KD’s GOAT tier portability

[tsherkin]

Golden State used to spam the Steph-KD PnR and all KD did was float after the screen and try to post up the switch. He could've racked up hella assists in that system just as a short roller or even just plain catching and attacking in space then kicking early vs the collapse instead of uselessly floating.

But like, consider that he averaged Karl Malone-level assists in that set... which means his output in that regard is proportionate with his usage in that set.

TBF, KD's reads have never been crisp or fast, so there's some level where he was also just not seeing things in time to hit certain guys, for sure. That's a valid criticism of him. But there's something of a cap on him "rack[ing] up hella assists" in a system where he had the ball for only so many possessions.

I do agree it limited his ceiling as an offensive player, though; I was more noting that he was never going to be some crazy AST production guy with Golden State and that it wasn't a super valid angle on that criticism.

Portability has essentially just become a buzzword used as a cudgel to beat players over the head whose games that poster doesn't like.

Yes.

Versatility > portability because one precedes the other. But the Overthinking Basketball crowd hates that it could really be so simple.

I think that versatility and portability are the same in value... it depends on the particular player. It depends on how well they play with their style. There's not really huge objective value to being a star who can float around to different schemes... because the idea is to build around HIM if he's good enough. If you're a secondary star, that's something else. Yeah, there's something to be said about who you can fit next to the guy, but ultimately, availability determines that as much as anything else and then you try to make it work. You can't just summon star-level players for your focal guy, after all.

[Heej]

Golden State used to spam the Steph-KD PnR and all KD did was float after the screen and try to post up the switch. He could've racked up hella assists in that system just as a short roller or even just plain catching and attacking in space then kicking early vs the collapse instead of uselessly floating.

But like, consider that he averaged Karl Malone-level assists in that set... which means his output in that regard is proportionate with his usage in that set.

TBF, KD's reads have never been crisp or fast, so there's some level where he was also just not seeing things in time to hit certain guys, for sure. That's a valid criticism of him. But there's something of a cap on him "rack[ing] up hella assists" in a system where he had the ball for only so many possessions.

I do agree it limited his ceiling as an offensive player, though; I was more noting that he was never going to be some crazy AST production guy with Golden State and that it wasn't a super valid angle on that criticism.

Portability has essentially just become a buzzword used as a cudgel to beat players over the head whose games that poster doesn't like.

Yes.

Versatility > portability because one precedes the other. But the Overthinking Basketball crowd hates that it could really be so simple.

I think that versatility and portability are the same in value... it depends on the particular player. It depends on how well they play with their style. There's not really huge objective value to being a star who can float around to different schemes... because the idea is to build around HIM if he's good enough. If you're a secondary star, that's something else. Yeah, there's something to be said about who you can fit next to the guy, but ultimately, availability determines that as much as anything else and then you try to make it work. You can't just summon star-level players for your focal guy, after all.

Well I don't know if the criticism was that he needed to be a crazy assist producing guy. Just don't be a guy not getting any assists lol. Especially in a system where everyone else knows how to finish an advantage generated by Curry and all KD had to do is be a super connector and extend those advantages. Instead, KD often chose to be a record scratch.

I vehemently disagree about there not being value in a star that can play in different schemes. Often the playoffs are won by exploiting one specific deficiency and hammering a certain defensive coverage or offensive set until the opponent breaks. Playoff basketball is now about putting out a lineup that can produce the most answers for the most schemes. Because now if an evenly matched opponent can discover just one thing they can exploit that gives them the numerical advantage, you're likely cooked for the series if there's no answer to it.

It's not the 90s where you can just build an offense off parking lot isos because illegal Defense rules turned it into an individualized game.

[tsherkin]

Well I don't know if the criticism was that he needed to be a crazy assist producing guy. Just don't be a guy not getting any assists lol. Especially in a system where everyone else knows how to finish an advantage generated by Curry and all KD had to do is be a super connector and extend those advantages. Instead, KD often chose to be a record scratch.

The quote to which I responded was very much criticising him for not producing assists, for producing 0 or 1 assists... in an environment where that is eminently possible based on how the ball was distributed.

I vehemently disagree about there not being value in a star that can play in different schemes. Often the playoffs are won by exploiting one specific deficiency and hammering a certain defensive coverage or offensive set until the opponent breaks. Playoff basketball is now about putting out a lineup that can produce the most answers for the most schemes. Because now if an evenly matched opponent can discover just one thing they can exploit that gives them the numerical advantage, you're likely cooked for the series if there's no answer to it.

It's not the 90s where you can just build an offense off parking lot isos because illegal Defense rules turned it into an individualized game.

Sure. But there's space in between those two things. Like, if you're literally ONLY capable of on-ball iso and PnR, then yes, there are seriously limitations to your game which can be exploited, no doubt. But that doesn't really describe not-Harden. Luka and Lebron are both capable post players and can work in other capacities. They often don't, because they are MORE effective doing their main thing, but the older Lebron gets, the more he posts and that opens things up for other ball handlers and what-not. That's been the case for over a decade now, having learned some of his lesson from 2011.

