Brunson v Curry

[LukaTheGOAT]

.

I am definitely not going to go through and respond to like 12 different comments, the vast majority of which say nothing that I haven’t already addressed in prior responses. Others can read my prior posts and see what the refutation of virtually all of this would be.

Anyways, what I will say is: The bottom line is that, as much as it obviously would pain you to admit it, Stephen Curry in his prime was demonstrably the impact king over a still-prime LeBron. I have demonstrated this quite rigorously in many posts in the past. In his mid-30’s he is unsurprisingly no longer the impact king. No one in their right mind would expect him to be. Your seeming attempt to suggest him no longer being the impact king in his mid-30’s shows he was never *really* the impact king in his earlier years is just plainly silly. He was the impact king of that era, and it wasn’t even particularly close. He is in many ways a very similar player now, but lots of little things go with age—quickness, burst, stamina, reaction times, vision, etc., not to mention just the accumulation of knocks and injuries over the years taking their toll. Those sorts of things together end up being significant for everyone, and Steph is clearly no different—with his impact and box numbers having notably declined from his younger years, as we would expect. This idea that we wouldn’t expect this scale of decline due to subtle things is just silly. Players routinely have significant jumps (both increases and decreases) in impact when they are near the start and end of their prime. Just to take an analogous player, Ray Allen’s LEBRON went down 42% from age 34 to age 35, despite his box numbers looking extremely similar and the team itself being similar (and even doing better). The metric was in significant part detecting Allen’s age-related decline—with lots of subtle factors surely getting worse and reducing impact. Your entire argument seems premised on the idea that something perfectly normal is actually abnormal, followed by you drawing the most negative possible inference from this silly idea, in order to get to a convenient conclusion. Finally, I’ll note that your seeming assumption that Steph’s decline is not a significant cause of his team as a whole not doing as well is bizarre. Steph not being as good is a major factor in his team not doing as well, and yet you’re somehow essentially taking his team not doing as well as evidence that he hasn’t really declined much!

There are a couple of things.

1)Yes, Steph had the most impressive RS plus-minus portfolio from 15-onward, which would classify as "prime Lebron years." However, levels of play vary throughout a prime. By the typical metrics, the heart of Lebron's prime was from 09-13. Though, let's just say we assume Curry was better than the best stretches that Lebron ever authored in the RS, the next point is the biggest selling point for why Curry isn't seen as serious threat to Lebron in general impact.


2) You said you demonstrated Steph was the impact king of the era, but as people have alluded to in the past, we are not just looking at his RS production for this. Whether you think it is fair or not, people have a large PS focus on this board, and it is clear the true impact king during the heart of Curry's prime in the playoffs was Lebron. That is why Lebron during that span gets designated as a better player, by most on this board. If you look at numbers from that 15-22 period for Lebron "He was the impact king of that era, and it wasn’t even particularly close.


From 15-22 in the PS (6 PS), Lebron's impact metrics look like the following:

Backpicks BPM-8.3

Average PS AuPM/G-5.8

BPM-10.4

Minutes Weighted RAPTOR-9.2


For reference,

Steph in half-time that time (3-year time span) during this span, has 3-year peaks of the following:

Backpicks BPM-6.9

Average PS AuPM/G-5.2

BPM-8.5

Minutes Weighted RAPTOR-8.75


Lebron over that sample, outperformed Curry's best 3-year stretches on a per-possession basis. I think that is notable, and shows how Lebron was able to sustain a higher level of play over a longer period.

It's hard to get numbers for the exact time period in play (15-22), but I think that gives you a decent starting point for where the belief of Lebron>Steph would come from.

Some other additional numbers:

2015-2020 PS PIPM

Lebron-7.37 (#1 over this span)

Steph-3.95 (#8 over this span)


14-18 RAPM

Lebron-5.18 (#2 over this span)

Steph-3.62 (#5 over this span)


15-19 RAPM

Lebron-4.96 (#2 over this span)

Steph-3.84 (#7 over this span)

Overall, Lebron lead offenses peaked higher as well during this period, and with his defense being generally being elite, I will side with him.

