Kobe vs Shai

[wafflzgod]

If Shai continues this pace for the rest of the year, has Kobe had a individual regular season as good as what Shai is doing this season?

[lessthanjake]

The answer here is no, IMO. SGA is playing extremely well—to me, he’s playing at a level above what Kobe reached. That said, Kobe will have had “greater” years unless the Thunder win the title.

[mademan]

No he hasnt. Both offensively and defensively

[ShotCreator]

Offense is close enough. I still want to see Shai in the playoffs a little more.

Defensively I think it's a blow out for Shai. Better everywhere.

Shai's the most complete guard since prime CP3 for me. A creative 3 level scorer who can pass and defend in his sleep.

Kobe had more gaps in his game IMO. In a variety of ways.

[mikejames23]

... I def. don't see a 5 time title winner in Shai. Shai's def. top 5 right now, but he has some work to do if he wants to be this good.

[One_and_Done]

Shai is already better peak to peak.

[Djoker]

Kobe clears him even just for the RS. What he did in 2006 is better than what SGA is doing now IMO. The Thunder rely mostly on their defense.

[OhayoKD]

the appropriate comparison is Jordan.

[Doctor MJ]

If Shai continues this pace for the rest of the year, has Kobe had a individual regular season as good as what Shai is doing this season?

No need to put the caveat. Shai '23-24 topped Kobe already.

[OhayoKD]

If Shai continues this pace for the rest of the year, has Kobe had a individual regular season as good as what Shai is doing this season?

No need to put the caveat. Shai '23-24 topped Kobe already.

70-win pace without his 2nd best player (in a period-of non-expansion no less). Just popped the defending champs missing 3 key teammates. Barring a mega drop-off, a Kobe comp is outright disrespectful.

[lessthanjake]

the appropriate comparison is Jordan.

I know you meant this as a dig at Jordan, but unironically SGA is playing at a high enough level so far this year that it’s not a crazy comparison IMO. Obviously, we’re not even halfway through the season and Jordan was at a ridiculous level for many years (which I doubt SGA will be able to match, but we’ll see!), so it’s perhaps premature to make such comparisons. That said, I think SGA’s year so far is pretty comparable to a Jordan year. And, while I don’t think discussion about “archetypes” is very helpful since every player is different, the success that SGA and the Thunder are having so far this year does tend to cut against arguments that we should take a presumptively negative view of the impact of players in this general mold. It also cuts against the idea that a player that generally is like Jordan wouldn’t be really successful and impactful in today’s NBA. Obviously SGA and Jordan are different players, but there’s a ton of similarities—both great scorers with fantastic mid-range games but not fantastic three-point shots who can and do play off-ball more than a lot of other great offensive players, both are good but not all-time great playmakers, and both are fantastic guard defenders who force lots of turnovers. And we see SGA leading a team to incredibly high heights so far this year (a 70-win pace so far, with a 12 SRS), with a very well-constructed but not exactly ridiculously star-laden team. We’ll see if SGA can keep things up the rest of the year and into the playoffs, but if he does then it does seem like a valid comparison to me. But that’s a reflection of how incredible SGA would’ve been if that were the case, rather than being a dig at Jordan.

[OhayoKD]

the appropriate comparison is Jordan.

I know you meant this as a dig at Jordan.

Not really. Would agree it bodes well for a theoretical Jordan modernized in all the right ways. That said, you seem to be conflating outcomes with attributes.

Obviously SGA and Jordan are different players, but there’s a ton of similarities—both great scorers with fantastic mid-range games but not fantastic three-point shots who can and do play off-ball more than a lot of other great scorers

Shai shoots far more threes, makes them at a higher clip, and makes them facing significantly more defensive attention. In context, SGA is a very good three-point shooter. Jordan was an average one in a league where the bar was much lower. In Jordan's league, SGA would be the best.

