NBA 2024-25 Season Thread

great shot of the Hornets coach yelling WTF there

I can't speak to what Kerr envisioned, but I can tell you that the Warriors offense during this period was very, very similar to the offense in which Curry played in college. Curry's greatest skills in college were shooting and moving relentlessly without the ball. Giving up the call, getting on his bicycle, and relocating for a three was a huge part of his success in college.

Curry's biggest improvements in the NBA have been playing on the ball, finishing inside, and getting strong enough to not get run over defensively. But the stuff you mainly associate with Kerr's offense was always what came most easily to Curry. If you look at scouting reports for Curry when he was coming out of college, they always highlighted his shooting and off-ball movement.

I'm not talking about Curry's ability to excel here - I don't think you even need to talk about Curry's college career, his skill set makes this obvious - but rather the system's overall efficiency with Curry off-ball (relative to spamming Curry PnR / isos), which allowed Kerr to lean more heavily into it over time. If you look at the evolution of their offense, it's obvious that Draymond's emergence was a key factor.

The point is that, prior to them being coached by Kerr and D'Antoni, there was no real reason to believe that Curry would specifically excel as an off-ball creator and Harden would excel as a ball-dominant guard. Curry was looking like a star point guard that can dominate the ball and excel. Harden was a combo-guard or a shooting guard that can also run an offense in a heliocentric system. Curry then found himself being coached by Kerr, who pretty much admits that he fundamentally believes ball movement as the right way to play basketball (paraphrased obviously), while Harden found himself coached by D'Antoni, who believes in running the offense through a combo scoring/passing guard and isn't afraid to spam what works a million times over, which resulted in gaudy possession numbers for Harden. There's no real reason to believe that Kerr and D'Antoni wouldn't have done something similar had they ended up with the other superstar.

Strictly looking at Harden from a skill perspective, Harden is pretty much an ideal guard for any kind of ball movement system and Curry is also pretty close to an ideal ball-dominant guard.

Also it's interesting to me that you're arguing against Curry being a system player, but I'm arguing that he would've been successful doing different things (to the extent that him ending up in the current system is a huge coincidence), but you're arguing that it's so obvious that Curry is such a great fit for the type of offense he ended up that any reasonable coach would've employed him in that manner, despite the fact that players with his skill set and overall abilities almost always end up in a ball-dominant role and every year lots of Warriors fans complain loudly why they aren't just using Steph that way more often like every other team would.

Funny in the sense that he comes off like a dumb bitch.

a lineup of russel dinwiddie rui prince and hayes...

... and it's a 20pt blowout in the 1st already

It was always blindingly obvious that Curry could play off the ball. Again, it was one of his primary attributes when he came in the league.

Bolded wasn't true when Curry came in the league, and it certainly wasn't believed to be true. He was more versatile by the time he got to the championship years than he was when he started.

I am arguing that most great players are "system" players according to your definition, including Curry. I also am arguing that Curry didn't "end up" in that type of offense. The system evolved around him to maximize his skills. That's how decent coaching works.

Kangz n clips tonight iirc

Clippers are a bad matchup for Sac

harden vs curry 1 v 1, who wins?

who's coaching?

how would the winner of harden vs curry in 1 on 1 affect lebrons legacy?

Saric is a poor man's Otto Porter. I'll leave it to the reader to decide how valuable that is.

A+ posting guys

hansolo.jpeg

It's also blindingly obvious that Harden could play off the ball. In fact, every single basketball player needs to be able to play off the ball, there's only one ball to go around. The question is whether he could have the impact to justify a lottery pick in that role (concern in 09) and whether he could have the impact to justify his emerging superstar status (concern in 13). And no this wasn't clear at all.

Curry was a combo-guard in college and played alongside a pass-first point guard in college for two years and wasn't the main point guard until his final season. The scouting reports talking about whether Curry could play point are saying, Curry is a great shooter and is more like a shooting guard, but can't guard 2s and his shooting is the one thing that's making him look lottery-worthy, so how is he going to fit into an NBA lineup? They aren't making some grand commentary about how Curry would be so effective off-ball in a ball-movement system. It's really about the fact that role players need to fit the system rather than the other way around and tweeners don't fit that well into typical systems.

Remember back then, a lot of basketball people felt that they needed someone to play an unselfish "pass-first" role and since most 2-5s didn't have the skills or the inclination to do, so if your 6-3 guard doesn't do that either, well we don't have anyone to play point or we have to let someone who is going to prioritize his own scoring to play point.

