Look at their rosters. Conley, Bogdanovic, Gobert, Clarkson, Ingles, O'Neal, Gay, and Whiteside. It's an extremely deep roster. It's obvious that Utah has a much better supporting cast.
Did you just include Gay and Whiteside as extremely deep? The Warriors have Wiggins Green, Porter, Igoudola, Lee, Poole and Bijelica and a top draft pick in Kuminga how is that roster head and shoulders over what GSW has? Green and Gobert are a wash, and Wiggins is better than any of the other guys on that list. Really Green and Whiteside?
Absolutely. How many backup centers are better than Whiteside? Gay is usually the 2nd player off the bench. How many 2nd-player-off-the-bench are better than Gay? Ignore Kuminga. He's averaging less than 10mpg and 5ppg. If you're using him to support your argument, then you've already lost. Don't be like the people last year who were using Wiseman as an example of all the help Curry has. There were people last year who actually thought Wiseman was better than Clint Capela. Wiggins may be the better than any of the other guys on the list, but what if you were to divide the list into tiers? Green, Wiggins, Gobert, Conley, and Bogdanovic would be in 1st tier. Then Poole, Clarkson, and Ingles in the 2nd tier. Then Otto Porter, Iguodala, Payton, Lee, Bjelica, O'Neale, Gay, and Whiteside in the 3rd tier. Do you think this is an unfair assessment?
Unfair assesment? It's delusional, and you are picking and choosing who has more value and fact remains even in your own argument you admit that the Utah roster is not head and shoulders above GSW, the way you ranked them they are about the same, so you think Mitchell is just as valuable as Curry? It does not mater what people think about Wiseman this team has even more talent and Curry has played worse.
I think 1 more tier one player and 1 more tier two player qualifies as "head and shoulders". Why is it delusional? I think tiers are a fair way of ranking players. It adds nuance. If you disagree with how the players are ranked, can you articulate your disagreement?
his PER and TS% have actually dropped really close to harden's at this point, and he had a huge lead. they are both having their worst seasons since they became all-stars.
part of the problem (at least for me) with steph's on/off data is that it's like looking at david robinson's and chris paul's advanced stats. at some point they are too good to be believable. like, you know they are great, but when chris paul (at one point a few years ago) is top 5 in playoff PER and WS48 and you're pretty sure he isn't the 5th best playoff performer ever, it doesn't make sense. when drob leads the league in WS48 in 1999 during the spurs first title, it's not that believable. and when he still leads the league 2 years later in 2001, there's no choice but to assume it just can't account for something or is overaccounting for something else and you have to scale the numbers down in your mind. steph feels the same. like he led the league in RPM last year, in a year where jokic was historic by basically any measure you want to look at. he led in 2019, in a year where he wasn't that great even by his own standards, giannis was mvp, harden had the best scoring season ever, kawhi won finals mvp, and lebron was still alive. he finished 2nd in 2018, but it was to kyle lowry so basically 1st among any serious candidates for best player in the league. in a year where golden state didn't even win 60 with one of the most talented rosters ever. and in 2015 and 2016, his mvp seasons? he basically lapped the field he was so far in 1st place, and yet no one left either of those seasons saying he was the best player in the league, much less the best by far. like i'm sure he has very high impact, but the numbers seem off. and that brings up the other thing. the year lowry was 1st, who was 3rd? his teammate fred van vleet. these on/off numbers sometimes get tangled up with your teammates and steph has draymond. in a lot of other things (like straight up on court plus/minus), draymond tends to have tremendous impact numbers. and he and steph share the court a ton and have maybe the most synergistic games for two teammates ever. i suspect what we see in some of steph's crazy numbers are the effect of draymond seeping in. as for not looking at his traditional stats, steph's 2016 season was incredible. practically broke the PER record, dominated in WS48, led the league in scoring. while not everything he does might be captured, the box score has not traditionally mistreated steph. his traditional stats and more basic advanced stats all say he is not having a great year compared to his other years in those same stats. it seems incredibly unlikely that he is still having the same impact, if for no other reason than it would apparently mean he didn't know how to have non-box score impact in the past but has developed the talent very recently.