But this is conversation is useful, though. Whether or not we agree on KD's performance level with the Warriors, what it highlights is that portability is a function of multiple skills and that it isn't at all universal, and reminds that impact doesn't directly translate either, and that makes sense.

I agree with you that you need more than just one set with which to attack the opponent. I can agree that you need to be somewhat versatile in your approach, though to an extant, that isn't new or we would have a very different appreciation for someone like Adrian Dantley.

I think there is a limit to how valuable portability is, and versatility both. I think the individual skillsets of a given player matter a lot, and there are some guys who are good enough that portability is somewhat irrelevant. You can work around their helio style and win rings. And then you have your other guys who have more off-ball game and they have their own limitations, because they still end up requiring good on-ball players. And even someone like Steph has a pretty strong, classical/prototypical PG game and on-ball action to begin with. And then has his own issues with variance due to volume 3pt shooting. And then someone like Bird had issues with physicality, lack of quickness, lack of strong dribble drive, and struggles with showing up as a scorer in the postseason.

My point was less that a guy can't be versatile, and more than we're talking sliding scale here. You don't need to be Steph in terms of off-ball action. You can get away with being Lebron. It's harder the more you extreme you play to either end, though.

[Heej]

Well I don't know if the criticism was that he needed to be a crazy assist producing guy. Just don't be a guy not getting any assists lol. Especially in a system where everyone else knows how to finish an advantage generated by Curry and all KD had to do is be a super connector and extend those advantages. Instead, KD often chose to be a record scratch.

The quote to which I responded was very much criticising him for not producing assists, for producing 0 or 1 assists... in an environment where that is eminently possible based on how the ball was distributed.

I vehemently disagree about there not being value in a star that can play in different schemes. Often the playoffs are won by exploiting one specific deficiency and hammering a certain defensive coverage or offensive set until the opponent breaks. Playoff basketball is now about putting out a lineup that can produce the most answers for the most schemes. Because now if an evenly matched opponent can discover just one thing they can exploit that gives them the numerical advantage, you're likely cooked for the series if there's no answer to it.

It's not the 90s where you can just build an offense off parking lot isos because illegal Defense rules turned it into an individualized game.

Sure. But there's space in between those two things. Like, if you're literally ONLY capable of on-ball iso and PnR, then yes, there are seriously limitations to your game which can be exploited, no doubt. But that doesn't really describe not-Harden. Luka and Lebron are both capable post players and can work in other capacities. They often don't, because they are MORE effective doing their main thing, but the older Lebron gets, the more he posts and that opens things up for other ball handlers and what-not. That's been the case for over a decade now, having learned some of his lesson from 2011.

But this is conversation is useful, though. Whether or not we agree on KD's performance level with the Warriors, what it highlights is that portability is a function of multiple skills and that it isn't at all universal, and reminds that impact doesn't directly translate either, and that makes sense.

I agree with you that you need more than just one set with which to attack the opponent. I can agree that you need to be somewhat versatile in your approach, though to an extant, that isn't new or we would have a very different appreciation for someone like Adrian Dantley.

I think there is a limit to how valuable portability is, and versatility both. I think the individual skillsets of a given player matter a lot, and there are some guys who are good enough that portability is somewhat irrelevant. You can work around their helio style and win rings. And then you have your other guys who have more off-ball game and they have their own limitations, because they still end up requiring good on-ball players. And even someone like Steph has a pretty strong, classical/prototypical PG game and on-ball action to begin with. And then has his own issues with variance due to volume 3pt shooting. And then someone like Bird had issues with physicality, lack of quickness, lack of strong dribble drive, and struggles with showing up as a scorer in the postseason.

My point was less that a guy can't be versatile, and more than we're talking sliding scale here. You don't need to be Steph in terms of off-ball action. You can get away with being Lebron. It's harder the more you extreme you play to either end, though.

Yeah I can see why you think that would be normal in that environment, I'm just saying I personally don't see it in that offense. From what I remembered watching them, KD often caused record scratches in Golden State and often defaulted to his base style of play when there were plenty of opportunities within that offense and offensive spacing for him to make different types of decisions that would've naturally led to assists and easier buckets.

And yeah I agree it's ultimately a sliding scale, but my thing is that there's a threshold on that scale for certain attributes where you can beat schemes or that scheme can beat you. Like if you're a 8/10 passer or above it starts getting less viable to swarm you to where you consistently generate an open shot out of it (Lebron/Jokic/Curry tier here). 6-8/10 range you're at least not gonna turned over and likely generate a step's worth of advantage that a teammate can extend driving on a closeout (current AD or Embiid tier). Once you're under that you get to the point where swarms work effectively on you, like AD and Embiid from 2 years ago or 80s Jordan

My point is that people think one guy being a 5 and another guy being an 8 on passing somehow means the guy with an 8 can cover for the guy with a 5. That doesn't make sense, they'll force the great passer to beat them in iso or deny them heavily while swarming the guy who can't pass out vs them. I'm glad that people have seen how basketball is actually played over the years and that some of these specialist-favored arguments hiding behind the portability buzzword have only gotten disproved by real life results.

