f4p wrote:DraymondGold wrote:From 2017–2019 (larger sample to give more stable values), here's the net rating with each of the stars on or off:
-All 4 stars on: +17. (that's 20% better than the 1996 Chicago Bulls across 3 seasons!)
-Only Klay off: +15.64.
-Only KD off: +13.54 (still better than the 96 Chicago Bulls even with KD off)
-Only Draymond off: +12.77
-Only Steph on, all 3 other stars off: +10.81
-Only Steph off: +1.94
When all four stars are on the court, the 17-19 Warriors are significantly better than the 1996 Bulls. With all 3 other all stars off, and just Steph on, the 17-19 Warriors have a better net rating than the 16 Warriors, 13 Heat, 2000 Lakers, 91 Bulls, 87 Lakers, or 86 Celtics. With all 3 all stars on, and just Steph off, the 17-19 Warriors are worse than this season's 2022 Cavs.
If we include both the regular season and the playoffs, the difference decreases, but Curry still dominates (only KD off: +11.08. only Steph off: +3.66). Lots of people have said that Curry's had a better fit than other peaks, and that his team was stacked. This is true. But, as far as I can tell, they only dominated when Curry was on the court,
here's the problem, at least for me. curry ALWAYS dominates these plus/minus stats. i won't go look up the others, but for something like RPM, steph practically comes out as the best player every year for the last decade. and yet there hasn't been a single season that ended where anyone said curry was the best player (well, maybe ElGee). at some point, like with chris paul and david robinson, i have to start at least somewhat discounting crazy good looking advanced stats that don't seem to match reality. steph would be practically the best player of all time if we just looked at some of these stats, and yet plenty of times we get to the playoffs and when they're over, we're pretty assured he's not the best player of all time.
Thanks for the reply! We definitely come at things from a different perspective, so it's nice to try to get a sense of a the opposing side
As you point out, there's a bit of a disconnect: Impact Stats ("curry ALWAYS dominates these plus/minus stats") vs Public opinion/Media ("and yet there hasn't been a single season that ended where anyone said curry was the best player" / " and yet plenty of times we get to the playoffs and when they're over, we're pretty assured he's not the best player of all time.") (for your third quote, it sounded like the assurance he wasn't the best was coming from public opinion or at least your own opinion -- sorry if I misunderstood the third quote, and feel free to correct me if there's a 3rd disconnect other than impact stats and public opinion).
This raises a question: are impact stats correct, or is public opinion correct (or is it somewhere in between)? Here, impact stats almost universally show Curry is in this Top tier of peaks. Public opinion didn't during the 2017-2019 Warriors run (though that may be changing now).
Example Mistakes on the two sides:
Neither side is perfect. As you suggest, there are cases where players seem to over perform in Impact stats compared to what a traditional list might think (you mention Chris Paul and David Robinson here. Others might reference KG, etc.).
I could also point out times where public opinion / media seems to be wrong. Take the 2022 preseason predictions. 15/16 ESPN writers had KD's Nets making the conference finals, with 10/16 saying KD's Nets would make the finals. KD's Nets were the only team swept in the first round. Only 1/16 ESPN writers had the Heat making the conference finals, and 0/16 ESPN writers had the Celtics even making the conference finals. In the west, 14/16 writers had LeBron's Lakers making the conference finals, and 10/16 had LeBron's Lakers making the finals. LeBron's Lakers didn't even make the playoffs. Only 3 writers had either the Warriors or the Mavs making the conference finals. (source:
https://www.basketballinsiders.com/news/espn-expert-picks-2022-nba-playoffs-espn-writer-predictions/). ESPN didn't have either the Warriors or the Celtics in their top 10 teams (
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/32399420/nba-preview-2021-22-power-rankings-projections-breakout-stars-storylines-all-30-teams?platform=amp). This pattern keeps up with most other media members and public opinion.