If you look at shorter peak PS stretches such as single year or 3-year PS stretches, I think once again, Lebron comes out looking stronger. According Backpicks, the 2015-17 Cavs have the 3rd best unique offensive PS stretch for relative offensive rating, and keep in mind Lebron did not have a healthy Kyrie or KLove for much of the 2015 PS. This once surpasses the Warriors offensive performance.

If you don't like using relative offensive rating to judge playoff offense, there is another method called common offensive rating.
Common offensive rating is comparing a team’s postseason play to other teams against that same given opponent (for that particular PS). The rORTG is also listed on the side too for those who, where a team’s playoff offensive rating is compared to it’s opponent’s regular season defensive ratings. The Cavs have the best common offensive rating of the time period.

The best 3-year offenses and defense (minimum of 20 games played across three postseason trips), we see the following unique team peaks in playoff offense per common offensive rating (cORTG) via Backpicks since 1984 (but only other potential contenders would be if you go back to Mikan days).

Team Year cORTG rORTG
CLE 2015-17 13.0 9.5


MIA 2012-14 9.7 8.7

LAL 1987-89 9.4 9


CHI 1991-93 8.8 8.4

CHI 1994-96 8.3 6.9

Lebron's offenses come out looking better under this approach as well. The 2016 Cavs (+15.3 cORTG) and 2017 Cavs (+14.6) have the two highest single-season offensive marks using this approach. Under the 3-year guise, the Cavs would be at least #1 going back to 1984.

There is just clear evidence Lebron ups his game to another level on average during this point, which is why the argument for Lebron is so enticing.

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If Lebron is arguably a better PS offensive player by the data, then I don't see how Curry could make up the difference once defense is factored in as well. Shifting gears to a holistic view, the post don't factor in what many would consider Lebron's peak years, such as 09, 12, 13, the idea that Steph was ever truly as impactful as Lebron in terms of driving championship equity is a hard sell. And this is what people stress when focusing on impact. It is why Hakeem still gets thrusted above David Robinson.

[lessthanjake]

.

I am definitely not going to go through and respond to like 12 different comments, the vast majority of which say nothing that I haven’t already addressed in prior responses. Others can read my prior posts and see what the refutation of virtually all of this would be.

Anyways, what I will say is: The bottom line is that, as much as it obviously would pain you to admit it, Stephen Curry in his prime was demonstrably the impact king over a still-prime LeBron. I have demonstrated this quite rigorously in many posts in the past. In his mid-30’s he is unsurprisingly no longer the impact king. No one in their right mind would expect him to be. Your seeming attempt to suggest him no longer being the impact king in his mid-30’s shows he was never *really* the impact king in his earlier years is just plainly silly. He was the impact king of that era, and it wasn’t even particularly close. He is in many ways a very similar player now, but lots of little things go with age—quickness, burst, stamina, reaction times, vision, etc., not to mention just the accumulation of knocks and injuries over the years taking their toll. Those sorts of things together end up being significant for everyone, and Steph is clearly no different—with his impact and box numbers having notably declined from his younger years, as we would expect. This idea that we wouldn’t expect this scale of decline due to subtle things is just silly. Players routinely have significant jumps (both increases and decreases) in impact when they are near the start and end of their prime. Just to take an analogous player, Ray Allen’s LEBRON went down 42% from age 34 to age 35, despite his box numbers looking extremely similar and the team itself being similar (and even doing better). The metric was in significant part detecting Allen’s age-related decline—with lots of subtle factors surely getting worse and reducing impact. Your entire argument seems premised on the idea that something perfectly normal is actually abnormal, followed by you drawing the most negative possible inference from this silly idea, in order to get to a convenient conclusion. Finally, I’ll note that your seeming assumption that Steph’s decline is not a significant cause of his team as a whole not doing as well is bizarre. Steph not being as good is a major factor in his team not doing as well, and yet you’re somehow essentially taking his team not doing as well as evidence that he hasn’t really declined much!