I honestly think these arguments are heavily rooted in nostalgia and trying to do mental gymnastics to explain why old school specialist favored styles of basketball are actually the best way to play the game. Womp womp, the future is now old man.

[lessthanjake]

Your whole point is that some skills like shooting are more portable because good teams have ballhandling which is interesting because one can just as easily say that good teams often have shooting and cutting as well so guys who can draw 2 to the ball consistently are actually what's more valuable. See how dumb this concept is? It's literally just wielded as a cudgel to punish guys people dislike or as a crutch to support guys they like.

As I said, the point I am making operates under a baseline assumption that genuinely really good NBA players (which you need in order to have a good team) are more likely to have really good on-ball skills, compared to other offensive skill sets. That seems intuitively right to me, and I think it is ultimately what people like Ben Taylor are also assuming when they talk about this concept. But, as I said, it is possible to conceive of roster construction in which you have a really good team and are lacking in on-ball skills. In that case, a guy with great on-ball skills would be really “portable” in that scenario, IMO. Personally, that seems less likely than the flip side, so I’d wager that a guy with great off-ball skills would be more likely to end up being really “portable.” If you disagree with that underlying assumption, then that’s fine.

I will note, however, that you’re oversimplifying what I’m saying to try to boil it down to “skills like shooting are more portable.” I’m really talking about a player’s off-ball game *as a whole.* Shooting can be a big part of that, of course, but off-ball movement is a huge factor, and there’s other things like screening ability as well. Someone can be a great shooter and not be a great off-ball player. In any event, overall, it’s more about how much value a player can have without the ball, because I’m assuming that a really good NBA team is likely to have other really good players who may be less "portable" and need the ball to get even close to maximizing their value. In that sense, I also tend to think players who make quick decisions with the ball are likely more "portable" because that tends to get others involved in the possession more (which is more and more important the better the teammates are, and therefore probably has even more value the better the team—though obviously it's a good trait no matter what).

What you don't realize you're actually getting at is that you're presupposing the guys who are stacked in one attribute are deficient in the "opposing" one which is what's actually holding the team back.

Yes, I think this is actually a good point for you to make. I actually *am* making that kind of assumption about a superstar player’s teammates. The reason for that is that I’m assuming the guy whose “portability” we are evaluating is the best player on his team, and therefore that his teammates have flaws, at least in relative terms (even if they’re really good players overall). And I am assuming that someone is more likely to have really good teammates that are great on the ball and relatively less good off the ball, rather than vice versa (i.e. that they’re players who need to the ball to get close to maximizing their value). If the opposite is true on a particular team, or if the really good teammates are actually equally good at both, then the intuition I’m talking about with regards to “portability” wouldn’t really logically follow.

In any event, in the scenario I’m outlining (where a player has really good teammates that are much better on the ball than off it), you are right in a sense that that other player’s deficiency is part of what would be holding the team back. But there’s going to be deficiencies for players on any team—even the best ones. My intuition here is that a more “portable” player is one that covers the deficiency that I think is most common amongst other really good players, rather than one that shares that same deficiency (at least in relative terms).

Since you want to simplify it to on-ball vs off-ball and assume that most good players will spec towards on-ball; what you fail to understand here is that it's not as simple as one guy's deficiency being covered by another's proficiency lmao.

In reality what happens is that schemes accentuate both players deficiencies until the ancillary skills are able to break the scheme and allow players to unleash their proficiencies. If you have a guy you consider to be more portable because he specs towards off ball, teams will just blitz the on-ball guy and get it out of his hands while forcing the off-ball guy to make the plays.

Phoenix is a fairly clear example of this where their big 3 were all theoretically portable players on paper who should have all been able to cover for the other's on-ball skills as great off-ball guys. Instead the Wolves were just able to attack all of their creating deficiency such that their proficiencies were unable to be utilized enough.

Your intuition fails to account for how modern zone schemes are able to completely flip the math on guys' skillsets and force them to round out their weaknesses to maintain their baseline efficacy. And this has been a theme in our discussions imo that you just don't seem well versed in the Xs and Os of basketball and tend to look at it through a spreadsheet or what looks good on paper.

Versatility has become the name of the game in every sport now.

