Do shooters really have good PORT?

[Heej]

Take the Wizards. Corey Kispert has easily the best 3 point shooting on the team, but does very little else. With good size, he's very portable. Kyle Kuzma has meh 3 point shooting (though he does a lot of it so he still forces coverage outside), good playmaking, good rebounding (for a wing), and an ability to get his shot without requiring help from a pass, screen, etc. IN a pinch you can play him anywhere from 1-5; Kispert is a wing, period. Much more versatile player but with his tendency to think he's a primary option scorer, not as portable. (Kuzma is the better defender too but neither have been strong at that end the last two years.)

COREY F***ING KISPERT!

For those who don't know, Google the Thibodeau story about Corey kispert this year

[OhayoKD]

Isn't shooting/providing offensive value without the ball part of "doing it all"? I don't really see how a portability vs versatility dichotomy makes any sense - it's not like the two are mutually exclusive in any way

Portability, when talking about someone other than the top 10 players in the league (who you bend your scheme to fit anyway) is frequently used as a shorthand for 3 and D type players. Versatility implies the ability to take on multiple roles in a team scheme, whether it's on ball scoring or just having the size to guard multiple positions or switchability. A player may certainly be both but isn't necessarily.

I always took Portability to be about some combination off-ball offensive value + defense (3&D works as a rough approximation, but I think something like Offensive Rebounding complicates that archetype), that is when it means anything at all (see my earlier post in the thread for why I'm not crazy about the terminology at all).

So the meme version

[parsnips33]

Portability, when talking about someone other than the top 10 players in the league (who you bend your scheme to fit anyway) is frequently used as a shorthand for 3 and D type players. Versatility implies the ability to take on multiple roles in a team scheme, whether it's on ball scoring or just having the size to guard multiple positions or switchability. A player may certainly be both but isn't necessarily.

I always took Portability to be about some combination off-ball offensive value + defense (3&D works as a rough approximation, but I think something like Offensive Rebounding complicates that archetype), that is when it means anything at all (see my earlier post in the thread for why I'm not crazy about the terminology at all).

So the meme version

?

[Heej]

I always took Portability to be about some combination off-ball offensive value + defense (3&D works as a rough approximation, but I think something like Offensive Rebounding complicates that archetype), that is when it means anything at all (see my earlier post in the thread for why I'm not crazy about the terminology at all).

So the meme version

?

He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.

[rrravenred]

Old enough to remember when they were called "role players".

Arguably, this was a bit more pertinent when outside shooting was a rarer commodity in the league and not considered "core" to scoring.

[tsherkin]

Old enough to remember when they were called "role players".

Arguably, this was a bit more pertinent when outside shooting was a rarer commodity in the league and not considered "core" to scoring.

Yeah, I mean, the best teams have always enjoyed good depth and breadth, right? Guys who can contribute in a bunch of ways but who generally fill specific roles on the team. You can't have stars 1-9 and you can't cycle isos endlessely, so you get guys figuring out where they generally fit and which playtypes they're routinely going to see. A lot of that now is shooting-based, more so than the catch-and-shoot guys of the 80s and 90s.

Same idea, though. It isn't really that different from those Reggie Evans/Danny Fortson types who were there to set screens, rebound and otherwise be out of the way, just more offensively focused.

[parsnips33]

So the meme version

?

He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.

So what actually scales best?

[Heej]

?

He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.

So what actually scales best?

#1 and 2 in a macro sense are IQ and motor. Drilling down I'd say:

Help defense/processing rotations, switchability on D, turnover economy, rebounding, playmaking

Basically everything to do with keeping defenses in rotation and minimizing your defense's need to rotate along with finishing plays. Zone defenses have made it a lot easier to force weaker players to beat you than back in the days of 1-4 flat and parking lot postups. As such winning in the new era requires a greater focus on minimizing weaknesses and having a strong 1-5 closing lineup that doesn't have much to exploit.

[parsnips33]

He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.

So what actually scales best?