There are a couple of things.

1)Yes, Steph had the most impressive RS plus-minus portfolio from 15-onward, which would classify as "prime Lebron years." However, levels of play vary throughout a prime. By the typical metrics, the heart of Lebron's prime was from 09-13. Though, let's just say we assume Curry was better than the best stretches that Lebron ever authored in the RS, the next point is the biggest selling point for why Curry isn't seen as serious threat to Lebron in general impact.

Yes, but you see the assertion I’ve made is not comparing to 2009-2013. That’s a much more difficult question. What I’ve said is that Steph has superior impact during his prime years than LeBron did during those years. If someone wants to say that LeBron had superior impact in 2009-2013 than Steph did in Steph’s prime, then I think that’s a much more debatable premise—LeBron’s impact data was better in those years than it was in the years after that, so it’s obviously a tougher call! And ultimately LeBron is a greater player, in significant part because he was a really impactful player for longer. But those don’t really go to the assertion that I’ve made in the past.

I’ll also note that none of this actually goes to the assertion I originally made *in this thread*, which was simply that Brunson is better than Steph now but that Steph was a different animal in his younger years. It was that bland assertion that managed to somehow draw ire.

2) You said you demonstrated Steph was the impact king of the era, but as people have alluded to in the past, we are not just looking at his RS production for this. Whether you think it is fair or not, people have a large PS focus on this board, and it is clear the true impact king during the heart of Curry's prime in the playoffs was Lebron. That is why Lebron during that span gets designated as a better player, by most on this board. If you look at numbers from that 15-22 period for Lebron "He was the impact king of that era, and it wasn’t even particularly close.

Yeah, this is something I’ve been over many times before (including I think with you, but also with others), so I’m not going to go around and around with the same thing. I think it’s a decent point, but at the same time, playoff impact data is very low sample size and inherently not at all the full picture, so I think it’s an inherently weak point to base one’s entire viewpoint about someone’s impact on it. For what it’s worth, it’s also true that if you go year-by-year, Steph’s playoff impact data in those years seems to be more often above LeBron than vice versa. See the first spoiler in this post: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107697936#p107697936. That lists which one of LeBron or Steph was ahead in a ton of different impact metrics by year. That includes three playoff-specific metrics, and Steph ends up ahead in 11 of the 16 data points. But yes, you can make a case for LeBron in this time period if you focus just on playoff impact. But that’s not normally what we do when we talk about impact, precisely because we know that playoff impact is really noisy (not to mention that regular season basketball happens and is an important thing that we talk about). If you want to say that LeBron was a better playoff performer in those years, I think that’s fine—but saying he was the “impact king” overall in those years is a *much* less tenable argument and really requires ignoring quite a lot.

[homecourtloss]

What you want is a stunning peak

I don’t want a stunning peak. I *got* a stunning peak. It happened. And you’re obviously just very invested in trying to handwave it away—likely because that stunning peak resulted in Steph being the clear impact king during his prime years, over a still-prime LeBron.

Are you so invested to put curry over lebron in an arbitrary stat for an arbitrary time window that you are now trying to downplay and diminish your own favorite player?

Though Curry isn’t the favorite player but a tool this poster uses for other purposes.

[lessthanjake]

I don’t want a stunning peak. I *got* a stunning peak. It happened. And you’re obviously just very invested in trying to handwave it away—likely because that stunning peak resulted in Steph being the clear impact king during his prime years, over a still-prime LeBron.

Are you so invested to put curry over lebron in an arbitrary stat for an arbitrary time window that you are now trying to downplay and diminish your own favorite player?

Though Curry isn’t the favorite player but a tool this poster uses for other purposes.

No. He’s one of my favorite players, but just not my favorite. For instance, I like Jokic more.