Lol, you apparently fail to realize that any defensive scheme designed to stop a really good player from doing the thing he is really good at will essentially inherently open things up for his team—thereby deriving value from forcing the defense to open things up. This is good for the offense! To take your example, if a team blitzes a great on-ball player to get it out of his hands, then that will create an advantage for the team by itself, because as long as that guy is able to get it out of his hands (which, if he’s a really good on-ball player, he should be able to do with consistency), the defense is left scrambling. That guy’s on-ball skill will have done its job incredibly well! Will the off-ball guy now have to make plays with the ball? Maybe, but it’d be from a position of advantage, and it’s actually quite likely that the great off-ball player will instead manage to use his great off-ball movement to massively exploit the now-scrambling defense—indeed that’s the wheelhouse of a great off-ball player! The two skill sets feed off each other in this example, and that’s the point! Both guys can do what they do best, at the same time (in this example, it’d be one guy creating the advantage, and the other exploiting that advantage using his biggest strength). Meanwhile, let’s take the flip side of this. Let’s say the defense instead tries to take away the off-ball guy, by shading defenders towards him as he moves off the ball (like how we have seen teams deal with Steph). They may well be able to limit the off-ball guy’s opportunities, but we’ve seen this movie before, and it ends up inherently opening space for the on-ball guy (because you can’t deal with an off-ball guy that way *and* double the guy on ball, or you just obviously create a layup line for everyone else).

Ultimately, it is a very basic concept that if two guys can play to their strengths and put pressure on the defense *at the exact same time*, then it is better than a situation where two guys can only truly play to their strengths one after the other. And, to go back to the thrust of your post, this is better precisely because of the fact that defenses aim to force players onto their weaknesses. Defenses can’t force two great players off their strengths at the same time, so they will generally fail in that goal against a team with a great on-ball and great off-ball player. It’s a pick-your-poison, but with the only options being a complete disaster for the defense. We saw this very well with Steph and KD. Meanwhile, with two great on-ball players, particularly if they aren’t great shooters, they inherently cannot both play to their strengths at the exact same time, and you can force them to their weakness by helping off the guy who is off the ball. Sure, the other guy may ultimately get the ball with some space to attack into, so that’s not all bad, but if he isn’t a great shooter, then the defense doesn’t have to close out super hard on him and the whole thing can easily break down a bit (not to mention that such a player will often not have the off-ball movement to put himself in the best position to receive the ball and exploit that space, often allowing the defense to end up recovering).

If your two best offensive players both excel on the ball but aren’t great off of it and aren’t great shooters, then you can help a decent bit off of whichever one doesn’t have the ball without too much worry. Both guys end up taking turns trying to operate on the ball against a team that can stack the paint more than they otherwise would, because the shooting isn’t great. In a lot of ways, it ends up arguably making it *harder* for each guy to create advantages using their strengths. And, to repeat myself, this is because when the one guy is playing to his strengths, the other guy inherently is not, and so you never have two guys creating advantages at once (or, perhaps more accurately, without having both guys play to their strengths at the same time, you’re not forcing the defense to live with an unmitigated version of one of the guys’ strengths).

This all seems rather obvious, and it’s a little surprising to me that a self-avowed X’s-and-O’s guru such as yourself would not understand it. It’s very basic stuff, and I’m frankly starting to wonder if your self-proclaimed vast knowledge of basketball is all talk—after all, as I’ve noted to you before, I have literally never once seen you actually break down any film, but instead I just constantly see you talk about how much you know and how good at breaking down film you are, all while you make extremely basic pronouncements about what basketball schemes aim to do (i.e. the type of statements one could glean from watching a few YouTube videos). Nothing you say about X’s and O’s has any depth to it whatsoever (it’s all just vague generalities), and yet a large percent of your posts involve you extolling your own depth of knowledge. Basketball is not very complicated, but still you very likely know quite a lot less than you think you do—perhaps the Dunning-Kroger effect in action.

[tsherkin]

Yeah I can see why you think that would be normal in that environment, I'm just saying I personally don't see it in that offense.

We can agree to disagree there, though we can agree that KD did not maximize his opportunities while there at the same time.

And yeah I agree it's ultimately a sliding scale, but my thing is that there's a threshold on that scale for certain attributes where you can beat schemes or that scheme can beat you. Like if you're a 8/10 passer or above it starts getting less viable to swarm you to where you consistently generate an open shot out of it (Lebron/Jokic/Curry tier here). 6-8/10 range you're at least not gonna turned over and likely generate a step's worth of advantage that a teammate can extend driving on a closeout (current AD or Embiid tier). Once you're under that you get to the point where swarms work effectively on you, like AD and Embiid from 2 years ago or 80s Jordan

Yeah, I'm with this paragraph, that makes sense to me.

My point is that people think one guy being a 5 and another guy being an 8 on passing somehow means the guy with an 8 can cover for the guy with a 5. That doesn't make sense, they'll force the great passer to beat them in iso or deny them heavily while swarming the guy who can't pass out vs them.

Yep, that also makes sense.

I'm glad that people have seen how basketball is actually played over the years and that some of these specialist-favored arguments hiding behind the portability buzzword have only gotten disproved by real life results.

Yep, I'm still with this.

You can't just have one dude and a bunch of set shooters anymore, for sure. This isn't the 90s, when having corner 3pt specialists was a wild thing, for sure. Or even earlier in the 2000s and 2010s when 5-out was at its peak initial efficacy. A more coherent scheme is necessary. And of course the baseline skill requirements a little higher to create the prerequisite efficiency. Harder and harder to get away with a sub-80% FT shooter, though Lebron is managing it right now like an absolute boss like it was 2020 again.