Biases that Cause the Mistakes: Both have biases which might explain these mistakes. Here's a few that come to mind (by no means an all-inclusive list):
1) Possible Bias with public opinion 1: Public Opinion / Media members might have a bias in favor of players who pass the "untrained eye test". For example, athleticism > basketball intelligence or skill, on ball offense vs off-ball offense, on-ball man defense vs team defense all show up more in highlight videos and are more noticeable to the untrained eye.
2) Possible Bias with public opinion 2: Public opinion / media members might over-index on memorable moments, considering them as more valuable or meaningful than they should.
3) Possible Bias with public opinion 3: People may overvalue "Traditional Narratives" (e.g. of needing to be the top scorer to be your team's best player, of needing to have the "Clutch Gene" with memorable last-minute shots to be an all-time player, of needing to win as a floor raiser who lifted bad teammates rather than as a ceiling raiser who unlocked good teammates).
4) Possible Bias with Impact stat 1: Impact stats can suffer from noise in smaller sample sizes. There was some discussion of this on the last page.
5) Possible Bias with Impact stat 2: The impact stats that are the most bias-free (e.g. RAPM, PIPM) can isolate your impact from your teammates' impact. But this impact is context-specific "value" (how much you help your team win given your context, e.g. your coach, role, etc., even if they can isolate your impact from your teammates') not goodness (how well you might help some team win in any context or in a general context).
6) Possible Bias with Impact stat 3: The impact stats that use Box-score inputs (to help in smaller samples) can have box-score biases (e.g. BPM, WS, PER). For example, they might favor offense over defense, or big men over smaller players, etc.
My personal opinion: As you've probably figured, I side with the impact metrics over public opinion. To me, when I consider the possible biases, Curry comes out on top. The possible biases against impact stats are definitely a concern. For me, they help explain why CP3 and Robinson are outliers, but to be clear -- Curry is a much more consistent outlier across all impact metrics than either of those two. When we consider the added context (which I won't repeat too much, since I already addressed the context in my Ballot on page 1), I feel pretty confident that the impact metrics are judging Curry accurately.
So is Public Opinion/Media underrating Curry (at least pre 2022)? I think so, yes. Curry gets value in a different way from almost any other all-time peak. He's not an all-time athlete (at least in the traditional ways, though his strength is underrated and his stamina/coordination are definitely all-time). He has more off-ball value more than perhaps any other player in history. This makes me think Bias 1 applies for Curry.
As for having memorable moments, Curry does have a memorable moment where ehe underperformed (2016 finals). This was of course due to injury, but nonetheless the memorable negative moment definitely supports the idea that Bias 2 is causing people to underrate Curry (much like 2011 playoffs causing people to underrate older LeBron).
As for Bias 3, he also suffers from this. Curry is willing to not be the top scorer on his team and go for non-traditional playmaking (offball playmaking) if it will help his team win more. Take the 2018 finals. KD scored more than Curry, which was given as a reason by the public / media to say that KD was the better offensive player player. But
Curry got doubled literally over 20x more than KD did. Curry was willing to be an off-ball playmaker for KD, which has a ton of value that gets ignored by people with Bias 3. Similarly, there's also a bias against being a ceiling raiser over being a floor raiser. Curry's clearly a ceiling raiser, so this applies here too.
Anyway, that's how I see things.
f4p wrote:and it only gets compounded with the "everyone else on the warriors didn't matter, it was actually all steph" plus/minus numbers. so why did the warriors go from losing a 3-1 finals lead to the most dominant season ever when adding kevin durant, if kevin durant has no impact on the warriors?
To be clear, I'm not trying to say that nobody else matters... only that Steph Matters Most. For example, the on/off data supports that Steph matters most, while also supporting that Dray/Klay/KD still helped the warriors.