That's a pretty critical difference for a shooting guard who doesn't want to get swallowed near the basket in a league filled to the brin with mobile giants like Wemby, Giannis, JJJ, and Davis.

both are good but not all-time great playmakers

Sure, but for translation purposes what matters is the "how". And there's a rather significant chasm in passing skill and processing speed to consider there:

Spoiler:

but he would also be likely to generate much easier passes for himself than guys like harden and luka and paul. i watched harden score 36 ppg iso'ing and blowing past people and spamming 35-36% step-back 3's on a spread out court in 2019, without anything nearing 1997 MJ athleticism and speed. maybe jordan's not automatically equaling the sheer volume of that particular season, but MJ's getting open even easier on a per possession basis and probably generating easier reads because you have to come over even more to try to stop him.

Hi f4p, falcolombardi I'm not sure I agree with your take on Jordan's passing at all, falcolombardi. I'm actually a bit surprised by it. I was watching some of the 91 playoffs recently (a lot of the games are available on YouTube), and I was pretty consistently impressed with Jordan's passing.

For example:

Watch on YouTube

1) 16:44
Layup pass from the 3 point line over 3 defenders. It’s a touch to the left of the guy, but it’s a crazy difficult pass to sneak through this opening and the defense, and he delivers with good vision and speed.

2) 19:31
Goes for the alleyoop pass form the top of the 3 point line. Another very difficult pass, that takes good vision and placement… just a split second too late, but this is a Trae Young level pass.

3) 21:18
Another layup pass from 5 feet behind the 3 point line. This one’s between 2 defenders, with the lookaway to fake out the defense

4) 29:35
Pick and roll left-to-right pocket pass through 2 defenders for the layup.

5) 32:57
Classic Jordan midair pass. Draws the double / soft-triple team, then passes out at the last second. It’s a touch low, but his teammate’s wide open if he wanted the midrange shot (and would have been even more open if he was a 3 point shooter today)

6) 33:53
Another layup pass around 3 defenders. Sees teammate cutting off ball and hits them at the perfect time.

I'm not sure I could confidently name 10 players who could make passes like 1, 2, 3, 5, 6.... and this is from just one single quarter!

These require vision (e.g. #6 requires seeing the cutter and thinking ahead faster than the defense can recover), they're difficult in timing and placement (e.g. #1 requires sneaking it through multiple defenders), they show passing ambition (e.g #2 is Trae-Young like in how ambitious it is), they're high-value passes (#1, 2, 3, 4, 6 are all layup passes on opportunities that wouldn't be generated otherwise), they show the ability to pass in the pick & roll which would be more valuable today (#4), they show Jordan's able to pass in dynamic situations (#5), they show he's able to pass easily out of double teams off his scoring threat (#4-6).... I'm really not seeing this lack of lead-pass ability. Again, this is from just one random quarter I turned on.... and I see similar stuff in his other 91 games. Am I missing something? How do any one of these passes fit the profile of someone who was just a "fairly 'basic' passer"?

Now to be fair, 91 was definitely one of his best passing playoffs. But people normally don't lose passing vision or passing accuracy as he gets older. To me, he just focused more on off-ball stuff as he got older, but if you put him with a coach that pushes him to pass more... I see no reason why he wouldn't be able to make pass #4 out of the pick and roll or pass #5 to a 3 point shooter, or pass #6 at the top of the 3 point line to a cutter.

This absolutely has potential as a heliocentric Top 5 player. It seems miles better than the stuff Durant or healthy Kawhi could ever do, and they're both capable of leading top-of-the-league offenses... and it's not like they're clearly better than Jordan as scorers or off-ball threats.

Do you disagree? I'd love to see film of Jordan's passing limitation if you have any

Hi draymond! Nice to talk with you again.

