The question with Curry is if he is top 10. Top 20 he has secured. Top 15, probably, I guess. I think the top 10 is ridiculous. But there are only around 12 or so who Curry is currently clearly behind, in my view.
Greatest ever list is going to be subjective with arbitrary criterias, but having Curry outside the top 20 is certainly going to be in the minority. Most lists from analysts and media (espn, Theringer, BR, SI etc) generally have Curry around 12-16. Personally I had KD at 12 and Curry at 13 and would move him into the top 10-11 if he wins another title.
Curry belongs somewhere between 11-20 on that list. Not every player from 12-20 is unquestionably better.
I look at it more from the perspective of which player I’d pick first if starting from scratch and I want to win a championship that year. Most years, when both were healthy, I’d take Durant over Curry.
He can also quit on a team. Probably dependent on the performance of the local strippers in the given year.
The big question should be "can so and so attract talent (or at least coexist) and win a championship"
This thread was created to "prove" that Curry was not as good as Harden. If you saw my posts at the early stage of this thread, I stated that whether a player could carry a bad team into the playoffs was not a very meaningful question. No player can carry a team with mediocre talent all the way to championship, not Curry, not Harden, not Durant, not even LeBron. The question should be, can a guy lead a talented team to win a championship?
That's definitely a valid/reasonable take. In terms of resume/accomplishments however, (who's career you'd rather have had) Curry is at least equal to KD and in the top 15 if not top 12.
For the Warriors, Durant was the supercharger that made them unbeatable. Curry was the engine that the team was built around. I think, all things being equal, Curry brings you closer to winning a championship when compared to Durant in a given year. They're both benefiting from recency bias in the grand scheme of things.
Durant is clearly a greater basketball player than Curry...in a one-on-one league. When you simply consider individual basketball skills, Durant has more tools, especially the size. But Curry, IMO, is a superior player in a five-on-five league, when your effect on the rest of the players also must be considered. Both are brilliant scorers and Curry is the better passer. Durant is a significantly better defender--largely due to his size, as Curry has been a pretty good defender technically for a while, but has size limitations. The question is whether Durant's defensive ability has a larger effect on winning NBA games than Curry's gravity and off-ball value. I think that tilts pretty heavily in favor of Curry, since it benefits all of his teammates. And this is borne out by their respective +/- numbers, especially when they were on the same team. Curry has basically always possessed better on/off numbers than Durant, because he's more important. The only player who's really competed with Curry for on/off dominance over the past decade or so has been LeBron James. And as far as the question "Who would you want to start a team with?" I think Curry has to be on the short list, because he's one of the few all-time greats who scales well--he can fit alongside pretty much any other type of great players with minimal disruption to anyone's value. Westbrook is kind of the polar opposite--he's fine as a floor-raiser on a bad team, but fits extremely poorly next to anyone else with talent because he can't provide any value without the ball in his hands at all times.
I was born and raised in Houston and lived in Austin the last 14 years I was in Texas. I will defend all Houston sports against anyone, I’ve raised my boys as Houston sports fans but I’ve become much more objective about basketball and football and baseball as I now have friends who root for other teams. I don’t or won’t look to statistics to say what teams get more breaks or the benefit of the doubt, I have other things to worry about. I hated the warriors and how the rockets couldn’t beat that damn team but I about lost all interest in the rockets watching Hardens brand of ball. It was horrible. It pains me to say that I’ve found myself rooting for the warriors this playoffs coincidentally along with the Celtics. They both play their own brand of basketball but it’s still a team oriented style. Steph curry for all his faults and deficiencies is probably a top 12 player in my mind, he isn’t the biggest nor fastest, he’s slight of frame but the dude brings it. What do I know? jajaja
Agree with most of your points, though it has to be noted the +/- numbers and the impact difference between Curry and KD does close significantly in the playoffs. KD is obviously the more talented player due simply to his unique combination of height, skill and elite shooting, but great as he is, I don't think he fully maximized his talents and is closer to 95% of his absolute potential. Simply changing his shot profile to more 3's and less long 2's would've made him even more efficient/dominant. Especially since he can pretty get those shots almost anytime.
Those Rockets were a virus in the system. An anomaly. Foster was the antivirus. He was Agent Smith. Harden was one the Neos that failed.
The key word is "lead" (meaning the best player) not just happen to play on a talented team. Otherwise, you'd have the ridiculous conclusion that Horry led more championship teams than Hakeem. Was Draymond the best player of any of the Warriors championship teams? Some people may argue that even Durant wasn't the leader of that team although he was probably their best player. I somewhat agree. But when you get to the more intangible concept of what constitute a "leader" it gets into the murky territory of subjectivity... not that these debates aren't already quite subjective. BTW, should being able to carry a team part of the criteria of being one of the best in history? Does winning championships weigh a lot in this kind of debate?
Being the most skilled at something but not being able to apply it under pressure is rather pointless. Probably why Harden is not in the top 20 conversations despite him being the league's MVP during an era when Lebron/KD/Curry are playing. Sports were always in a way a precursor to nations showing off their innate (ethnical/racial?) physical prowess to both prep for and stave off war. War = pressure. It is subjective. I was just trying to get that subjectivity out of the way by suggesting that clear cut requirement of being productive under pressure is a requirement that needs to be explicitly mentioned when comparing players in a historical backdrop of things. Horry's ability to be steadfast and hit high pressure shots can be considered a sort of leadership skill and Draymond's ability to call people out and provide emotional outlet to his teams can also be considered the same. In fact, people tend to say that it was altercation with Green that drove KD out of Oakland. And that's a good indication that Green had the voice of the team behind him in some ways (ie a leader).
Lol @ Harden fanbois complaining about the Warriors spending habits. If you have a surefire stud like Steph that can transform the laughing stock of the NBA into Championship players (talking about you Swaggy P, Javale McGee, very likely Wiggins etc) why wouldn’t they spend the extra money? We weren’t going to win a Championship with Harden as the main option or even #2 option so it wasn’t going to matter if we spent extra money on role players. The same guys that are complaining are very likely the same group that hold onto the notion that letting players like Ariza walk was going to be the difference. Steph and the Warriors are what we as Rockets fans wished Harden and the Rockets were. He wasn’t. We’re not. No need to be jealous and hate.
