kareem can also have arguments for GOAT peak, although I would disagree.

how ppl still be puttinn mj on the lvl with bron as if bron dont got way better d n clown him in "impaact"

Absence of evidence <> evidence of absence.

Jordan's on/off in the playoffs isn't as good as LeBron's, but it isn't significantly worse. The limited sample RAPMs we have from Squared2020 suggest Jordan could be on that top tier.

In terms of career I think Jordan's case is much weaker.

There's a fair bit more than playoff on/off here working against Jordan. Even taking the best single-year set for Jordan(88) he's a smaller per-possession outlier in that set than Lebron is in whole career stuff even as the no.2(kg) has played 70,000 less possessions. The two regular seasons we have on/off for Jordan have him scoring lower than all but a couple of Lebron's.

More importantly, using the largest possible samples for off(84), even the best inflated signals for Jordan(give him all the credit for the Bulls srs shift between 84 and 88) place him well short of the marks Lebron has hit again and again, and there's nothing from the real-world stuff that suggests separation from even his own contemporaries(Magic and Hakeem), or various players Lebron dominates directly in every way possible(KG, Shaq, Duncan ect).

Account for era-srs-tresholds and Kareem and Russell also look much better from what we have in the regular season with playoff-only analysis the only thing suggesting potential parity with the former. The more you rely on surrounding years, the worse Jordan looks relative to that top-tier.

[MyUniBroDavis]

I refuse to believe the conversation shifted to jordan

[eminence]

how ppl still be puttinn mj on the lvl with bron as if bron dont got way better d n clown him in "impaact"

Absence of evidence <> evidence of absence.

Jordan's on/off in the playoffs isn't as good as LeBron's, but it isn't significantly worse. The limited sample RAPMs we have from Squared2020 suggest Jordan could be on that top tier.

In terms of career I think Jordan's case is much weaker.

There's a fair bit more than playoff on/off here working against Jordan. Even taking the best single-year set for Jordan(88) he's a smaller per-possession outlier in that set than Lebron is in whole career stuff even as the no.2(kg) has played 70,000 less possessions. The two regular seasons we have on/off for Jordan have him scoring lower than all but a couple of Lebron's.

More importantly, using the largest possible samples for off(84), even the best inflated signals for Jordan(give him all the credit for the Bulls srs shift between 84 and 88) place him well short of the marks Lebron has hit again and again, and there's nothing from the real-world stuff that suggests separation from even his own contemporaries(Magic and Hakeem), or various players Lebron dominates directly in every way possible(KG, Shaq, Duncan ect).

On+On/Off has a better correlation with APM type metrics than just on/off (duh), and MJs '97 would rank 8th in LeBrons career by that very basic measure (since we don't have a comparable APM dataset available that I'm aware of for the two). Just ahead of years like '11, '20, '21. Behind '09/'10/'12/'13/'15/'16/'17. That doesn't seem too shabby for a season most wouldn't have at the very top of MJs years.

A minutes adjustment would push it a bit higher, and reasonably close to non '09 seasons.

[TheGOATRises007]

I refuse to believe the conversation shifted to jordan

It wasn't an MJ stan who brought him up this time tbf

[OhayoKD]

Absence of evidence <> evidence of absence.

Jordan's on/off in the playoffs isn't as good as LeBron's, but it isn't significantly worse. The limited sample RAPMs we have from Squared2020 suggest Jordan could be on that top tier.

In terms of career I think Jordan's case is much weaker.

There's a fair bit more than playoff on/off here working against Jordan. Even taking the best single-year set for Jordan(88) he's a smaller per-possession outlier in that set than Lebron is in whole career stuff even as the no.2(kg) has played 70,000 less possessions. The two regular seasons we have on/off for Jordan have him scoring lower than all but a couple of Lebron's.

More importantly, using the largest possible samples for off(84), even the best inflated signals for Jordan(give him all the credit for the Bulls srs shift between 84 and 88) place him well short of the marks Lebron has hit again and again, and there's nothing from the real-world stuff that suggests separation from even his own contemporaries(Magic and Hakeem), or various players Lebron dominates directly in every way possible(KG, Shaq, Duncan ect).