First and foremost i will point out the bolded parts are not the same meaning. I didnt say jordan was a bad passer or couldnt be a lead ball handler. I think that his vision was able of making the correct but basic reads. Which is good enough when you are a top 3 scorer ever

If the word basic sounds more harsh than it should it is unerstandable, but is the word i would use for when someone passing vision goes as far as doing the correct but obvious pass. Which to be kinda honest...most of those passes you highlighted are(more of that in a second, need to explain myself on this)

There is first a need of separating vision from scoring gravity. Jordan passed the former with flying colours but was imo more a solid passing grade at the former

A guy who is a great scorer but lacks a decent vision will waste great creation chances over and over in lieu of tough shots for himself, jordan had a solid enough vision that he could find most of those passing windows hence why he was a great proto helio in the late 80's with his huge scoring threat and offensive load. But he rarely found the "hidden gems" that better passers do

those often hidden in plain sight by the less valuable but safer and clearer dimes or "lost great assist" chances to take a "good enough shot". Side effects of the shot first/pass second that led to his historical scoring seasons (and low turnovers)

as those highest value assists often are more likely to be deflected or stolen, there is a reason most passers dont want or cannot go for them well enough

There are many aspects to creation.

1- One is not taking shots where a pass would do better to your team, jordan failed this at a relatively high rate when a "good enough" shot was available to him. Times where he takes a good pull up where a teammate had a better spot up.

2-Another is not making overt mistakes, those where a player goes for a near impossible shot rather than passing (jordan did this a ton before cleaning up around 87) makes a terrible pass to nowhere,etc. Jordan cleaned these up after his first seasons which is how a player goes from a weak passer to a solid, average capable one like jordan did

3-The next one is precision, the ability to make passes others wouldnt dare to makr threading a narrow path of rival bodies and limbs. Jordan attempts one in the lob you mention but failed to thread the needle (trae young who you mention threads those lobs or other kind of high precision passes consistently but trae young is actually a fairly high standard of a passer to compare to jordan here)

4- the most flashy one is finding the really hidden passes nobody else would see or imagine and frequently seeing them and imagining them. The ones that magic or bird were iconic for but that nash doncic, lebron and others can find with some frequency. These ones that in my analysis jordan rarely made

To look at your examples

16:44 pause the video at roughly the start 16:48 and see how there is a wide open bulls player in the paint clear for everyone to see right in front of jordan field of vision. Is the correct read but is also the obvious one a coach would be angry at his players for missing. Is the right choice of course but is not particularly impressive to send the ball to your teammate totally alone under ths paint right across you

19:31 the lob attempt, the right idea but execution is a bit off the mark. I dont blame jordan for missing the hard but high value pass slighlty...but i know that trae or luka or harden hit those a majority of the time which is another component of why they are better passers

21:18 this is the best pass of the six, as jordan finds the better pass to the interior with grant over the corner 3 and seems to regognize that divac is going to the corner leaving a easy score for horace but if you pause at 21:21 is still a easy one

with a open grant (his defender is basi prop in that angle as he "fronts" him) a inmefective double team that is so far enough that jordan has a comfortable straight line pass in a straight field of vision to make over the two lakers players. As divac is going to guard the corner shooter.

Good pass but one i would expect an starting ball handler make nearly every time

29:40 another good and correct pass that i would expect my ball handler to almost always be able to make in that situation (having the scoring pressure or athletism to create the opening is a different question)as is not exactly that small of a window

is a precise pass quickly delivered but not exactly passing through a narrow corridor of arms, is the kind of good and correct read that is the expected baseline of a modern heliocentric star to be seen as a great passer. Pause at 29:39 and see that the closest rival arms in the ball path is the guard running -behind- jordan who is in no good position/angle to challenge the passing angle even

Jordan obviously stops his momentum while the chasing guard doesnt so it looks like a tighter window it was

32:57 kinda tricky to evaluate. On one side jordan went for the ultra tough shot but then he managed to pass in the air to keep the play moving

If you think he did it on purpose to draw the defense attention it would be a impressive pass but it honestly seems more like a mistake that his athletism and hand size let him solve along some luck that there was a teammate in the right spot for a bailout kick out

Either way it was a score created by jordan scoring pressur more than great vision or anticipation (unless we think he had planed a 3d chess move to pass in the air from the start)

33:53 nice awareness to notice the cutting player getting in position for a pass, easily a good and correct pass but you overstate a fair bit the "3 player wall" im fromt of him a fair bit.