Anyways, your constant insinuations are baseless. Believe it or not, I’ve rooted for LeBron in every playoff series he’s ever been in that wasn’t against Jokic or Steph. I had many arguments with people around 2009, because I was saying LeBron was playing at Jordan level, and people got mad about that. I’ve defended The Decision for years, and still do, including on this forum. The only NBA playoff games I’ve been to in person were specifically games I went to to see LeBron. I’ve been much more of a LeBron fan over the years than anything else. Not agreeing with everything his biggest fans say, and often arguing with them because they’re extremely vocal (and often extremely rude to an almost negatively-polarizing extent), doesn’t make me actually have some sort of bad faith agenda against a player I’ve almost always rooted for.

[LukaTheGOAT]

I am definitely not going to go through and respond to like 12 different comments, the vast majority of which say nothing that I haven’t already addressed in prior responses. Others can read my prior posts and see what the refutation of virtually all of this would be.

Anyways, what I will say is: The bottom line is that, as much as it obviously would pain you to admit it, Stephen Curry in his prime was demonstrably the impact king over a still-prime LeBron. I have demonstrated this quite rigorously in many posts in the past. In his mid-30’s he is unsurprisingly no longer the impact king. No one in their right mind would expect him to be. Your seeming attempt to suggest him no longer being the impact king in his mid-30’s shows he was never *really* the impact king in his earlier years is just plainly silly. He was the impact king of that era, and it wasn’t even particularly close. He is in many ways a very similar player now, but lots of little things go with age—quickness, burst, stamina, reaction times, vision, etc., not to mention just the accumulation of knocks and injuries over the years taking their toll. Those sorts of things together end up being significant for everyone, and Steph is clearly no different—with his impact and box numbers having notably declined from his younger years, as we would expect. This idea that we wouldn’t expect this scale of decline due to subtle things is just silly. Players routinely have significant jumps (both increases and decreases) in impact when they are near the start and end of their prime. Just to take an analogous player, Ray Allen’s LEBRON went down 42% from age 34 to age 35, despite his box numbers looking extremely similar and the team itself being similar (and even doing better). The metric was in significant part detecting Allen’s age-related decline—with lots of subtle factors surely getting worse and reducing impact. Your entire argument seems premised on the idea that something perfectly normal is actually abnormal, followed by you drawing the most negative possible inference from this silly idea, in order to get to a convenient conclusion. Finally, I’ll note that your seeming assumption that Steph’s decline is not a significant cause of his team as a whole not doing as well is bizarre. Steph not being as good is a major factor in his team not doing as well, and yet you’re somehow essentially taking his team not doing as well as evidence that he hasn’t really declined much!

There are a couple of things.

1)Yes, Steph had the most impressive RS plus-minus portfolio from 15-onward, which would classify as "prime Lebron years." However, levels of play vary throughout a prime. By the typical metrics, the heart of Lebron's prime was from 09-13. Though, let's just say we assume Curry was better than the best stretches that Lebron ever authored in the RS, the next point is the biggest selling point for why Curry isn't seen as serious threat to Lebron in general impact.

Yes, but you see the assertion I’ve made is not comparing to 2009-2013. That’s a much more difficult question. What I’ve said is that Steph has superior impact during his prime years than LeBron did during those years. If someone wants to say that LeBron had superior impact in 2009-2013 than Steph did in Steph’s prime, then I think that’s a much more debatable premise—LeBron’s impact data was better in those years than it was in the years after that, so it’s obviously a tougher call! And ultimately LeBron is a greater player, in significant part because he was a really impactful player for longer. But those don’t really go to the assertion that I’ve made in the past.

I’ll also note that none of this actually goes to the assertion I originally made *in this thread*, which was simply that Brunson is better than Steph now but that Steph was a different animal in his younger years. It was that bland assertion that managed to somehow draw ire.

2) You said you demonstrated Steph was the impact king of the era, but as people have alluded to in the past, we are not just looking at his RS production for this. Whether you think it is fair or not, people have a large PS focus on this board, and it is clear the true impact king during the heart of Curry's prime in the playoffs was Lebron. That is why Lebron during that span gets designated as a better player, by most on this board. If you look at numbers from that 15-22 period for Lebron "He was the impact king of that era, and it wasn’t even particularly close.