[Heej]

As I said, the point I am making operates under a baseline assumption that genuinely really good NBA players (which you need in order to have a good team) are more likely to have really good on-ball skills, compared to other offensive skill sets. That seems intuitively right to me, and I think it is ultimately what people like Ben Taylor are also assuming when they talk about this concept. But, as I said, it is possible to conceive of roster construction in which you have a really good team and are lacking in on-ball skills. In that case, a guy with great on-ball skills would be really “portable” in that scenario, IMO. Personally, that seems less likely than the flip side, so I’d wager that a guy with great off-ball skills would be more likely to end up being really “portable.” If you disagree with that underlying assumption, then that’s fine.

I will note, however, that you’re oversimplifying what I’m saying to try to boil it down to “skills like shooting are more portable.” I’m really talking about a player’s off-ball game *as a whole.* Shooting can be a big part of that, of course, but off-ball movement is a huge factor, and there’s other things like screening ability as well. Someone can be a great shooter and not be a great off-ball player. In any event, overall, it’s more about how much value a player can have without the ball, because I’m assuming that a really good NBA team is likely to have other really good players who may be less "portable" and need the ball to get even close to maximizing their value. In that sense, I also tend to think players who make quick decisions with the ball are likely more "portable" because that tends to get others involved in the possession more (which is more and more important the better the teammates are, and therefore probably has even more value the better the team—though obviously it's a good trait no matter what).



Yes, I think this is actually a good point for you to make. I actually *am* making that kind of assumption about a superstar player’s teammates. The reason for that is that I’m assuming the guy whose “portability” we are evaluating is the best player on his team, and therefore that his teammates have flaws, at least in relative terms (even if they’re really good players overall). And I am assuming that someone is more likely to have really good teammates that are great on the ball and relatively less good off the ball, rather than vice versa (i.e. that they’re players who need to the ball to get close to maximizing their value). If the opposite is true on a particular team, or if the really good teammates are actually equally good at both, then the intuition I’m talking about with regards to “portability” wouldn’t really logically follow.

In any event, in the scenario I’m outlining (where a player has really good teammates that are much better on the ball than off it), you are right in a sense that that other player’s deficiency is part of what would be holding the team back. But there’s going to be deficiencies for players on any team—even the best ones. My intuition here is that a more “portable” player is one that covers the deficiency that I think is most common amongst other really good players, rather than one that shares that same deficiency (at least in relative terms).

Since you want to simplify it to on-ball vs off-ball and assume that most good players will spec towards on-ball; what you fail to understand here is that it's not as simple as one guy's deficiency being covered by another's proficiency lmao.

In reality what happens is that schemes accentuate both players deficiencies until the ancillary skills are able to break the scheme and allow players to unleash their proficiencies. If you have a guy you consider to be more portable because he specs towards off ball, teams will just blitz the on-ball guy and get it out of his hands while forcing the off-ball guy to make the plays.

Phoenix is a fairly clear example of this where their big 3 were all theoretically portable players on paper who should have all been able to cover for the other's on-ball skills as great off-ball guys. Instead the Wolves were just able to attack all of their creating deficiency such that their proficiencies were unable to be utilized enough.

Your intuition fails to account for how modern zone schemes are able to completely flip the math on guys' skillsets and force them to round out their weaknesses to maintain their baseline efficacy. And this has been a theme in our discussions imo that you just don't seem well versed in the Xs and Os of basketball and tend to look at it through a spreadsheet or what looks good on paper.

Versatility has become the name of the game in every sport now.

Lol, you apparently fail to realize that any defensive scheme designed to stop a really good player from doing the thing he is really good at will essentially inherently open things up for his team—thereby deriving value from forcing the defense to open things up. This is good for the offense! To take your example, if a team blitzes a great on-ball player to get it out of his hands, then that will create an advantage for the team by itself, because as long as that guy is able to get it out of his hands (which, if he’s a really good on-ball player, he should be able to do with consistency), the defense is left scrambling. That guy’s on-ball skill will have done its job incredibly well! Will the off-ball guy now have to make plays with the ball? Maybe, but it’d be from a position of advantage, and it’s actually quite likely that the great off-ball player will instead manage to use his great off-ball movement to massively exploit the now-scrambling defense—indeed that’s the wheelhouse of a great off-ball player! The two skill sets feed off each other in this example, and that’s the point! Both guys can do what they do best, at the same time (in this example, it’d be one guy creating the advantage, and the other exploiting that advantage using his biggest strength). Meanwhile, let’s take the flip side of this. Let’s say the defense instead tries to take away the off-ball guy, by shading defenders towards him as he moves off the ball (like how we have seen teams deal with Steph). They may well be able to limit the off-ball guy’s opportunities, but we’ve seen this movie before, and it ends up inherently opening space for the on-ball guy (because you can’t deal with an off-ball guy that way *and* double the guy on ball, or you just obviously create a layup line for everyone else).