Good but not -great- pass as he recognizes his teammate (again, right in fromt of his field of vision) moving into scoring position and delivers an accurate pass to him.

All of these are good passes, correct reads.(even the bailout pass in the air once he got himself there) but neither is remarkable, they are 6's, 7's maybe one or two 8's. But not the 9's and 10's that the best passers do with relative frequency

Jordan was an all time scorer with huge scoring pressure om defenses and athletism so he could create these "6's and 7's" and maybe some "8's, the kind of assist profile i would expect of an average nba ball handler guard if the average nba guard could score and create off his scoring threat at industrial quantities like jordan

But modern star helios are expected to do those highlight "9's and 10's" assists too, make those though lob passes consistently and not prioritize their own "good enough scoring options" at the expense of better shots for teammates

Jordan created by making the simple decisions archaic defenses asked him to make, much like Hakeem. SGA creates by being a far more dynamic and ambidextrous ball-handler, with better vision and anticipation, and much quicker decision-making, as well as being able to leverage both rim pressure and pressure from deep to keep more sophisticated defenses, featuring more dynamic defenders, honest. The outcome is similar, but the process is different. And the process is what matters when one claims a player will do well in a different league.

Finally

and both are fantastic guard defenders who force lots of turnovers.

Guard defenders who force turnovers is about where the similarity stops. As covered, mot much suggests the "getting your hand to the ball" part is of great intrinsic value:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=116226778#p116226778
To the extent it does matter, the how makes a difference. Jordan forced turnovers at the expense of being one of the most error-prone defenders in the league. Shai forces them being one of the least. Shai is blownby less, is out of position less, and fouls less, all of which he does dealing with vastly more versatile offensive stars playing on vastly more dynamic offenses, run or led by a an unprecedented glut of basketball supercomputers like Jokic, Lebron, Luka, and to some degree Draymond, either personally or via teammates, finding and exploiting the gaps left by excessive "defensive activity".

Courtesy of playing in a league where the likes of Bird and Drexler shined, Jordan may well retain an era-relative case. But Shai is better at basketball. We're yet to see if he's better by enough to be as or more impactful though early returns are promising.

[Cavsfansince84]

... I def. don't see a 5 time title winner in Shai. Shai's def. top 5 right now, but he has some work to do if he wants to be this good.

Did Kobe win 5 titles in one season? A lot of people don't even use a season in which he won a ring as his peak.

[AEnigma]

Pretty easy for me to imagine Shai winning an MVP and two Finals MVPs, and then theoretically being able to win three additional titles next to a player like peak Shaq (e.g. current Jokic or future Wemby).

[mademan]

With the future OKC should have, if theyre not destroyed by injuries ***knock on wood***, Shai has a real path to being a top 10 all time great

[lessthanjake]

Obviously SGA and Jordan are different players, but there’s a ton of similarities—both great scorers with fantastic mid-range games but not fantastic three-point shots who can and do play off-ball more than a lot of other great scorers

Shai shoots far more threes, makes them at a higher clip, and makes them facing significantly more defensive attention. In context, SGA is a very good three-point shooter. Jordan was an average one in a league where the bar was much lower. In Jordan's league, SGA would be the best.

That's a pretty critical difference for a shooting guard who doesn't want to get swallowed near the basket in a league filled to the brin with mobile giants like Wemby, Giannis, JJJ, and Davis.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume that Jordan would be a better three-point shooter in today’s league than he was in his own league. It’s not *certain*, but the league as a whole has gotten much better at three-point shooting and it is surely in large part because players are practicing threes to a way larger degree than they did in the past. If he were in today’s era, Jordan would surely focus a lot more on three-point shooting. And we have seen countless examples of players improving drastically at three-point shooting when they do that. It is *possible* that Jordan could’ve focused on threes more and just not improved on them at all. But I don’t think that should be our baseline assumption, especially with someone that we know was a GOAT-level mid-range jump shooter. Given that SGA makes threes at pretty much exactly league-average rate (albeit I’m sure with a higher-than-average difficulty on those shots), it doesn’t take a big leap to think Jordan could’ve scaled up to be at least similarly good. Indeed, given how good he was as a mid-range shooter, I personally would probably guess he’d be better at threes in this era than SGA, but it is of course all speculative and highly dependent on how much returns Jordan got for the inevitable additional practice he’d put into it. At the very least, I don’t think it’s an off-base comparison to compare the three-point shooting of the two, given that they’re fairly similar in era-relative terms.

