Thursday, June 02, 2016

Steph Curry after His Age 27 Season -- a Top 19 Playoff Performer

http://bkref.com/tiny/wGWBL

Certainly we can take into account that some of these guys have played a LOT more games and minutes than Curry through his age 27 season (basketball-reference.com uses the player's age as of February 1 of the season, so it is not entirely a fair comparison, but if you want to sort through 19 guys and figure out their birthdays, go ahead).  In any event, Curry is a March 14 birthday, so he is really 28.  If anything, this flaw in the system favors him by giving him an extra year to qualify versus, say, LeBron who is a December 30 birthday.

LeBron and Magic are far and away the biggest minutes guys on the list.

Jordan, Wilt, Shaq and LeBron and Kareem are the most effective per minute.  Duncan and Durant deserve mention for having good total WS.
(Note - I sort of cheated and tailored the list to get Durant in.  He has the worst WS/48 - I kept him in and left Wade out.  Wade almost makes the list).

It should be noted that lists like this are a major reason why I place Bird so low on my all-time rank list (13th).  Bird is last on the list in PER, 3rd to last in WS/48 and 11th in Win Shares.  He was a great player, but he does not deserve a top 5 or even top 10 ranking among the all-time greats. 

For those of you wondering, through his age 27 season, 2006, Kobe had a playoff PER of 20.5 and a WS/48 of .139 good for 26th and 37th place on a far expanded list.

Curry is 17th in PER, 15th in WS/48 and 19th in WS for guys on this list. 
No matter what Curry does in this series, he isn't going to be anywhere near the top 4 or 5 guys for overall production or production per minute. 

Summary -- Curry has been excellent, but certainly not at the very top of the all-time best NBA playoff greats.

1 comment:

HM said...

Note to those reading this after Game 1. Curry had negative WS in Game 1 of the 2016 Finals, so he dropped off the list. Look at the expanded list linked in the Kobe reference portion of the article.