Yeah, this is something I’ve been over many times before (including I think with you, but also with others), so I’m not going to go around and around with the same thing. I think it’s a decent point, but at the same time, playoff impact data is very low sample size and inherently not at all the full picture, so I think it’s an inherently weak point to base one’s entire viewpoint about someone’s impact on it. For what it’s worth, it’s also true that if you go year-by-year, Steph’s playoff impact data in those years seems to be more often above LeBron than vice versa. See the first spoiler in this post: https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107697936#p107697936. That lists which one of LeBron or Steph was ahead in a ton of different impact metrics by year. That includes three playoff-specific metrics, and Steph ends up ahead in 11 of the 16 data points. But yes, you can make a case for LeBron in this time period if you focus just on playoff impact. But that’s not normally what we do when we talk about impact, precisely because we know that playoff impact is really noisy (not to mention that regular season basketball happens and is an important thing that we talk about). If you want to say that LeBron was a better playoff performer in those years, I think that’s fine—but saying he was the “impact king” overall in those years is a *much* less tenable argument and really requires ignoring quite a lot.

Am I supposed to be reading your post? Because not a single PS only number you provided has Curry being better than Lebron on average over the shared timespan, so I do not know what to be say. You keep sharing heavily influenced RS numbers, which Curry leads, and it doesn't dispute my point because I've already acknowledged Curry's better RS plus-minus footprint. None of this dissuades people from Lebron being "the guy," of his era, because impact is largely evaluated in the crucible of the PS. That is why Lebron is trusted into a different tier than. Curry during the heart of Curry's prime.

Saying sample size is too small for guys that have multiple long playoff runs over this time period, isn't very convincing either. Curry played 115 PS games from 15-22. That's over a season's worth of games, and is more than a comfortable size for the hybrid metrics often used to stabilize. We aren't just using pure-plus minus, which suggests Curry might be behind. But we have box-score numbers that also suggest that Curry was just a much lesser player.

[lessthanjake]

Saying sample size is too small for guys that have multiple long playoff runs over this time period, isn't very convincing either. Curry played 115 PS games from 15-22. That's over a season's worth of games, and is more than a comfortable size for the hybrid metrics often used to stabilize. We aren't just using pure-plus minus, which suggests Curry might be behind. But we have box-score numbers that also suggest that Curry was just a much lesser player.

No, that’s still not a very significant sample size. It’s basically equivalent to a single season of data (particularly when we take into account that playoff MPG are higher, so the off sample per game is smaller). And while hybrid metrics are better over smaller samples than raw data is, they’re definitely still pretty noisy (in large part because, ultimately, single-season RAPM or on-off is still a large component in the metrics). I certainly wouldn’t take one player being ahead of another by a decent bit in a single season as particularly conclusive, so nor would I do so with playoff data that is a similar size. And that’s not even getting into the potential issues caused by simply averaging the data across different years (i.e. scaling differences), which adds to the noisiness in this particular comparison.

More importantly, it’s also just essentially ignoring RS numbers. I realize that you’re explicitly conceding Curry’s better regular-season impact footprint in his prime years. But, while conceding it, you’re also virtually entirely dismissing its importance, in favor of the above-discussed smaller-sample data. Most basketball is regular-season basketball. It matters, and when we discuss impact data, we virtually always discuss (and even focus on) regular season data. This is because it is larger-sample data and also just because the regular season happens and matters a lot for assessing players. If the argument that Steph wasn’t the “impact king” essentially requires throwing away the regular-season data, then I don’t think it’s a particularly good argument, since it is a conclusion based on ignoring quite a lot that is widely understood as being really important data for assessing impact.

I’d note that we have measures that combine both RS and playoffs. Most prominently, we have RAPTOR—which combined RS+Playoffs. If we take the average of these players’ RS+Playoff RAPTOR in the years where they both were in their prime (I’d say 2013-2014 through 2019-2020), Steph has an average RAPTOR of 9.40, while LeBron has an average of just 6.47. And it’d be a similar story if we used a different time horizon instead (for instance, 2013-2014 through 2017-2018 would be 9.72 for Steph and 6.40 for LeBron). So it’s really not close, unless we actually just throw away the regular season data—which is not what we normally do in virtually any other discussion when assessing and comparing players’ basketball impact. I don’t see why we should do it here.