As for the "3-1 finals to the most dominant season ever" point, I don't see the 16 Warriors as anything other than dominant. They're more dominant than the vast majority of teams in NBA history. Why did they lose? Well... Curry was playing injured, Draymond was suspended for a game, Andrew Bogut missed the last 2.5 games, Iguodala was playing slightly injured, Harrison Barnes had arguably the worst 3-game stretch of his life, LeBron and Kyrie had arguably the best 3-game stretch of their life... all for the Cavs to beat the Warriors by a measly 4 points in what was statistically the single closest Finals series ever. Basically everything went wrong for the Warriors, and everything went right for the Cavs, and the Warriors still almost won. The 16 Warriors were definitely dominant. They just suffered from injuries.
Adding KD just helped them be more dominant (and more healthy). But Curry's Warriors were always dominant, assuming they were healthy. That's where I'm absolutely open to arguments against Curry. Unfortunately, Curry's one of the least healthy all-time peak players (not that KD is much better). But if you want to knock Curry down for health concerns, by all means, go for it.
f4p wrote:why does the last 8 years of warriors history look like: klay thompson plays 5 straight years, warriors make 5 straight finals, klay thompson misses 2 years, warriors miss 2 straight playoffs (maybe they could have eked their way in if steph played in 2020 but the early results were not dissimilar to 2021), klay comes back, warriors make finals again. at some point, the "it's all steph" stuff stops being believable. the guy is basically tom brady without the longevity at this point. amazing coaching, amazing defensive support, stats don't quite hold up in the playoffs, but still wins all the time, whether he has an amazing playoffs or a "meh" playoffs.
You mention they miss the playoffs when Klay was injured, but I think that's underrating Steph's contributions. They played like the worst team in the league when both Klay AND Steph were missing in 2020 (while also having a worse-fitting bench).
As for 2021, the Warriors were the 8th seed, so saying they weren't a playoff team while having $32.74 Million Dollars of salary missing for the entire season definitely seems to be underselling it. Yes, they missed the playoffs, but they made the play-ins and were certainly playoff-quality even with the missing salary and the poor-fitting bench. And, once they weren't missing salary and had a better fitting bench, suddenly the Warriors were back to being champions, with Curry once again as the clear-cut best player on the team.
f4p wrote:sansterre also thought the 2018 rockets were the 95th best team ever, like 60 spots behind the mighty 2010 orlando magic. it was a great project, but not the Bible, especially as it couldn't take into account things like injuries.
you could argue Kawhi's injury makes the Spurs overrated in the system (though the 2017 Warriors still come out on top in that team list if you reduce the Spurs' SRS by 50% to account for the injury),
and i will argue that. it took a +7 SRS team and turned them into a joke, with i believe both curry and durant posting +17 rTS% numbers against the #1 defense, in a series where they were getting shellacked in game 1 with kawhi healthy. where does the warriors playoff run come out if the spurs win game 1 and maybe steal another? mandhandling the 2017 cavs is certainly impressive buy stylistically probably less so than a healthy spurs (b/c the cavs had no defense).
Sansterre's list of course isn't perfect (it doesn't claim to be), but it's also one of the most thoroughly researched lists and well thought-out lists on the internet. And the fact that the list isn't perfect doesn't undermine the fact that, statistically, the 2017 Warriors opponents were perfectly in line with the opponents that other all time teams faced (even after accounting for Kawhi's injury).
The question isn't whether the Warriors opponents were the most difficult opponents possible. The question is whether the Curry's' opponents were less difficult than other all-time player's opponents, and whether that difficulty changes how we evaluate Curry's playoffs relative to his opponent's playoffs. And per his opponent's average SRS (per Sansterre's list), we find that Curry's 2017 playoff opponents are ballpark in line with Duncan's 2003 opponents, or Larry Bird's 1986 opponents, or Magic's 1985 opponents, or Jordan's 1991 opponents, even after curving for the loss of Kawhi.
Happy to discuss more if you'd like!
Definitely not what I was trying to say -- Sorry if I gave that impression! 