both are good but not all-time great playmakers

Sure, but for translation purposes what matters is the "how". And there's a rather significant chasm in passing skill and processing speed to consider there:

Spoiler:

Hi f4p, falcolombardi I'm not sure I agree with your take on Jordan's passing at all, falcolombardi. I'm actually a bit surprised by it. I was watching some of the 91 playoffs recently (a lot of the games are available on YouTube), and I was pretty consistently impressed with Jordan's passing.

For example:

Watch on YouTube

1) 16:44
Layup pass from the 3 point line over 3 defenders. It’s a touch to the left of the guy, but it’s a crazy difficult pass to sneak through this opening and the defense, and he delivers with good vision and speed.

2) 19:31
Goes for the alleyoop pass form the top of the 3 point line. Another very difficult pass, that takes good vision and placement… just a split second too late, but this is a Trae Young level pass.

3) 21:18
Another layup pass from 5 feet behind the 3 point line. This one’s between 2 defenders, with the lookaway to fake out the defense

4) 29:35
Pick and roll left-to-right pocket pass through 2 defenders for the layup.

5) 32:57
Classic Jordan midair pass. Draws the double / soft-triple team, then passes out at the last second. It’s a touch low, but his teammate’s wide open if he wanted the midrange shot (and would have been even more open if he was a 3 point shooter today)

6) 33:53
Another layup pass around 3 defenders. Sees teammate cutting off ball and hits them at the perfect time.

I'm not sure I could confidently name 10 players who could make passes like 1, 2, 3, 5, 6.... and this is from just one single quarter!

These require vision (e.g. #6 requires seeing the cutter and thinking ahead faster than the defense can recover), they're difficult in timing and placement (e.g. #1 requires sneaking it through multiple defenders), they show passing ambition (e.g #2 is Trae-Young like in how ambitious it is), they're high-value passes (#1, 2, 3, 4, 6 are all layup passes on opportunities that wouldn't be generated otherwise), they show the ability to pass in the pick & roll which would be more valuable today (#4), they show Jordan's able to pass in dynamic situations (#5), they show he's able to pass easily out of double teams off his scoring threat (#4-6).... I'm really not seeing this lack of lead-pass ability. Again, this is from just one random quarter I turned on.... and I see similar stuff in his other 91 games. Am I missing something? How do any one of these passes fit the profile of someone who was just a "fairly 'basic' passer"?

Now to be fair, 91 was definitely one of his best passing playoffs. But people normally don't lose passing vision or passing accuracy as he gets older. To me, he just focused more on off-ball stuff as he got older, but if you put him with a coach that pushes him to pass more... I see no reason why he wouldn't be able to make pass #4 out of the pick and roll or pass #5 to a 3 point shooter, or pass #6 at the top of the 3 point line to a cutter.

This absolutely has potential as a heliocentric Top 5 player. It seems miles better than the stuff Durant or healthy Kawhi could ever do, and they're both capable of leading top-of-the-league offenses... and it's not like they're clearly better than Jordan as scorers or off-ball threats.

Do you disagree? I'd love to see film of Jordan's passing limitation if you have any

Hi draymond! Nice to talk with you again.