[Djoker]

Despite claims to the contrary, Lebron doesn't have a very clear edge in postseason box score since 2015.

2015-2024 Playoff Numbers
Steph: 27.5/5.6/5.9 on 61.1 %TS (+5.0 rTS) with 3.3 tov in 36.7 mpg (128 games)
Lebron: 29.0/9.7/8.1 on 59.1 %TS (+3.0 rTS) with 3.8 to in 39.9 mpg (129 games)

It amounts to a very small offensive edge for Lebron but the edge is built upon Lebron playing more minutes. His proponents will say "See he contributes more." but him playing more minutes is a result of playing more close games. Steph's teams blew out so many opposing teams that he would often sit large chunks of, if not entire, fourth quarters.

2015-2024 Playoff Numbers - Per 36 Minutes
Steph: 27.0/5.5/5.8 on 61.1 %TS (+5.0 rTS) with 3.2 tov (128 games)
Lebron: 26.2/8.8/7.3 on 59.1 %TS (+3.0 rTS) with 3.4 tov (129 games)

When we normalize minutes, the box scores are neck and neck. Curry is scoring at a bit higher rate with higher efficiency while Lebron has a playmaking edge albeit with slightly higher turnovers.

[homecourtloss]

Despite claims to the contrary, Lebron doesn't have a very clear edge in postseason box score since 2015.

2015-2024 Playoff Numbers
Steph: 27.5/5.6/5.9 on 61.1 %TS (+5.0 rTS) with 3.3 tov in 36.7 mpg (128 games)
Lebron: 29.0/9.7/8.1 on 59.1 %TS (+3.0 rTS) with 3.8 to in 39.9 mpg (129 games)

It amounts to a very small offensive edge for Lebron but the edge is built upon Lebron playing more minutes. His proponents will say "See he contributes more." but him playing more minutes is a result of playing more close games. Steph's teams blew out so many opposing teams that he would often sit large chunks of, if not entire, fourth quarters.

2015-2024 Playoff Numbers - Per 36 Minutes
Steph: 27.0/5.5/5.8 on 61.1 %TS (+5.0 rTS) with 3.2 tov (128 games)
Lebron: 26.2/8.8/7.3 on 59.1 %TS (+3.0 rTS) with 3.4 tov (129 games)

When we normalize minutes, the box scores are neck and neck. Curry is scoring at a bit higher rate with higher efficiency while Lebron has a playmaking edge albeit with slightly higher turnovers.

Will someone comment something like this here:

Brunson is currently better than Curry, because Curry just had his age 35-36 season and has declined a good bit (though obviously still really good).

or this:

Yes, a guy in his mid-30’s having steadily declining impact numbers must just be because of changing lineup combinations (including in metrics that aim to control for quality of other players on the court) and not at all because he’s getting old and not as good as before. Of course!

No?

Note: At the end of 2016, LeBron had played more minutes than Curry has through this year.

Curry prime: a small window
LeBron prime: 100 years

[rk2023]

How did this derail into yet another revising history about LeBron thread

(In the sense of underselling the last half-decade of his prime)..

[rk2023]

Ohh Brunson is gonna be a way better player than Steph. LOL. He just needs a better team around him.. Hell arguably he already is better. He can just do more offensively

How so? I’m one of Brunson’s bigger fans (he broke my heart in 2018 - as a Michigan basketball fan who saw them get crushed by Villanova; I still love his game and his developmental story). I could see him developing into a similar player as Shai in a better offensive environment and with more reps as a lead guard.. but that’s no peak Steph. Just seems this is rooted in anti-player rhetoric

[DorianRo]

Ohh Brunson is gonna be a way better player than Steph. LOL. He just needs a better team around him.. Hell arguably he already is better. He can just do more offensively