Ultimately, it is a very basic concept that if two guys can play to their strengths and put pressure on the defense *at the exact same time*, then it is better than a situation where two guys can only truly play to their strengths one after the other. And, to go back to the thrust of your post, this is better precisely because of the fact that defenses aim to force players onto their weaknesses. Defenses can’t force two great players off their strengths at the same time, so they will generally fail in that goal against a team with a great on-ball and great off-ball player. It’s a pick-your-poison, but with the only options being a complete disaster for the defense. We saw this very well with Steph and KD. Meanwhile, with two great on-ball players, particularly if they aren’t great shooters, you can force them to their weakness by helping off the guy who is off the ball. Sure, the other on-ball guy may still get the ball with some space to attack into, so that’s no all bad, but if he isn’t a great shooter, then the defense doesn’t have to close out super hard on him and the whole thing can easily break down a bit (not to mention that such a player will often not have the off-ball movement to put himself in the best position to receive the ball and exploit that space, often allowing the defense to end up recovering).

If your two best offensive players both excel on the ball but aren’t great off of it and aren’t great shooters, then you can help a decent bit off of whichever one doesn’t have the ball without too much worry. Both guys end up taking turns trying to operate on the ball against a team that can stack the paint more than they otherwise would, because the shooting isn’t great. In a lot of ways, it ends up arguably making it *harder* for each guy to create advantages using their strengths. And this is because when the one guy is playing to his strengths, the other guy inherently is not, and so you never have two guys creating advantages at once (or, perhaps more accurately, without having both guys play to their strengths at the same time, you’re not forcing the defense to live with an unmitigated version of one of the guys’ strengths).

This all seems rather obvious, and it’s a little surprising to me that a self-avowed X’s-and-O’s guru such as yourself would not understand it. It’s very basic stuff, and I’m frankly starting to wonder if your self-proclaimed vast knowledge of basketball is all talk—after all, as I’ve noted to you before, I have literally never once seen you actually break down any film, but instead I just constantly see you talk about how much you know and how good at breaking down film you are, all while you make extremely basic pronouncements about what basketball schemes aim to do (i.e. the type of statements one could glean from watching a few YouTube videos). Nothing you say about X’s and O’s has any depth to it whatsoever (it’s all just vague generalities), and yet a large percent of your posts involve you extolling your own depth of knowledge. Basketball is not very complicated, but still you very likely know quite a lot less than you think you do—perhaps the Dunning-Kroger effect in action.

Good job, you've finally achieved level 1 in understanding how basketball works. Generating an advantage against a scheme. Yes, you're right those schemes sacrifice an advantage elsewhere on the court in order to take away a primary proficiency.

Now I'm gonna need you to take the next step forward in understanding what happens on a basketball court and comprehend that generated advantages now need to ultimately be extended and finished. Players with better ancillary skills like say an on-ball spec'd guy who has enough skill to relocate and get the ball on the move before a defense can load up, or is able to attack the glass and draw in another defender now is able to extend that advantage and hopefully lead to it being finished.

And your example about the on-ball and off-ball players are precisely why I say you don't really understand Xs and Os because there's a very simple coverage people use nowadays to deal with guys like that who can't create anything off the bounce... switching LMFAO. Or just keeping it simple and chasing the guy over top and having the 4 or 5 dropped in the paint.

It's why the Klay types have already begun to go out of style and you need guys who are able to put the ball on the floor and keep defenses rotating. There's no need to put 2 off the ball at that point, and as such doesn't actually compromise the defense such that it opens up an opportunity for the on-ball guy. At which point they'll just get swarmed and the off-ball guy is run off the line and forced to make a play in space, which he can't do. Lol Dunning-Kruger indeed. You overestimate your simplistic and reductive understanding of what actually happens on the floor. You don't understand that you need to have the most answers to the most schemes in the new era of basketball. Every post of yours is a confession of this.

And I mean if you haven't seen me breakdown my thoughts on coverages and how certain plays broke down then that's a consequence of you not being in the LeBron thread over the years, and me not keeping up on the boards with my takes anymore. You can ask any of the regulars in that thread what they think about my breakdowns of what's happening film-wise and I'm confident they'll provide an assessment that would make you continue to seethe.

[Heej]

Yeah I can see why you think that would be normal in that environment, I'm just saying I personally don't see it in that offense.

We can agree to disagree there, though we can agree that KD did not maximize his opportunities while there at the same time.

And yeah I agree it's ultimately a sliding scale, but my thing is that there's a threshold on that scale for certain attributes where you can beat schemes or that scheme can beat you. Like if you're a 8/10 passer or above it starts getting less viable to swarm you to where you consistently generate an open shot out of it (Lebron/Jokic/Curry tier here). 6-8/10 range you're at least not gonna turned over and likely generate a step's worth of advantage that a teammate can extend driving on a closeout (current AD or Embiid tier). Once you're under that you get to the point where swarms work effectively on you, like AD and Embiid from 2 years ago or 80s Jordan

Yeah, I'm with this paragraph, that makes sense to me.