First and foremost i will point out the bolded parts are not the same meaning. I didnt say jordan was a bad passer or couldnt be a lead ball handler. I think that his vision was able of making the correct but basic reads. Which is good enough when you are a top 3 scorer ever

If the word basic sounds more harsh than it should it is unerstandable, but is the word i would use for when someone passing vision goes as far as doing the correct but obvious pass. Which to be kinda honest...most of those passes you highlighted are(more of that in a second, need to explain myself on this)

There is first a need of separating vision from scoring gravity. Jordan passed the former with flying colours but was imo more a solid passing grade at the former

A guy who is a great scorer but lacks a decent vision will waste great creation chances over and over in lieu of tough shots for himself, jordan had a solid enough vision that he could find most of those passing windows hence why he was a great proto helio in the late 80's with his huge scoring threat and offensive load. But he rarely found the "hidden gems" that better passers do

those often hidden in plain sight by the less valuable but safer and clearer dimes or "lost great assist" chances to take a "good enough shot". Side effects of the shot first/pass second that led to his historical scoring seasons (and low turnovers)

as those highest value assists often are more likely to be deflected or stolen, there is a reason most passers dont want or cannot go for them well enough

There are many aspects to creation.

1- One is not taking shots where a pass would do better to your team, jordan failed this at a relatively high rate when a "good enough" shot was available to him. Times where he takes a good pull up where a teammate had a better spot up.

2-Another is not making overt mistakes, those where a player goes for a near impossible shot rather than passing (jordan did this a ton before cleaning up around 87) makes a terrible pass to nowhere,etc. Jordan cleaned these up after his first seasons which is how a player goes from a weak passer to a solid, average capable one like jordan did

3-The next one is precision, the ability to make passes others wouldnt dare to makr threading a narrow path of rival bodies and limbs. Jordan attempts one in the lob you mention but failed to thread the needle (trae young who you mention threads those lobs or other kind of high precision passes consistently but trae young is actually a fairly high standard of a passer to compare to jordan here)

4- the most flashy one is finding the really hidden passes nobody else would see or imagine and frequently seeing them and imagining them. The ones that magic or bird were iconic for but that nash doncic, lebron and others can find with some frequency. These ones that in my analysis jordan rarely made

To look at your examples

16:44 pause the video at roughly the start 16:48 and see how there is a wide open bulls player in the paint clear for everyone to see right in front of jordan field of vision. Is the correct read but is also the obvious one a coach would be angry at his players for missing. Is the right choice of course but is not particularly impressive to send the ball to your teammate totally alone under ths paint right across you

19:31 the lob attempt, the right idea but execution is a bit off the mark. I dont blame jordan for missing the hard but high value pass slighlty...but i know that trae or luka or harden hit those a majority of the time which is another component of why they are better passers

21:18 this is the best pass of the six, as jordan finds the better pass to the interior with grant over the corner 3 and seems to regognize that divac is going to the corner leaving a easy score for horace but if you pause at 21:21 is still a easy one

with a open grant (his defender is basi prop in that angle as he "fronts" him) a inmefective double team that is so far enough that jordan has a comfortable straight line pass in a straight field of vision to make over the two lakers players. As divac is going to guard the corner shooter.

Good pass but one i would expect an starting ball handler make nearly every time

29:40 another good and correct pass that i would expect my ball handler to almost always be able to make in that situation (having the scoring pressure or athletism to create the opening is a different question)as is not exactly that small of a window

is a precise pass quickly delivered but not exactly passing through a narrow corridor of arms, is the kind of good and correct read that is the expected baseline of a modern heliocentric star to be seen as a great passer. Pause at 29:39 and see that the closest rival arms in the ball path is the guard running -behind- jordan who is in no good position/angle to challenge the passing angle even

Jordan obviously stops his momentum while the chasing guard doesnt so it looks like a tighter window it was

32:57 kinda tricky to evaluate. On one side jordan went for the ultra tough shot but then he managed to pass in the air to keep the play moving

If you think he did it on purpose to draw the defense attention it would be a impressive pass but it honestly seems more like a mistake that his athletism and hand size let him solve along some luck that there was a teammate in the right spot for a bailout kick out

Either way it was a score created by jordan scoring pressur more than great vision or anticipation (unless we think he had planed a 3d chess move to pass in the air from the start)

33:53 nice awareness to notice the cutting player getting in position for a pass, easily a good and correct pass but you overstate a fair bit the "3 player wall" im fromt of him a fair bit.