#1 and 2 in a macro sense are IQ and motor. Drilling down I'd say:

Help defense/processing rotations, switchability on D, turnover economy, rebounding, playmaking

Basically everything to do with keeping defenses in rotation and minimizing your defense's need to rotate along with finishing plays. Zone defenses have made it a lot easier to force weaker players to beat you than back in the days of 1-4 flat and parking lot postups. As such winning in the new era requires a greater focus on minimizing weaknesses and having a strong 1-5 closing lineup that doesn't have much to exploit.

I don't disagree, but surely something like IQ manifests in positioning on the floor offensively (the role that spacing and shooting ability plays in this is obvious), knowing when and where to cut and motor might manifest in quality of screen setting or offensive rebounding - all off-ball offensive skills.

Defense is obviously defense and highly portable. To the extent that there can be some diminishing returns with redundant skillsets, I would guess the effect is less so than it would be on defense.

Turnover economy and playmaking are clearly on-ball offensive skills and their value is clear, but in playmaking I think some of the lines can be blurred when you think of like a short roll playmaker or offensive "connectors" who can swing the ball or upgrade a good shot to a better shot. Is that stuff better classified as on-ball or off-ball? Hard to say IMO

[OhayoKD]

?

He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.

So what actually scales best?

Well firstly, how well a skillset scales is partially dependent on what the better players are actually adding to a team. Chris Paul's ball-handling for example is very scalable in a situation like Pheonix, even though it doesn't fit in "combination of off-ball and defense". As it allows him to provide value without taking shots from the the other two scorers and hence contributes to how scalable chris paul is.

Reducing the offensive component to "what can you do without the ball" is filtering out a number of team situations in your analysis, particularly if you are reducing "what can you do without the ball" to shooting and cutting. And if you are looking for "what takes away from teammates the least", shooting and cutting are not the least overlapping skills:

- IQ (#1 above anything else)
- communication (on both ends of the floor)
- scouting and gameplan contributions in the film room/film study (part of IQ but important enough to be its own category)

Calling IQ a "skill" is a misnomer in the context as it is not really a skill, but rather a quality that is a prerequire for

a. a variety of extremely scalable skills
b. reliable application of said skills

This can manifest as

-> Running though and preparing counters for potential playoff opponents (per rondo, the 2020 lakers had Lebron look at Boston and Rondo look at miami after the Nuggets series)

-> Pre-empting opposing subs, making them for your own team (bob meyers notes Lebron doing this during their finals, arenas notes him doing this to seal game 5 in his first playoff series)

-> Directing teammates to the right spots to break down defenses (draymond, cp3, lebron all have several instanced of doing this)

-> anticipating and adjusting personal and team strategy based on the effeciacy(or lackthereof) of initial plans or adjustments made by an opponent

-> identifying and blowing up (personally or via communication) opposing offensive sets (draymond, kg, lebron. cp3 all do this)

-> preparing strategies and directing teammates to deal with opposing offensive stars (the classic example is russell vs wilt, kd notes lebron doing this against him, and kobe is reported to have done this in prep for the 2010 finals)

-> advising teammates on what they can physically do to overwhelm a specific personell matchup (lebron did this with ad in their first win vs the warriors this season)

-> drawing up plays

-> controlling tempo

These sorts of applications bolster a team regardless of personell, can be done without even being on the court(if you recall draymond was mic'd up doing this from the bench in game 3 vs the lakers last year), and work with stars and non-stars. More over there is minimal risk of diminishing returns as there are only a handful of a players who can effectively do these things in the league.

If we look for players who've been able to lead championship team under multiple coaches we get...

-> Bill Russell
-> Lebron James
-> Magic Johnson
-> Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Three of these four players were did most if not all of the things listed above with the last one experiencing a relative renaissance at advanced age playing with one of those first 3.

Per Coaching RAPM(which treats coaches as 6th men and then specifcally tries to adjust by looking how players do with and without them), top coaches have similar stars with Phil Jackson coming as an outlierish +6 (which tracks when you consider his track record with key players missing from his teams). It shouldn't be that suprising then that the biggest impact outlier(as well as the most successful player ever) was the one player in nba history who literally won as a player coach while the modern impact outlier is legm.

The other commonality here: Defense.

Bill Russell, Lebron, and Kareem are all able to carry good defenses with Kareem being on a different level from James and Russell being on a different level from Kareem. 3 and D's are not the most scalable, defensive stats are.

