iggymcfrack wrote:WarriorGM wrote:iggymcfrack wrote:
I know this may be a little unconventional, but I actually really highly value the POY votes from the project in the PC forum. I consider a POY to be more prestigious than an MVP in terms of how I rate players. LeBron was POY 9 times in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020. Steph was POY once in 2015. That would exactly align with my own beliefs about who was the best player each year.
I’m higher on Steph than a lot of people, but he was rather inconsistent in the playoffs. The year he had his best regular season stats and was voted unanimous MVP, he choked the Finals away with a pretty terrible performance for a superstar where it wouldn’t have taken much to win. LeBron has 5 postseasons with better numbers than Curry’s career best.
I know the argument with Curry is that his off-ball gravity makes him overperform the box score, but if you look at Engellman’s career RAPM, LeBron is 2nd in raw data behind Jokic and 1st when you adjust for age. Curry is 8th in raw data and 5th adjusted for age. He’s behind not only LeBron, but also trails KG and Chris Paul in both datasets. He’s also had much worse availability than LeBron over the years. LeBron has played almost 5K more minutes than Curry since Steph entered the league.
If you wanna look at more traditional criteria, LeBron has 4 MVPs and has finished top 5 in voting 14 times. He’s been first-team all-NBA 13 times. Steph has 2 MVPs and has been top 5 in voting 4 times. He’s been first team all-NBA 4 times. LeBron’s the all-time scoring leader. Curry’s currently 35th on the list. Basically any way you slice it, LeBron has been much better than Curry. That’s not a knock on Curry. It’s hard to keep up with the GOAT. Steph can be a top 10 player all time and still be a long ways behind the greatest to ever pick up a basketball.
Regarding paragraph 1:
The LeBron Forum a.k.a the PC Forum? We're supposed to take anything seriously coming out of that echo chamber?
Regarding paragraph 2:
The 2016 finals is described as a choke from Steph despite coming back from injuries earlier in the playoffs and having gutted out a 1-3 comeback against the Thunder. Fine. Then what do we make of LeBron's 2009 loss to Dwight Howard? The 2011 finals collapse? Or the 2014 1-4 lopsided loss to the Spurs? Steph and the Warriors in their prime have always been a tough out. I cannot think of a best-of-7 series where they lost in under six games even when they were the underdogs.
LeBron has 5 postseasons with larger numbers? Heliocentric play leads to larger individual numbers not necessarily to better basketball. You going to argue Westbrook putting up large numbers means he was a better player than Curry?
Regarding paragraph 3:
RAPM is a black box. A purported attempt to recreate it had Curry with the larger numbers. RAPM has also fallen in use. Probably in part due to some of the newer output looking dubious. Has the look of a metric that was curve fit to produce a desired outcome at the beginning. In any event wins are the number that matters most to me and considering Curry's winning numbers are in record territory it reduces the chance it's just randomness or luck. Wins supersede other numbers. When there is a discrepancy between wins and those other numbers it is those other numbers that must explain themselves or go back to the drawing board.
Regarding paragraph 4:
Media awards are ultimately opinions open to bias. As I showed in an earlier post Curry has experienced historically anomalous MVP voting results when playing with KD. And that's only the beginning. The All-NBA selection that went to David Lee instead of Steph in 2013 perhaps was understandable at the time but with hindsight ignoring what happened there is unjustifiable. That and the Iguodala FMVP and even KD FMVPs illustrate the shortcomings of this approach penalizing as it does players who enhance the play of their teammates, those who weren't expected to be stars from the beginning, and those not popular with the media for whatever reason. If with the benefit of hindsight one could expect corrections to be issued and context to be applied perhaps one could take these opinions more seriously but as we see just from this example it's just as likely media will double down on their previous dumb takes.
LeBron's the all-time scoring leader? But he's only been the scoring champ once. Curry has been the scoring champ twice. Curry also has a higher highest scoring game. It's very easy to slice things in a way that show Curry's advantages.
So you don’t believe in box score numbers, you don’t believe in impact numbers, you don’t believe in smart poster consensus, and you don’t believe in media consensus. What do you believe in exactly?
My response was initially to you asking what LeBron’s superior accomplishments were with a skeptical tone. Well I listed all the top criteria that I and other analytically bent people would usually use to judge players. If you wanna say they’re all stupid fine, but you’re not making a point, you’re just choosing to ignore all evidence.