Good but not -great- pass as he recognizes his teammate (again, right in fromt of his field of vision) moving into scoring position and delivers an accurate pass to him.

All of these are good passes, correct reads.(even the bailout pass in the air once he got himself there) but neither is remarkable, they are 6's, 7's maybe one or two 8's. But not the 9's and 10's that the best passers do with relative frequency

Jordan was an all time scorer with huge scoring pressure om defenses and athletism so he could create these "6's and 7's" and maybe some "8's, the kind of assist profile i would expect of an average nba ball handler guard if the average nba guard could score and create off his scoring threat at industrial quantities like jordan

But modern star helios are expected to do those highlight "9's and 10's" assists too, make those though lob passes consistently and not prioritize their own "good enough scoring options" at the expense of better shots for teammates

Jordan created by making the simple decisions archaic defenses asked him to make, much like Hakeem. SGA creates by being a far more dynamic and ambidextrous ball-handler, with better vision and anticipation, and much quicker decision-making, as well as being able to leverage both rim pressure and pressure from deep to keep more sophisticated defenses, featuring more dynamic defenders, honest. The outcome is similar, but the process is different. And the process is what matters when one claims a player will do well in a different league.

I think this all basically translates to “basketball offenses and defenses were simpler in the 1990s than they are now.” Which is true. And you can speculate that Jordan would not have been able to translate his playmaking to today’s more complicated era. But that’s definitely just a speculative argument, since Jordan was not in today’s offenses and did not face today’s defenses.

I also think what you’re really talking about is the inevitable improvement of human beings at thinking through any game or other complicated endeavor. In anything, people will keep coming up with new and better ways of doing things, and those things will eventually become widely understood and implemented by people playing that game or engaging in that endeavor. And then people will innovate further upon that, and it’ll happen again. In some sense, I think we can look at that and say that that means that people today are better at virtually everything than they were in the past. In a sense, that’s true! But it doesn’t really tell us much about what someone in the past would be like in today’s era if they were the beneficiary of accumulated knowledge/insight that came after their time. If Jordan played in today’s era, it is highly unlikely that his thinking regarding basketball would be the same as it was in the 1990s. Our default assumption should be that his knowledge and understanding of the game would scale up along with everyone else’s. Is that definitely what would happen? No, we can’t say for sure what would happen in any time-machine speculation exercise. But I definitely don’t think we should assume otherwise. And I don’t think we can say that SGA is a better playmaker than Jordan in era-relative terms (probably the opposite actually IMO), so I don’t think our baseline assumption should be that Jordan in today’s era would be worse.

Finally

and both are fantastic guard defenders who force lots of turnovers.

Guard defenders who force turnovers is about where the similarity stops. As covered, mot much suggests the "getting your hand to the ball" part is of great intrinsic value:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=116226778#p116226778
To the extent it does matter, the how makes a difference. Jordan forced turnovers at the expense of being one of the most error-prone defenders in the league. Shai forces them being one of the least. Shai is blownby less, is out of position less, and fouls less, all of which he does dealing with vastly more versatile offensive stars playing on vastly more dynamic offenses, run or led by a an unprecedented glut of basketball supercomputers like Jokic, Lebron, Luka, and to some degree Draymond, either personally or via teammates, finding and exploiting the gaps left by excessive "defensive activity".

Courtesy of playing in a league where the likes of Bird and Drexler shined, Jordan may well retain an era-relative case. But Shai is better at basketball. We're yet to see if he's better by enough to be as or more impactful though early returns are promising.

