Sir John
Expert Swordsman
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2009
- Messages
- 422
- Reaction score
- 1,241
- Points
- 93
Agreed.
I appreciate the stats, Sir John -- but I disagree with how they're being used here. Age comparisons can be useful, but they can also be misleading. You're comparing a 3 year vet to a rookie, which is just as pointless today as it was when people were doing it with LeBron. Of course the 3 year vet should be better -- he had a 2 year head start! Even Durant and LeBron struggled as rookies.
Agreed.
Strongly disagree here. Curry's growth curve clearly demonstrates why he's the player he is today. He's improved little by little each season. Irving has shown very little growth curve, which is why I'm not nearly as hopeful as you are about him ever reaching Curry's level. Many players reach the level Irving's at; only a select few reach the level Curry's currently at.
Curry (WS/48)
2010 .077
2011 .128
2012 .144
2013 .180
2014 .225
Irving (WS/48)
2012 .125
2013 .125
2014 .128
Curry (RAPM)
2010 -2.22
2011 -0.33
2012 1.45
2013 2.52
2014 3.84
Irving (RAPM)
2012 -3.09
2013 -2.07
2014 -1.39
Also, Kyrie's TS% has gone down each season, while Curry's has gone up. Kyrie's PER/USG ratio has also gone down each season, while Curry's has gone up.
With partial exception to RAPM, none of these are positive trends for Kyrie.
It's you who are manipulating stats -- and in doing so have not only lost sight of your point but actually disproven it. I'd go so far as to say that's clear to everyone but...you. Assuming you're sincere and not merely trolling, I'll try one last time:
1. There is no way to make a strict apples to apples comparison in the sense you're requesting. It's literally impossible as they came into the league at different ages. What we can do -- the only objective, statistical tool we have available -- is normalize against not the start of their careers but their ages -- and what we know constitutes peak-NBA age years (historically 25-28 years old on average).
2. Everything you're claiming is based on your personal beliefs and interpretative claims. That's the key thing you have to see and understand. Your claims aren't factual, they're your personal theories. Yet you continue to pretend these beliefs are based on something objective. That's what I -- and others -- are trying to disabuse you of. You're perfectly welcome to believe what you want -- and considering we're talking about making future predictions, in a certain sense, it could even be said that there's a 50/50 coin toss' chance you'll be correct. But it won't be because the facts say a particular thing, it'll be because chance broke that way.
3. That's why different posters have shown you different facts, stats, and perspectives for your continuously moving claims. We're trying to help you understand the difference between facts and beliefs. You started and respond by claiming certain "facts" and others respond with equal (or better) counter-facts. The point is not to claim or prove that you are definitely wrong (who knows, maybe Kyrie won't become a great player, I have no idea), it's to show you that you're pretending to make factual, knowledge-based claims when they are really beliefs and opinions.
4. Another thing we're responding to is the shady and hazy way you move the goal posts. Kramer gives a set of stats that indicate the opposite of your claim so you brush them aside as "empty" and that what you really care about is "winning" (never mind that your initial made no such mention). I or others give you stats in Win Shares -- a system tied to trying to parcel out contributions to winning -- and you come up with twists and dodges about how they aren't good enough.
5. That might be a perfectly fine line of criticism IF there were better alternatives but that's just the point. Whenever you get tied down, you try to wiggle out of it by asking for things that literally cannot and do not exist. There's no way to give you what you now ask for. You can't supply it either.
That there exists no set of facts that could disprove your claim -- I don't mean because they haven't been generated but because by your definition they are impossible to produce even at a theoretical level -- is point-blank proof that you're mistaking your personal, metaphysical beliefs about Kyrie as something factual. If it can't be falsified then it's a metaphysical not factual/scientific claim.
Now, specific to what you wrote above:
6. Of course we all know about Kyrie's "trend line." (It's debatable whether you can call something that happened one time a trend but let's put that aside.) I myself referenced it 2, 3 times in my post. You are not adding new information in your response. What you're doing is making a metaphysical claim: that a 21/22 year old player who regresses for one season early in his career cannot recover, cannot by say, age 26 become a player at the level of, say, Steph Curry. It's a belief, an opinion, a projection.
7. For that matter, it's actually a falsifiable belief/opinion. Kobe, for example, regressed between his second and third years (that is, he was better in his second year than his third), then, obviously, took off to the stratosphere. Tony Parker plateaued during his 3-4 years, then took off, then fell back between years 6-7, then took off again. DeMar DeRozan regressed for two straight season. He was better his rookie year than his second. His third year was even worse than his second. Then he turned it around and this past season, was an All-Star. Kevin Durant went backwards between seasons 3-4, now he's league MVP.
I could give you scores, perhaps hundreds of examples, but I can't do all you're learning for you but spend a little time doing some research at basketball reference.
The point of this little exercise: NBA player growth is not always linear. Theory (that was never a fact): debunked.
So that's what we're trying to explain to you using one example after another: you are repeatedly confusing your personal beliefs/theories with facts and then presenting them as such. You're perfectly entitled to your opinion -- it's got about a 50/50 shot of coming true -- but you have to recognize it for what it is and stop pretending it's something it's not. Otherwise, no one is going to listen to you, care what you say, or respect your point of view. Get it?