I think that's all 100% fair and I agree that +/- can be a misleading stat. But I think at the same time, we can agree that when Curry runs around and forces defenses to chase him all over the floor, that makes things easier for everyone else to some extent or another. We may not know exactly how much, but we know that motion creates problems for the defense and does *something* to help his team. And that's not necessarily captured in typical stats. So it seems likely that some element of his +/- is unique to him (and Klay Thompson and a few other players across the league that do this kind of stuff) and that his traditional stats don't always capture all of his value.
wiggins i think is on a mid level max, and otto porter just got off of a max contract... not many teams can play the way golden state does without breaking the bank. warriors have the highest payroll in the nba
The Warriors haven't played that great since November ended. Part of that is better competition and part of that is Curry having one of the worst shooting slump of his career. Curry's slump can be attributed to two main factors. His % from wide open 3's have fallen to approx 40% from typically 46%-52% and his 2 point % has fallen under league average. The first is likely a fluke/variance while the latter is more concerning. First 20 games the Warriors were 18-2 with a +13.6 net rating & Curry shooting 45/41/94, 28/6/6 splits. Their last 17 games the Warriors are 11-6 with a +3.7 net rating & Curry shooting 38/36/89, 25/5/5 splits.
It appears from this that Curry has a lot to do with how well the Warriors are playing. Do people really think the Warriors would be a plus 500 team without Curry playing this year? I look at their roster and I don’t see it.
Very nice breakdown of those advanced stats and how it seems to be not a great measuring stick of a player's greatness.
Green is on the cusp of wining the defensive player of the year and is the Warriors best playmaker. I know you said it in sarcasm but yeah
Who in here has argued otherwise? Nobody has said that Curry does not make it easier for others around him. The argument currently is that he does not have MVP numbers and that he has not led his team to great success when he has not had a great team around him.
Nice strawman, but yeah I think they could be a plus 500 team, I mean Memphis, Toronto Nuggets and Wizards are so why not GS?
How is it a strawman if you believe it to be true? And if you don’t believe it to be true, then you think Curry’s presence has turned a borderline playoff team into a top-tier contender.
Adding any allstar would push most playoff teams into contenders. Thats not the accomplishment you are making it out to be. There are probably at least 20 players in the league that could do what curry is doing on the warriors
The Warriors success is largely contingent on 3 main factors IMO. 1 - Their system. 2 - Curry. 3 - Effort/Buying In. The Warriors system of Curry running off-ball, screening and constant motion is a unique one in the NBA. Opposing teams are simply not accustomed nor prepared for it in the regular season. There aren't any other player like Curry where opposing defenses need to exert such effort off the ball. The resulting confusion of the spit actions, cutting and screening from Curry causes teams to give up a ton of easy baskets in the paint or risk giving up a Curry 3. The Warriors despite not having a post monster like Jokic, Embid, Zion or an elite dribble driver like Ja, Donovan & Harden are one of the best teams in the NBA in % in the paint and top 10 in points in the paint. Teams don't have the time during the regular season to gameplan and adjust to unique systems during the regular season, which is why outliers like the Nash Suns, Curry Warriors and the MDA Harden Rockets presented such a headache for opposing teams. However this advantage isn't as pronounce in the playoffs. The second factor is Curry's elite efficient volume scoring. If Curry wasn't scoring at around league leading volume and efficiency, the danger presented by his off-ball movement wouldn't be as effective, not to mention simply the 27-32 points at 1.3 ppp. Instead of regularly having a 63%-67% TS if Curry merely had a 59%-63%, opposing teams wouldn't need to sell out or panic to cover his movement. 0.10 points or even 0.05 ppp may not seem like much but over 100 possessions and over many games, it's the difference between the top rated offense and the worst. The third factor is effort/buying in. The Warriors have the best defense in NBA and have been consistently one of the better defensive teams in the NBA since 2013. Different roster, different coaches and different level of talent/abilities. The common denominator is that each of those teams all bought in to playing hard and committing to the defensive system. This year's Warriors are not the best defensive team in terms of talent or abilities, but they are by far the best defense due to being bought in, connected to one another and effort. Once the playoffs start however, I'd rather have the Bucks or Heat's defenses. Curry is the biggest factor in the Warriors regular season success (which thousands of pbp data over the years will confirm as well as this years pbp data. note: the more minutes the more reliable the data). This shouldn't be too surprising since their entire system is designed/built around his talents. But IMO what level of Klay they get back will be the key to how far they can advance in the playoffs, when individual talents as well as shot creation matters a lot more than it does in the regular season.