We’ve been down this road before regarding defense, so I don’t care to rehash the same things again with you. Suffice to say that there’s a lot of evidence that steals are very impactful at an individual level (people can see here for an example post addressing this: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=113832610#p113832610) and your use of team-wide data to the contrary is not convincing for a lot of reasons. These reasons include (1) because a lot of things that would make a team as a whole tend to get more steals are also things that would tend to make them give up defensive impact in other ways—for instance, playing small ball lineups; (2) the evidence you pointed to largely amounted to really obvious things like how a team’s FG% correlates more with winning than steals, which is just…not even remotely surprising and doesn’t at all suggest steals aren’t super impactful; and (3) there is team-level data that indicates steals *are* very impactful. We can also suffice to say that the overall evidence we have of Jordan’s defensive impact throughout his career is very strong (as are the testimonials from his contemporaries about it FWIW). You’ve tended to just exit discussions whenever I’ve rigorously gone through it all, but one example of such a discussion is the following thread, which I encourage anyone to read through if they’re curious about this topic, since I don’t have much interest in rehashing this topic again: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2384374&hilit. I think people can read through our discussion in that thread and draw their own conclusions. Another post from the General Board that wasn’t directed to you might also be helpful for people to look at: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=113820883#p113820883.

As it relates to this thread, I don’t think there’s really much of anything telling us that SGA is a better defensive player than Jordan was. You’re free to subjectively believe otherwise—it’s tough to prove much of anything about defense in the NBA in general, and definitely about defense from older eras. But I think you really just want to reach a certain conclusion and it’s easy for you to reach a preferred conclusion about something that it is difficult to prove much about either way. That said, to draw this back to the thread topic, I do think we have enough data to tell us that SGA probably is a better defender than Kobe was, since we have more fulsome impact data for Kobe.

[TheGOATRises007]

SGA was arguably better last season than any of Kobe's best seasons.

This season is even more clear.

But we need to see how the playoffs unfold. Maybe he dips a level(unlikely based on last season).

[Cavsfansince84]

I think there's a lot of people that already have it in their heads that Shai can't possibly be as good as Kobe or MJ because they are legends and its blasphemy to put him in the same sentence as them until he's won x amount of rings. Which is not really fair to Shai though I get that generally until a player does win at least 1 ring and have some strong playoff runs under their belt they will be doubted. So it's either wait and see how Shai/Okc do in the playoffs this year or go off the regular seasons he's had the last two years. I honestly don't think MJ would do much more in the rs than what Shai is doing now. Maybe he'd shoot more but I don't think his efficiency would match Shai. Defensively it's hard to say but its possible Shai is a better defender than both. Being part of such a great defensive team only makes his case stronger.

[DirtyDez]

the appropriate comparison is Jordan.

98’ Jordan? 25 year old MJ was an alien and would’ve been for any era.

[lessthanjake]

I think there's a lot of people that already have it in their heads that Shai can't possibly be as good as Kobe or MJ because they are legends and its blasphemy to put him in the same sentence as them until he's won x amount of rings. Which is not really fair to Shai though I get that generally until a player does win at least 1 ring and have some strong playoff runs under their belt they will be doubted. So it's either wait and see how Shai/Okc do in the playoffs this year or go off the regular seasons he's had the last two years. I honestly don't think MJ would do much more in the rs than what Shai is doing now. Maybe he'd shoot more but I don't think his efficiency would match Shai. Defensively it's hard to say but it’s possible Shai is a better defender than both. Being part of such a great defensive team only makes his case stronger.

I think the bolded is right. And that’s because SGA has been having an all-time-level regular season this year, not because of anything negative about Jordan. I do think it is right to have a little bit of skepticism of what we’re seeing now, because he and the Thunder might slow down as the regular season progresses, and he also hasn’t yet shown this kind of level in the playoffs. Personally, though, I’m hoping that SGA and the Thunder keep going at this level including in the playoffs. It’s fun to watch historic greatness. I’m definitely a Jokic fan, but I dunno who I’d root for between the Thunder and the Nuggets in a playoff series (not that there’s much question which one of those teams would win a series between them, even if Jokic played like an alien), and I would definitely root for the Thunder over any other team.