My point is that people think one guy being a 5 and another guy being an 8 on passing somehow means the guy with an 8 can cover for the guy with a 5. That doesn't make sense, they'll force the great passer to beat them in iso or deny them heavily while swarming the guy who can't pass out vs them.

Yep, that also makes sense.

I'm glad that people have seen how basketball is actually played over the years and that some of these specialist-favored arguments hiding behind the portability buzzword have only gotten disproved by real life results.

Yep, I'm still with this.

You can't just have one dude and a bunch of set shooters anymore, for sure. This isn't the 90s, when having corner 3pt specialists was a wild thing, for sure. Or even earlier in the 2000s and 2010s when 5-out was at its peak initial efficacy. A more coherent scheme is necessary. And of course the baseline skill requirements a little higher to create the prerequisite efficiency. Harder and harder to get away with a sub-80% FT shooter, though Lebron is managing it right now like an absolute boss like it was 2020 again.

Well hey at least we agree on the main stuff here. It's a little wild how quickly basketball is evolving. Remember when Stretch 4 was a huge thing in 2010? Then 5 years later it was "stretch 4 isn't enough, they need to be able to make plays". S*** is moving really quick in general now man. Hell, like you said even 5-out isn't all that special anymore; but it was damn near gamebreaking a few years ago lol. Wild times to be alive I guess

[tsherkin]

Well hey at least we agree on the main stuff here.

For sure.

It's a little wild how quickly basketball is evolving. Remember when Stretch 4 was a huge thing in 2010?

I remember when a stretch 4 was a revolution due to the way they could space the floor with 15 footers from the baseline. Like Ho Grant or Kurt Thomas and such. Sam Perkins, Clifford Robinson, Robert Horry, that era. And what a difference Horry made for both Dream and Shaq, and how he slotted next to TD. And then yeah, the next iterations with like Sheed, then Serge Ibaka.

Then 5 years later it was "stretch 4 isn't enough, they need to be able to make plays". S*** is moving really quick in general now man. Hell, like you said even 5-out isn't all that special anymore; but it was damn near gamebreaking a few years ago lol. Wild times to be alive I guess

Absolutely.

[eminence]

I generally think of stretch 4s having always been a thing, it just got lost in the low-talent/expansion riddled 70s before returning.

Dolph Schayes went pro in the 40s for goodness sakes.

[Cavsfansince84]

I think a lot of people have fallen in love with the idea of a theoretical KD in terms of what he can do on the court which isn't the same as the actual KD that we have seen since 2014 or outside of a few playoff series where he seemed so unstoppable which aren't a perfect picture of the level of player he actually is. That area between the hypothetical and actual(which includes a tendency to disappear and what could be described as a passive personality) is where I think the issue is.

[Heej]

I generally think of stretch 4s having always been a thing, it just got lost in the low-talent/expansion riddled 70s before returning.

Dolph Schayes went pro in the 40s for goodness sakes.

Interesting. Wasn't one of the Hallmarks of 60s ball that guys were more well rounded across positions where everyone was expected to be able to at least cut and pass? Almost as if more talented eras tend towards guys being well rounded as opposed to specializing.

[Cavsfansince84]

Interesting. Wasn't one of the Hallmarks of 60s ball that guys were more well rounded across positions where everyone was expected to be able to at least cut and pass? Almost as if more talented eras tend towards guys being well rounded as opposed to specializing.

I think its also a semi reflection of the coaching styles that are en vogue in any given era and rules changes which they may adapt to.

[AEnigma]

I generally think of stretch 4s having always been a thing, it just got lost in the low-talent/expansion riddled 70s before returning.

Dolph Schayes went pro in the 40s for goodness sakes.

Even in the 1970s, you had spacing bigs like McAdoo and Issel and Sikma, plus Cowens and Reed and Thurmond to lesser extents… arguably Beaty and Paultz, although I have seen relatively little of them. Bob Love among dedicated power forwards, and Jamaal Wilkes when he played power forward.

[Heej]

I generally think of stretch 4s having always been a thing, it just got lost in the low-talent/expansion riddled 70s before returning.

Dolph Schayes went pro in the 40s for goodness sakes.

Even in the 1970s, you had spacing bigs like McAdoo and Issel and Sikma, plus Cowens and Reed and Thurmond to lesser extents… arguably Beaty and Paultz, although I have seen relatively little of them. Bob Love among dedicated power forwards, and Jamaal Wilkes when he played power forward.

Seems to me like specializing PFs into dirty work guys was a consequence of lack of talent and we've been gaslit by media and 90s fans into thinking that specializing is optimal basketball because it feeds into the 90s mythology.

[tsherkin]

I generally think of stretch 4s having always been a thing, it just got lost in the low-talent/expansion riddled 70s before returning.

Dolph Schayes went pro in the 40s for goodness sakes.

There have been outliers across all of league history. But even back then, you had 5s who could do it, right. Bellamy. Jerry Lucas. Even Kareem had some range, though nothing like contemporary range, obviously.