On+On/Off has a better correlation with APM type metrics than just on/off (duh), and MJs '97 would rank 8th in LeBrons career by that very basic measure (since we don't have a comparable APM dataset available that I'm aware of for the two). Just ahead of years like '11, '20, '21. Behind '09/'10/'12/'13/'15/'16/'17. =

Is that correlation because double-counting on is more accurate or because "apm-type metrics" are still susceptible to collinearity(relevant considering Jordan and Pippen's minutes were very closely tied during the 2nd three-peat)? Double-crediting Jordan for having a better team and only coming up "just ahead" of 21 doesn't seem particularly impressive. Would appreciate seeing the specific scores/gaps.

That doesn't seem too shabby for a season most wouldn't have at the very top of MJs years.

Most would not, but per the impact stuff we have for both, the second-three-peat is not clearly behind the first. Granted that's probably a matter of rotations.

As mentioned, larger samples view peak jordan as a much less valuable player

A minutes adjustment would push it a bit higher, and reasonably close to non '09 seasons

Meh. Lebron played substantially more minutes during the first 13 years of his careers in a league where his contemporaries have generally played less.

[Outside]

The biggest revelation to me about these Nuggets is Murray’s transformation. He was largely a head-down tunnel vision scorer with questionable shot selection. He’s now a legitimately great playmaker who sees the floor way better than he used to.

I don’t know how it happened but it just did. Maybe playing with Jokic does that to players? Even AG made some passes that had 0 chance of happening when he was with the Magic. Pretty incredible.

A key part of that to me is way Denver's role players excelled at well-timed cuts. Many of Murray's best passes were to a cutter arriving at the right moment, so it's a synergistic thing that requires the cutter doing his job well and the passer knowing the cutter will be there.

I was also impressed with Murray's improved playmaking, but a lot of that is leveraging how well-designed and executed Denver's offense was. Don't get me wrong, he still deserves credit because of the awareness and ability to thread passes well through tight windows, but it's not as if it's all him. It's him learning how to leverage his skills within the system and taking advantage of teammates doing the same.

I was impressed with his improved defense as well. Numerous times, Miami would hunt him on switches, but he held up pretty well. Some of that was Butler inexplicably not going at him, and while some may point to Butler's lingering ankle injury, Butler seemed healthy enough to do most normal stuff. Still, Murray's positioning was good, his lower-body strength seemed good, and he generally stayed down on up-fakes and avoided reaching. A lot more disciplined on that end than I've seen him be previously.

The area he needs to improve the most is ballhandling. He's still somewhat shaky there. Also, on multiple occasions, he didn't react well to double-teams out high. He has to handle those better.

But he's now a champion, which I think will do wonders for his overall confidence. He's calmer, steadier, more patient.

[MyUniBroDavis]

The biggest revelation to me about these Nuggets is Murray’s transformation. He was largely a head-down tunnel vision scorer with questionable shot selection. He’s now a legitimately great playmaker who sees the floor way better than he used to.

I don’t know how it happened but it just did. Maybe playing with Jokic does that to players? Even AG made some passes that had 0 chance of happening when he was with the Magic. Pretty incredible.

A key part of that to me is way Denver's role players excelled at well-timed cuts. Many of Murray's best passes were to a cutter arriving at the right moment, so it's a synergistic thing that requires the cutter doing his job well and the passer knowing the cutter will be there.

I was also impressed with Murray's improved playmaking, but a lot of that is leveraging how well-designed and executed Denver's offense was. Don't get me wrong, he still deserves credit because of the awareness and ability to thread passes well through tight windows, but it's not as if it's all him. It's him learning how to leverage his skills within the system and taking advantage of teammates doing the same.

I was impressed with his improved defense as well. Numerous times, Miami would hunt him on switches, but he held up pretty well. Some of that was Butler inexplicably not going at him, and while some may point to Butler's lingering ankle injury, Butler seemed healthy enough to do most normal stuff. Still, Murray's positioning was good, his lower-body strength seemed good, and he generally stayed down on up-fakes and avoided reaching. A lot more disciplined on that end than I've seen him be previously.

The area he needs to improve the most is ballhandling. He's still somewhat shaky there. Also, on multiple occasions, he didn't react well to double-teams out high. He has to handle those better.

But he's now a champion, which I think will do wonders for his overall confidence. He's calmer, steadier, more patient.