Duncan is considered less scalable than Shaq and Steph but if we consider fit and results:

-> Steph is a guard who was relatively weak as an on-ball passer and decision maker and defender who was paried with a defensive anchor who also is a great on-ball passer and a great floor-general/on-court coach

-> Shaq was a center who was relatively weak defending against space on the perimiter, handling the ball, shooting, and a passing and was paired with a guard who was an excellent ball-handler, a very good shooter, and a very good passer

-> Duncan was a Center who was relatively weak as a passer, ball-handler, and perimeter defender paired with...a center who was a worse passer, a worse ball-handler, and worse in space.

Yet somehow it was Duncan who produced the best impact portfolio(kills the other two in rapm while posting the best extended wowy splits of anyone between Kareem and James) and the most team success(with two championships including a dominant one with that specific pairing).

The somehow really isn't hard to figure out. Defensive stars are far less common than offensive ones and even the allegedly least scalable defensive skill(paint-protection) has repeatedly proven to stack very well(wallaces -> pistons, giannis/lopez -> bucks, duncan/robinson -> spurs are 3 of your top 5 non-russell defenses).

An offensive star who is good or nuetral defensively or a 3 and d wing lose more next to most stars than a player who can actually exert star-level impact defensively.

He means this conception of what scales best on championship level teams is erroneous but people still believe it anyway.

So what actually scales best?

#1 and 2 in a macro sense are IQ and motor. Drilling down I'd say:

Help defense/processing rotations, switchability on D, turnover economy, rebounding, playmaking.

Idk about calling turnover economy a skill. It's more a product of other skills. (and important not to conflate actual turnover economy with bbr turnover economy)

Also paint-protection(and deterrence from that capacity to protect) is probably more scalable than playmaking or scoring and generates more value than any other defensive skill, so it should definitely be listed here.

[Heej]

So what actually scales best?

#1 and 2 in a macro sense are IQ and motor. Drilling down I'd say:

Help defense/processing rotations, switchability on D, turnover economy, rebounding, playmaking

Basically everything to do with keeping defenses in rotation and minimizing your defense's need to rotate along with finishing plays. Zone defenses have made it a lot easier to force weaker players to beat you than back in the days of 1-4 flat and parking lot postups. As such winning in the new era requires a greater focus on minimizing weaknesses and having a strong 1-5 closing lineup that doesn't have much to exploit.

I don't disagree, but surely something like IQ manifests in positioning on the floor offensively (the role that spacing and shooting ability plays in this is obvious), knowing when and where to cut and motor might manifest in quality of screen setting or offensive rebounding - all off-ball offensive skills.

Defense is obviously defense and highly portable. To the extent that there can be some diminishing returns with redundant skillsets, I would guess the effect is less so than it would be on defense.

Turnover economy and playmaking are clearly on-ball offensive skills and their value is clear, but in playmaking I think some of the lines can be blurred when you think of like a short roll playmaker or offensive "connectors" who can swing the ball or upgrade a good shot to a better shot. Is that stuff better classified as on-ball or off-ball? Hard to say IMO

Well that's why I have IQ as the macro most portable attribute because obviously it manifests in a myriad of ways. It's why guys like LeBron Jokic and Curry can genuinely be comparably effective on or off the ball because they can make any read on the floor.

On-ball vs off-ball distinctions don't matter as much as making the right read as an advantage generator or as an advantage extender. You want your off-ball guys to be capable of attacking closeouts to either extend or finish advantages anyway and your on-ball guys need to make the right read to dish it to the right guy and continue churning defenses.

[parsnips33]

Is the overwhelming focus on offense in Portability conversations largely a red herring? Is defense broadly and help defense/"organizational defense" (don't know if there's a better term for this, but thinking about defensive playcallers like Dray, KG, Bron) more specifically really the number one scalable/portable skillset? Obviously you don't have to deal with the "only one ball" problem on defense

I find myself pretty convinced by OhayoKD's arguments here

Now if we were to restrict the conversation simply to Offensive Portability, I would imagine shooting to still rank extremely highly, while acknowledging that specific team contexts might call for a different ordering of priorities

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I think in these discussions someone confuses the concept of portability and its limitations with the sometimes simplistic evaluations people can have about it.