It's the evolution of the idea over decades more than the specific label, and of course the proliferation into a league standard instead of an individual example.

[AEnigma]

I generally think of stretch 4s having always been a thing, it just got lost in the low-talent/expansion riddled 70s before returning.

Dolph Schayes went pro in the 40s for goodness sakes.

Even in the 1970s, you had spacing bigs like McAdoo and Issel and Sikma, plus Cowens and Reed and Thurmond to lesser extents… arguably Beaty and Paultz, although I have seen relatively little of them. Bob Love among dedicated power forwards, and Jamaal Wilkes when he played power forward.

Seems to me like specializing PFs into dirty work guys was a consequence of lack of talent and we've been gaslit by media and 90s fans into thinking that specializing is optimal basketball because it feeds into the 90s mythology.

Mm, maybe. Horry was notable for taking threes, as was Sam Perkins on the Supersonics (often acting as a small-ball centre even). Cliff somewhat less so, but did take them. Terry Mills later. Grant was a notably elite mid-range shooter, more in the Lamarcus Aldridge mould, but looking at Laimbeer and Tom Chambers and Robert Parish… Moses Malone by that point… I would not say that spacing bigs made for a newly rediscovered concept or anything outside of the 3s, but Sikma and Laimbeer had already started with that, and in the ABA you even had Red Robbins taking some.

Also profoundly embarrassed that I listed Sikma and Cowens and Reed and McAdoo and Issel and Thurmond but not Lanier.

[Heej]

Even in the 1970s, you had spacing bigs like McAdoo and Issel and Sikma, plus Cowens and Reed and Thurmond to lesser extents… arguably Beaty and Paultz, although I have seen relatively little of them. Bob Love among dedicated power forwards, and Jamaal Wilkes when he played power forward.

Seems to me like specializing PFs into dirty work guys was a consequence of lack of talent and we've been gaslit by media and 90s fans into thinking that specializing is optimal basketball because it feeds into the 90s mythology.

Mm, maybe. Horry was notable for taking threes, as was Sam Perkins on the Supersonics (often acting as a small-ball centre even). Cliff somewhat less so, but did take them. Terry Mills later. Grant was a notably elite mid-range shooter, more in the Lamarcus Aldridge mould, but looking at Laimbeer and Tom Chambers and Robert Parish… Moses Malone by that point… I would not say that spacing bigs made for a newly rediscovered concept or anything outside of the 3s, but Sikma and Laimbeer had already started with that, and in the ABA you even had Red Robbins taking some.

Also profoundly embarrassed that I listed Sikma and Cowens and Reed and McAdoo and Issel and Thurmond but not Lanier.

Truee guess I'm thinking more of how it transitioned from a luxury to a necessity by 2010

[eminence]

I generally think of stretch 4s having always been a thing, it just got lost in the low-talent/expansion riddled 70s before returning.

Dolph Schayes went pro in the 40s for goodness sakes.

There have been outliers across all of league history. But even back then, you had 5s who could do it, right. Bellamy. Jerry Lucas. Even Kareem had some range, though nothing like contemporary range, obviously.

It's the evolution of the idea over decades more than the specific label, and of course the proliferation into a league standard instead of an individual example.

I gave the most iconic early example, but my position is that it has been common for the whole history of the league.

[AEnigma]

Seems to me like specializing PFs into dirty work guys was a consequence of lack of talent and we've been gaslit by media and 90s fans into thinking that specializing is optimal basketball because it feeds into the 90s mythology.

Mm, maybe. Horry was notable for taking threes, as was Sam Perkins on the Supersonics (often acting as a small-ball centre even). Cliff somewhat less so, but did take them. Terry Mills later. Grant was a notably elite mid-range shooter, more in the Lamarcus Aldridge mould, but looking at Laimbeer and Tom Chambers and Robert Parish… Moses Malone by that point… I would not say that spacing bigs made for a newly rediscovered concept or anything outside of the 3s, but Sikma and Laimbeer had already started with that, and in the ABA you even had Red Robbins taking some.

Also profoundly embarrassed that I listed Sikma and Cowens and Reed and McAdoo and Issel and Thurmond but not Lanier.

Truee guess I'm thinking more of how it transitioned from a luxury to a necessity by 2010

Right, where I would say the league was a bit slower overall was regularly having two functional frontcourt spacers. That did not become normal until recently. I can list a bunch of centres who created space, but usually they would be playing with a lesser spacing power forward, or a small forward briefly playing up (e.g. Detlef Schrempf, Derrick McKey, Larry Bird…).

There were some decent combinations on that front all the same. McHale does not have this reputation, but he had good range overall. Nance and Daugherty. I gestured at the Sonics when they went with Detlef/Perkins, and the Bulls had it in 1994 with Kukoc and Grant. Smits and McKey to some degree (heh). When the Knicks picked up Camby they could run a few lineups where that was an option. And then the Mavericks started the true revolution with Dirk and Raef.