Miami are really good at blitzing in general, Murray’s always been pretty good at stringing it laterally and getting the defender to be forced to switch and thus get a guard on jokic

[eminence]

Is that correlation because double-counting on is more accurate or because "apm-type metrics" are still susceptible to collinearity(relevant considering Jordan and Pippen's minutes were very closely tied during the 2nd three-peat)? Double-crediting Jordan for having a better team and only coming up "just ahead" of 21 doesn't seem particularly impressive. Would appreciate seeing the specific scores/gaps.

That doesn't seem too shabby for a season most wouldn't have at the very top of MJs years.

Most would not, but per the impact stuff we have for both, the second-three-peat is not clearly behind the first. Granted that's probably a matter of rotations.

As mentioned, larger samples view peak jordan as a much less valuable player

A minutes adjustment would push it a bit higher, and reasonably close to non '09 seasons

Meh. Lebron played substantially more minutes during the first 13 years of his careers in a league where his contemporaries have generally played less.

A) On-Off shouldn't really be compared between players on different teams (except as a measure of importance to their own team, but that's a largely meaningless measure on its own), it measures teamwide hierarchy (even more accurately positional hierarchy). Adding On gives it some semblance of being a league wide statistic by combining team quality (On) and importance to the team (On/Off), obviously minutes should also be accounted for. All else equal, a +10 on/off on a +10 team is more impressive than on a +0 team.

B) Large sample APM stats aren't particularly vulnerable to collinearity (it could theoretically happen, but lineups aren't generally strict enough that I'm ever worried about it). More often I see that used by folks to discredit guys they don't like. MJ/Pippen both have great APM stats because the Bulls were head and shoulders over the rest of the league and they were the driving force (same as Steph/Dray to follow). Even then, the potential issue would be that one is being given credit the other should be receiving, not that things are being double counted. My glance at BBref simplification of On+On/Off would obviously be significantly more susceptible to collinearity than any regression system would be (so APM style statistics are particularly useful looking at the Steph/Dray duo - which generally point to Steph as the 1A and Dray as the 1B, though each have waxed and waned at points).

C) On+On/Off for LeBron's career and MJ '97-'03 (per 100, as that's what BBref has it in)

'97 +21.3
'98 +15.1
'02 +3.2
'03 +2.4

'04 -0.4
'05 +10.9
'06 +14.5
'07 +15.0
'08 +13.3
'09 +36.2
'10 +28.3
'11 +19.6
'12 +24.4
'13 +28.5
'14 +14.2
'15 +27.3
'16 +27.3
'17 +25.6
'18 +3.3
'19 +10.6
'20 +18.9
'21 +19.2
'22 +0.0
'23 +13.9

The 10 highest seasons by this measure that I'm aware of (high minutes, sorry 2007 Lowry):
1. 2016 Draymond +44.8
2. 2016 Steph +40.6
3. 2009 LeBron +36.2
4. 2021 Gobert +35.7
5. 2015 Steph +34.8
6. 2005 Duncan +34.7
7. 2017 Steph +34.3
8. 2017 CP3 +34.2
9. 2023 Jokic +34.0
10. 2005 Manu +33.8

D) I need to go back to Squareds data and look over some of the posts, I pulled and did some basic stats on the first few and got away from that, so I haven't gone over MJs first 3pt stuff in any detail.

[parsnips33]

Gotta give some love to Oakland's own Aaron Gordon

Shot over 50% from the field and 40% from 3 in the last 3 rounds of the playoffs, all while guarding KD, Bron, and Jimmy Buckets

Integral part of a championship team

We all had to pretend like he was some nameless scrub last year to give Jokic an excuse for losing in round 1

I don't think anyone had to pretend he was a scrub to give Jokic an excuse. The team lost because they did not have Murray and Porter.

Well yeah, they didn't have to. Didn't stop people from doing it

[Peregrine01]

Gotta give some love to Oakland's own Aaron Gordon

Shot over 50% from the field and 40% from 3 in the last 3 rounds of the playoffs, all while guarding KD, Bron, and Jimmy Buckets

Integral part of a championship team

We all had to pretend like he was some nameless scrub last year to give Jokic an excuse for losing in round 1

I don't think anyone had to pretend he was a scrub to give Jokic an excuse. The team lost because they did not have Murray and Porter.

Well yeah, they didn't have to. Didn't stop people from doing it

He absolutely played like a scrub in last years playoffs. Draymond was completely in his head and dared him into doing exactly what he wanted him to do. He’s become a radically different player this year.