As for, what about Bron losing to the Magic in ‘09? Well, LeBron had a better series against them than Curry’s ever had in his career including a buzzer beater game winner and his team just didn’t step up. He averaged 39/8/8 on .591 TS%. If he had Curry-level teammates they win easily. Curry in the biggest game of his life had 17/5/2 on .316 TS% with 4 turnovers. That’s a choke.
Bron did choke in the 2011 Finals, but that’s one series in his entire life against a stellar postseason record for 20 years. Curry played like **** in 2 of the 3 biggest series of his life. It’s a different hit rate. Now I’m not a Curry hater. He did come up huge in the 2018 WCF against Houston and the 2022 Finals against Boston. The latter gave him the title of GOAT PG for me. But while LeBron was one of the most consistent playoff performers of all-time aside from one series, Curry was very hit or miss.
You bring up Westbrook for heliocentric style as a comparison but even his best statistical postseason (a 1st round loss) didn’t beat out Curry’s peak postseason BPM of 9.7. LeBron has a peak postseason BPM of 17.5. I said he had 5 postseasons that beat out Curry, but actually I was looking at the regular season. It’s actually ELEVEN of LeBron’s 17 postseasons that beat Curry’s best. He’s also an elite defender which Curry absolutely isn’t. You have no argument here whatsoever.
I actually answered all your points already but let's go over this again.
Box score numbers? Impact numbers? Smart poster consensus? Media consensus?—I told you already wins trump all of those. If the wins cannot be explained by the previous you have to go back and try to explain it again. And I have already explained those individually.
Large box score numbers do not necessarily have a direct correlation to winning and can be influenced significantly by style of play.
RAPM is a black box with Engelmann's ranking having been contradicted by at least one attempt to recreate it and some of its results are just odd. Given the amount of interpretation one would probably need to get useful info out of it one might do as well interpreting the raw impact numbers directly.
Smart posters? How do we know they are smart posters? Here's a simple applicable test for this situation: a player comes along who leads his previously perennially losing team to two 67+ win seasons, a championship and is selected as back-to-back MVP—one unanimously, is this player a potential top ten player of all-time? Is the player possibly the greatest player in the league? If the answer received is "no he isn't and it isn't even worth discussing" then that is not a smart poster—or maybe he is but he knows in the pit of his stomach the guy who he's been championing as the best player actually isn't and he isn't interested in getting at the truth. The PC forum purports to discuss basketball and devotes hundreds of pages to its LeBron thread. A player who is just as great if not greater doesn't get 10 pages of discussion despite pulling out yet another championship that they completely did not see coming. Is there any self-reflection? Are there any questions about how they did not see this coming? Nope. None. It's a silly pretentious forum full of LeBron diehards that turned off most of those who might believe differently.
Media consensus? Media awards and commentary are a marketing tool first and foremost. Being able to hand them out is a perk of paying billions in broadcast rights. You think there aren't any vested interests involved? You don't see the constant stupidity on display that they pass off as reasonable takes? Kareem was robbed of an FMVP because of network pressure. Windhorst confessed that contract situations could affect his voting. Lots of drama surrounding opinions of mouthpieces of vested interests that at the bottom of it really shouldn't matter. The achievements exist independently of whether the media appreciates them or not.
Which brings us back to the matter of listing what LeBron's achievements are. What I seem to be getting for the most part is a bunch of media awards and lots of seasons with big box score stats. Nice but they still just produced 4 championships same as Curry and I wouldn't even call them as impressive. Curry won with arguably Iguodala and Wiggins as his team's second option. LeBron's won with Kyrie Irving who is in the finals again with someone else and Anthony Davis who was chosen for the 75th Anniversary Team.
Bron had a better series losing to the Magic than Curry ever did? Bron lost in 6 games. Curry's "choke" series against the Cavaliers went 7. In the deciding elimination games of the series the 2009 Cavaliers lost by 13 to the Magic while the Warriors lost by 4 to the 2016 Cavaliers. Curry was outscored by 10 by James while James was outscored by 15 by Dwight Howard. And let's face it Curry lost to James and Irving while LeBron lost to Dwight Howard and Rashard Lewis. If 2016 was a choke by Curry, 2009 was a choke by James. Don't give me this "aside from one series" tripe. I'm also unsure what the second big series Curry played like **** is supposed to be. The one where he won his first championship with his scoring in the 4th quarters?
Pointing to James' larger numbers overall don't really impress me much because
that's his game being both a feature and limitation of a heliocentric offensive hub. That's why Wade was a worse fit for James than KD was for Curry. Curry can affect the game in other ways.