But the modern position of heliocentric ball-dominant guard is about letting guys like Curry (best scorer, high basketball IQ, good enough passer / ball-handler) run the point and using the threat of scoring as the primary way to create opportunities for others (or vice versa). It's about conceding that creating for yourself and creating for others are both hard enough, instead of running plays to specifically do one or the other (or having players be strongly biased towards one skill vs the other) let's put the ball in the hands of the player that can do both at a high level and use the threat of one to make the other easier. It's like spamming QB options rather than having pass plays and run plays.

And Curry was literally that player his final season in college. In fact Curry's draft profile reads more like a description of Harden under D'Antoni:

https://www.draftexpress.com/article/Sit...

In other words, Curry played more like a ball-dominant guard under a D'Antoni system than Harden ever did and that's what worried the scouts, because that's not a prototypical point guard role. The scouts were worried that there was a huge mismatch between how he was being used and his eventual role in the NBA, because well, that position didn't really exist and they didn't think Curry would be that good anyway.

Btw Harden didn't play like this at all in college - he was pretty much just a shooting guard in a system.

Just to be clear, your contention is that if D'Antoni became the Warriors coach in 2014 he would've devised a Kerr-like ball movement offense where Curry runs all these off-ball screens so that Draymond Green can exploit mismatches instead of spamming PnRs and letting Curry cook the way he did in college? And that if Harden was on the Warriors instead of Curry, Kerr would've been like, you know what, let's forget about this whole ball movement thing that I believe is the right way to play, let's just spam Harden isos.

Chet is the first rookie in history with 100 blocks and 100 threes. There are 25 games left.

(also Wemby will be the second rookie in history to do this sometime in March)

29 pts w 5/8 from 3 tonight. Chet had 10 going into 4Q but he typically decides to all of a sudden get aggro in 4Q's mostly.

I don't think I've ever called Curry a system player. In fact, I'm the one arguing that Curry looks like a conventional-enough superstar that it's obvious enough that he would've succeeded in a heliocentric role, one that's increasingly common for superstars with his skill set, that it's a pretty big coincidence that he ended up in a rare ball movement system. You on the other hand are arguing that Curry is such a snowflake and how that's so obvious to everyone that any decent coach would've somehow come up with a rare system and a rare role for a superstar player at the NBA level specifically to suit him, despite the fact that this literally never happened before Kerr (and no, his college coach playing him at 2 when there was another star point guard on the team, then moving him to 1 after that player graduated does not count).

The reality is that Curry played in a historically unusual situation and has historically high discrepancy in terms of how he was viewed within that unusual situation and outside of that situation. The intellectually honest thing to do is to acknowledge that this creates a fair amount of uncertainty in terms of evaluation.

candybar do you use ChatGPT to generate all those big paragraphs?

I've been working hard on a long post the past few days about how Steph Curry is overrated, here it is:

Stephen Curry, often hailed as one of the greatest basketball players of our time, has sparked intense debates about his true standing in the pantheon of NBA legends. While many celebrate his remarkable achievements, some argue that he is overrated. Let’s delve into the reasons behind this perspective.

• Exceptional Team Support: Curry has been blessed with an extraordinary supporting cast. His partnership with Klay Thompson, another phenomenal shooter, and the defensive prowess of Draymond Green provided him with a unique advantage. Additionally, playing alongside Kevin Durant, an MVP and scoring titan, elevated Curry’s success. While Curry’s shooting skills are unparalleled, his teammates played a crucial role in creating an environment where he could thrive.
  
• Playoff Performances: Despite his accolades, Curry’s playoff performances have occasionally fallen short of expectations. His shooting percentages dip, and he faces challenges when defenses tighten during critical moments. Critics argue that his clutch performances do not consistently match his regular-season brilliance.
  
• Notable Stats: Let’s examine some key stats:
  
  • Career Points Per Game: 23.5
    
  • Playoff Points Per Game: 26.5
    
  • Finals Points Per Game: 27.1
    
  • Field Goal Percentage: Ranges from 42.2% to 47.7%
    
  • Three-Point Percentage: Varies from 38.9% to 43.6%
    
  • Player Efficiency Rating (PER): Averaging around 23.8
    
  • Clutch Factor: Contrary to popular belief, Curry’s stats don’t necessarily improve in clutch situations.
    
  
  
  
• Legacy and Perception: Curry’s legacy is intertwined with his impact on the game. His style revolutionized basketball, emphasizing long-range shooting and quick ball movement. However, some critics argue that his influence overshadows his actual performance on the court.
  

Here's some of my words on lighting the beam: (GO KANGZ!!!)

hype! Bonus had a triple dub with like 7 minutes left in the 3rd. Russ couldn't have been happy with that development

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