How so? I’m one of Brunson’s bigger fans (he broke my heart in 2018 - as a Michigan basketball fan who saw them get crushed by Villanova; I still love his game and his developmental story). I could see him developing into a similar player as Shai in a better offensive environment and with more reps as a lead guard.. but that’s no peak Steph. Just seems this is rooted in anti-player rhetoric

Hes got more versatility.. Way more than Steph at a more efficient clip. Steph is a little one dimensional with the 3's. Brunson can do it all anywheres. The fact he took these lowly knicks to Top 2 seed is unreal.. ANd hes just a tough tough dude.

[Throwawaytheone]

What a truly bizzare thread. Are people here trying to argue 2022-2024 Curry is as good as prime 2015-2019 Curry? I thought that was a pretty funny idea to laugh at, proposed by casuals and trolls mostly. I don't even understand the argumentation behind this, just watch the games.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Saying sample size is too small for guys that have multiple long playoff runs over this time period, isn't very convincing either. Curry played 115 PS games from 15-22. That's over a season's worth of games, and is more than a comfortable size for the hybrid metrics often used to stabilize. We aren't just using pure-plus minus, which suggests Curry might be behind. But we have box-score numbers that also suggest that Curry was just a much lesser player.

No, that’s still not a very significant sample size. It’s basically equivalent to a single season of data (particularly when we take into account that playoff MPG are higher, so the off sample per game is smaller). And while hybrid metrics are better over smaller samples than raw data is, they’re definitely still pretty noisy (in large part because, ultimately, single-season RAPM or on-off is still a large component in the metrics). I certainly wouldn’t take one player being ahead of another by a decent bit in a single season as particularly conclusive, so nor would I do so with playoff data that is a similar size. And that’s not even getting into the potential issues caused by simply averaging the data across different years (i.e. scaling differences), which adds to the noisiness in this particular comparison.

More importantly, it’s also just essentially ignoring RS numbers. I realize that you’re explicitly conceding Curry’s better regular-season impact footprint in his prime years. But, while conceding it, you’re also virtually entirely dismissing its importance, in favor of the above-discussed smaller-sample data. Most basketball is regular-season basketball. It matters, and when we discuss impact data, we virtually always discuss (and even focus on) regular season data. This is because it is larger-sample data and also just because the regular season happens and matters a lot for assessing players. If the argument that Steph wasn’t the “impact king” essentially requires throwing away the regular-season data, then I don’t think it’s a particularly good argument, since it is a conclusion based on ignoring quite a lot that is widely understood as being really important data for assessing impact.

I’d note that we have measures that combine both RS and playoffs. Most prominently, we have RAPTOR—which combined RS+Playoffs. If we take the average of these players’ RS+Playoff RAPTOR in the years where they both were in their prime (I’d say 2013-2014 through 2019-2020), Steph has an average RAPTOR of 9.40, while LeBron has an average of just 6.47. And it’d be a similar story if we used a different time horizon instead (for instance, 2013-2014 through 2017-2018 would be 9.72 for Steph and 6.40 for LeBron). So it’s really not close, unless we actually just throw away the regular season data—which is not what we normally do in virtually any other discussion when assessing and comparing players’ basketball impact. I don’t see why we should do it here.

If you want to use that methodology, then feel free. I think its wrong if we are trying to determine who is the best player, but so be it.

Feel like this is large extension of our other convo, where you seem to believe the 24 Celtics pose a threat to 24 Denver because of their bonkers RS performance, even though looking at how these guys matchup, I think shows Boston would be at a great disadvantage.

See you in the next thread when we argue over these 2, lol.

[LukaTheGOAT]

Despite claims to the contrary, Lebron doesn't have a very clear edge in postseason box score since 2015.