[parsnips33]

I don't think anyone had to pretend he was a scrub to give Jokic an excuse. The team lost because they did not have Murray and Porter.

Well yeah, they didn't have to. Didn't stop people from doing it

He absolutely played like a scrub in last years playoffs. Draymond was completely in his head and dared him into doing exactly what he wanted him to do. He’s become a radically different player this year.

Draymond sonned him for sure

I think there's certain players that get underrated in an effort to prop up a star they play with. AG is (was?) one of them. The constant race to "HE HAS NO HELP" leads to very good players becoming footnotes and I think it's a shame

[jalengreen]

Well yeah, they didn't have to. Didn't stop people from doing it

He absolutely played like a scrub in last years playoffs. Draymond was completely in his head and dared him into doing exactly what he wanted him to do. He’s become a radically different player this year.

Draymond sonned him for sure

I think there's certain players that get underrated in an effort to prop up a star they play with. AG is (was?) one of them. The constant race to "HE HAS NO HELP" leads to very good players becoming footnotes and I think it's a shame

While this still happens this year which is unfair to the Nuggets imo (the "no all-stars" talk as if Murray hasnt played at an all-nba level), I think role is important in the context of Gordon. He's fantastic in his current role, but as the second-best player on a team like he was in 2022? Nah

[rk2023]

Gotta give some love to Oakland's own Aaron Gordon

Shot over 50% from the field and 40% from 3 in the last 3 rounds of the playoffs, all while guarding KD, Bron, and Jimmy Buckets

Integral part of a championship team

We all had to pretend like he was some nameless scrub last year to give Jokic an excuse for losing in round 1

Cool data, courtesy of HCL

With Aaron Gordon defending in the playoffs:

Kevin Durant: 26/68, 3/13 on threes, 15 FTA, 12 assists, 12 TOV
KAT: 10/27, 1/9 on threes, 8 FTA, 3 assists, 9 TOV
Booker: 10/20, 1/5 on threes, 2 FTA, 5 assists, 3 TOV
Butler: 9/18, 3/6 on threes, 3 FTA, 11 assists, 1 TOV
A.Edwards: 10/21, 5/9 on threes, 4 FTA, 3 assists, 0 TOV
LeBron: 12/20, 1/4 on threes, 0 FTA, 11 assists, 1 TOV

Nuggets’ Playoffs ON/OFF

Jokic: +9.5 ON, +1.8 OFF, +7.7 ON-OFF
Murray: +10.3 ON, -1.8 OFF, +12.1 ON-OFF
Gordon: +12.5 ON, -7.1 OFF, +19.6 ON-OFF

Nuggets’ Finals’ ON/OFF through game 5

Jokic: +6.9 ON, +10.2 OFF, -3.3 ON-OFF
Murray: +13.1 ON, -25.4 OFF, +38.5 ON-OFF
Gordon: +15.4 ON, -27.2 OFF, +42.6 ON-OFF

This is in a series with zero garbage minutes.

[ardee]

Honestly the only guys I think that inarguably had higher PEAKS is Kareem Jordan LeBron Shaq

Then he's in an arguable tier with guys like Hakeem Timmy Wilt Russell

And he's clearly better than Bird Magic Kobe Steph KD West Big O were at their peaks imo

This is special. His defense is so good lol

Generally agree, I only switch Wilt and Kareem, plus move Russell down a tier. I think Wilt in '67 did enough to be in the Jordan/Shaq/LBJ tier, while Kareem for me can be ranked in any order with Hakeem and Duncan. Jokic belongs with them in the 5-8 range.

kareem probably had less help when he pulled his own 67 in his 2nd year in the league. Your tiering doesn't make much sense unless you disregard defensive impact

Wilt was better than Kareem defensively.

Also, Kareem was playing with a still prime Oscar Robertson who some think actually had more impact than him (I don't agree with that but he was still one of the best no. 2s of all time). He also had Bobby Dandridge at the forward spot.

I don't think it was necessarily better than Wilt's '67 cast but it's definitely a debate.

My tiers are by overall impact. I see LeBron, Jordan, Shaq and Wilt as GOAT level on both ends in those peak years. Kareem, Duncan and Hakeem were all GOAT on one end and "just" elite on the other, which is why I have them one tier down (along with Jokic now).