Golden State's Struggles Provide Insight into Why The Team Has Won Championships
Remember the old MLB ad declaring "Chicks dig the long ball"?
Fans and "stat gurus" alike dig the long ball in the NBA, declaring that you cannot be successful in today's game without shooting well from three point range. That assertion is demonstrably false. In The Evolution of the Usage of the Three Point Shot, Part IV, I wrote, "Winning teams play consistent defense, they control the paint at both ends of the court, and they outrebound their opponents. A team that does not do those things well is not going to have much success; if a team excels tremendously in one or two categories then it may survive a slight weakness in another category, but just jacking up three pointers with little regard for defense, paint presence, and rebounding is not a championship recipe, as repeatedly demonstrated by the Houston Rockets during the Daryl Morey/James Harden era."
The defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors are 3-6 this season. Stephen Curry is playing at an MVP level (31.0 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 6.8 apg, shooting splits of .487/.414/.944) and his numbers are better across the board than they were last season. The Warriors rank first in scoring, ninth in field goal percentage, and 16th in three point field goal percentage; last season, the Warriors ranked 15th in scoring, ninth in field goal percentage, and eighth in three point field goal percentage. The difference is defense. This season, the Warriors rank 30th (last) in points allowed, and 22nd in defensive field goal percentage; last season, the Warriors ranked third in points allowed and second in defensive field goal percentage. Also, the Warriors rank 26th in rebounding this season after ranking seventh in rebounding last season. Stephen Curry leads the Warriors in rebounding this season, and he is the only Warrior averaging more than 6.5 rpg; last season he ranked fourth on the team in rebounding (5.2 rpg) behind Draymond Green (7.3 rpg), Kevon Looney (7.3 rpg), and Otto Porter Jr. (5.7 rpg).
After the Warriors won the 2022 NBA championship, I stated that I do not rank Curry among the top 10 players of all-time. Curry does not have the necessary combination of size and all-around skill set to be ranked among the best of the best; I rank him in the top 25-30 of all-time. A combination of recency bias, placing too much weight on "ring counting," and obsession with three point shooting explains why some people rank Curry higher than I do. It is important to not be a prisoner of the moment, to not rank players based solely on championships won, and to not overvalue three point shooting.
The only player under 6-5 in my Pantheon is Jerry West, who was at least as good as Curry offensively and much better defensively. West "only" won one championship, but he played at an elite level throughout his NBA Finals career and he is still the only player from the losing team to win the Finals MVP (in 1969, the first year that the award was given). Ironically, his worst Finals performance was in 1972, the only time that he won a title. The West-Curry comparison is not adequately made by focusing on Curry's 4-1 edge in championships won, because championships won is impacted by who West and Curry played with, who they played against, and the way that playing conditions and rules have evolved. I rank West ahead of Curry because West could do more things well. In other words, all things being equal, I could see West winning four championships with the modern Warriors while putting up numbers at least as good as Curry's and while playing elite defense; I am not convinced that if Curry played with West's teams he would have won more or accomplished more than West did, and I believe that Curry would have not fared as well in a more physical league that did not have the three point shot.
As indicated above, the Warriors' success is grounded in defense and rebounding. More than 30 years ago, Pat Riley declared "No rebounds, no rings," and that is as true today as it was in the 1980s. Curry is a wonderful player, but he is not the primary driver of the Warriors' defensive and rebounding excellence, and it is evident this season that without that defensive and rebounding excellence the Warriors are not even a .500 team despite Curry putting up MVP-level numbers.
It remains to be seen if the Warriors will improve their defense and rebounding, or if a combination of age, complacency, and internal strife has permanently compromised their ability and/or willingness to excel in those areas--but it is evident that even though Curry gets the headlines it is not his three point shooting that drives the Warriors' success.
It is worth extending this analysis to another team that is often discussed, the L.A. Lakers. It has been repeatedly asserted that the Lakers are struggling because they do not have good outside shooters. It should be remembered that the Lakers' 2020 championship team ranked fourth in points allowed, eighth in defensive field goal percentage--and 21st in three point field goal percentage! The 2020 Lakers did not have the "lasers" that LeBron James has lamented that the current Lakers lack; the 2020 Lakers had LeBron James and Anthony Davis committed to attacking the paint on offense and protecting the paint on defense.
Last season, the Lakers ranked 28th in points allowed, 21st in defensive field goal percentage, and 22nd in three point field goal percentage. This season's Lakers have improved defensively while their three point shooting has regressed, but even if the Lakers shot better from three point range than they are now they would not be an elite team unless/until they consistently play high level team defense while also attacking the paint on offense. Improvement in any area would obviously help a losing team, but the foundations of championship level play are defense and rebounding, not three point shooting.
Another important ingredient in the championship recipe is the willingness to pay top dollar for top talent. "Stat gurus" used to assert that they are so much better at talent evaluation than everyone else that they could build a great team with a relatively low budget, but the evidence does not support that belief. "Stat gurus" often point out how many teams have high payrolls but do not win championships as if this proves that traditional-minded talent evaluators are incompetent, but that is a flawed and incomplete viewpoint because each year only one out of 30 teams will win the championship. Put another way, even if the champion's payroll ranks in the top 10, nine of the top 10 payrolls will not win a title, so by definition it will always be true that most of the teams that spent a lot of money did not win a championship.
What "stat gurus" neglect to mention is that the championship team will almost always be one of the top spending teams. Therefore, the most honest way of looking at this is to see how often championship teams rank among the top spenders. Since the 2010-11 season (when LeBron James formed a super team in Miami), the NBA champion has had the top payroll twice, ranked in the top five six out of 12 years, and has ranked lower than 10th just four times, with an average ranking of seventh. Disregard the 2014 Spurs (who ranked 19th while paying Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard less than $2 million), and the average ranking is sixth.
The Golden State Warriors had the highest payroll in the NBA last season, and they have the highest payroll this season. In their three championship seasons prior to 2022, they ranked 14th (2015), 14th (2017) and second (2018) in payroll. They exploited a boost in the salary cap in 2017 to sign Kevin Durant, who was the best player on their 2017 and 2018 championship teams. There is no question that big spending played a significant role for their 2018 and 2022 championship teams, and there is also no question that the good fortune of having Stephen Curry and others on below market value contracts (due to those players not having signed their big money contract extensions yet) helped the Warriors win their first two championships.
The larger point is that the league's economic structure is much different than it used to be, which impacts competitive balance, and that is yet another reason that comparing players mainly based on "rings" is not the best method.
Stephen Curry is a great player, and I think that he would have excelled in any era--but this era is tailor-made to his skill set strengths, and he has been blessed with teammates who have enabled the Warriors to be an elite defensive team. Although West played with prime Elgin Baylor, in general he did not have teams as well-balanced as Curry has had, and by the time West played with Baylor and Chamberlain, all three players were past their primes, though West and Chamberlain were still quite good.
Labels: Anthony Davis, Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors, Jerry West, Klay Thompson, L.A. Lakers, LeBron James, Stephen Curry
posted by David Friedman @ 10:01 PM
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