2015-2024 Playoff Numbers
Steph: 27.5/5.6/5.9 on 61.1 %TS (+5.0 rTS) with 3.3 tov in 36.7 mpg (128 games)
Lebron: 29.0/9.7/8.1 on 59.1 %TS (+3.0 rTS) with 3.8 to in 39.9 mpg (129 games)

It amounts to a very small offensive edge for Lebron but the edge is built upon Lebron playing more minutes. His proponents will say "See he contributes more." but him playing more minutes is a result of playing more close games. Steph's teams blew out so many opposing teams that he would often sit large chunks of, if not entire, fourth quarters.

2015-2024 Playoff Numbers - Per 36 Minutes
Steph: 27.0/5.5/5.8 on 61.1 %TS (+5.0 rTS) with 3.2 tov (128 games)
Lebron: 26.2/8.8/7.3 on 59.1 %TS (+3.0 rTS) with 3.4 tov (129 games)

When we normalize minutes, the box scores are neck and neck. Curry is scoring at a bit higher rate with higher efficiency while Lebron has a playmaking edge albeit with slightly higher turnovers.

First off, we were talking about Curry's prime from 15-22, so not sure about adding the additional years.

By the box-score? By most box-score composites they are not that close, Lebron has an advantage by multiple standard deviations.


From 15-22 in the PS (6 PS), Lebron's box-metrics look like the following:

PER-29.1

WS/48-.243 (15.3 OWS)

BPM-10.4 (7.7 OBPM)



From 15-22 Steph in the PS,

PER-23.9

WS/48-.204 (12.6 WS)

BPM-7.5 (6.8 OBPM)

[DorianRo]

If you put Brunosn on the Warriors the past 10 years, dude would have mopped up. I mean hes playing with the scrub ass Knicks who just got 2nd seed and in the 2nd round of the playoffs now and just a beat team with two HOFers.

'Nuff said

[spree8]

If you put Brunosn on the Warriors the past 10 years, dude would have mopped up. I mean hes playing with the scrub ass Knicks who just got 2nd seed and in the 2nd round of the playoffs now and just a beat team with two HOFers.

'Nuff said

“Scrub ass Knicks” lol, stop trolling

[OhayoKD]

What a truly bizzare thread. Are people here trying to argue 2022-2024 Curry is as good as prime 2015-2019 Curry? I thought that was a pretty funny idea to laugh at, proposed by casuals and trolls mostly. I don't even understand the argumentation behind this, just watch the games.

Person who can't read paragraph-length posts properly should probably not be telling people to watch the games

[OhayoKD]

If you put Brunosn on the Warriors the past 10 years, dude would have mopped up. I mean hes playing with the scrub ass Knicks who just got 2nd seed and in the 2nd round of the playoffs now and just a beat team with two HOFers.

'Nuff said

scraping past a team that has yet to make the conference finals because their superstar is always injured in a series he can barely jump is crazy.

[DorianRo]

If you put Brunosn on the Warriors the past 10 years, dude would have mopped up. I mean hes playing with the scrub ass Knicks who just got 2nd seed and in the 2nd round of the playoffs now and just a beat team with two HOFers.

'Nuff said

“Scrub ass Knicks” lol, stop trolling

Its mostly scrubs and role players... Come on.. Hardly the Heatles

[Throwawaytheone]

What a truly bizzare thread. Are people here trying to argue 2022-2024 Curry is as good as prime 2015-2019 Curry? I thought that was a pretty funny idea to laugh at, proposed by casuals and trolls mostly. I don't even understand the argumentation behind this, just watch the games.

Person who can't read paragraph-length posts properly should probably not be telling people to watch the games

I've read the posts and the arguments fall hilariously flat. Reciting box score stats from 2017 and comparing them to 2023 is quite literally the most casual thing imaginable, it's a literal trope that gets mocked endlessly. It's almost unbelievable how weak of an argument it is. Watching Curry from 2015-2017 and comparing him to now is a seismic difference in literally every aspect of basketball. He's my favourite player ever and got me into basketball but I'm not going to deny that at the age of 36, he has indeed regressed significantly compared to when he was 28. That's fine and he's still really enjoyable to watch, but it's so bizarre seeing people deny it. It's sheer ignorance, or an attempt to push a dishonest agenda.