Speaking of low turnovers, even today during that highlight play vs Ant he lost the handle and he had Ant and another one close to him I think but it wasn’t a turnover, a 2 point instead.

I don’t think enough people are talking about his low turnover aspect.

Exactly I didn’t even mention the turnovers, like 1.7 turnovers per game at 33/5/7/2 is again just unfathomable. He might arguably be the most efficient per-minute player of all time given his combination of high efficiency scoring and low turnover playmaking.

He literally reminds me of 2016 steph, except from the “mid-range.” Which is crazy to say because he’s also shooting 41% from 3.

He’s in a special zone right now that I saw with 2016 steph - you expect every “mid-range” shot to go in.

Yeah I noticed that too, I remember how Steph sitting 4th quarters was seen as a huge talking point for his MVP case, now that it’s SGA the same argument has been flipped completely and you have people saying “Shouldn’t it count against SGA that he has to sit 4th quarters?”

Same with metrics like EPM, they were huge talking points when people wanted to argue Jokic over Embiid, but now that its SGA over Jokic people have now changed the argument to saying why PRA stats are more important.

nah it’s been declining for a while now

first time i noticed it was Harden/Giannis 2018-19

where it was a conversation of that dude is averaging 37, how is Giannis the MVP (i thought Giannis was the MVP that season, not saying it shoulda been Harden)

and then with Jokic all the stats saying he’s an elite defender, people just went away from it

it’s happening in the nfl too with DVOA for example

Don’t worry once it becomes the norm people will stop caring. 

People still love their impact stats, just they’ve shifted to using box score derivative ones like BPM because it favours their guy

Same thing happened with Russ and triple doubles lol OKC just never been likable I guess.

People like stats more if they justify the feeling they have based just on watching a player.

If Jokic has the single season EPM record people will 100% use it as evidence that he has the greatest peak of all time. A lot of those people would ignore the stat if it suggested SGA was.

all of a sudden, all these accolades and stats don’t mean anything when the thunder are on top lol.

He’s gotten to a point where it’s the expectation but it’s still amazing. He’s got such a mastery of his game it’s nuts

but why is that tho

because with every other player who’s going to be top 20 all time player, we kinda in the moment recognized it

edit:

damn can’t even ask a question on this sub anymore

I never understood the “You can’t judge trades years later” argument. When you’re trading for a 20-year old and a boatload of picks isn’t the only way to judge a trade after that young player has matured and some of the picks have conveyed? Like it doesn’t make sense to say “It’s only hindsight” when the whole trade was done with the long-term future in mind.

I think it’s different because with SGA it was still an unknown. With Luka they literally had a known commodity and just made the finals

it was worse than the luka trade, but it’s different in the sense that you can’t blame the clippers at all. 99 out of 100 times you make that trade with how kawhi and pg were playing at that time.

Based on pure impact its the worst trade in history probably surpassing the nets-celtics trade where they got Garnett and Pierce for Tatum and Brown.

Blame Dame Lillard for dismantling the Thunder team. If the Thunder don’t get destroyed that playoffs, they probably run it back.

MVP

His playmaking is also half of theirs…

Yes, but much less assists than Jokic.

He looked sluggish during the first quarter then scored 13 points in the last 6 minutes of the first half.

The ability to just lock in is very funny to watch.

It’s why people don’t have Duncan higher.

Duncan is usually ranked 5 to 10 all time. That where he should be. It not like people have Duncan 25th or something. I never got the whole Duncan is so underrated. He not underrated everyone calls him a top 10 player and the greatest power forward. You can’t be underrated.

Consistently scoring 25+ on its own doesn’t really impress me much. Consistently scoring 25+ on incredible efficiency though is extremely impressive and is why he is so valuable.

It’s a fancy plus minus that normalizes by position, historical performances weighted to favor more recent players at your position, and strength of your supporting cast. It’s liked because it’s designed to be predictive, and it’s debatably the best advanced stat at capturing who will have the greatest impact moving forward. A con from math folks is that all the regularization, weighting, and focus on prediction may lose something in describing how a player is doing in the moment. The con from r/nba is usually because the results don’t always align with desired narratives and/or “math is for nerds. Eye test better”

Not relevant to this lol

People should absolutely lose their minds when you say that. This is a horrible take right now, when the Thunder have had objectively the easiest schedule out of all the teams. And even if he keeps up the efficiency for a whole season, the mere fact that Steph achieves the same efficiency from behind the 3 point line makes him a much greater offensive weapon, the greatest in history. It demands way more of the defense to stick to Steph at all times and leave him no space even in all that room beyond the arc than it does to clog the paint to contest Shai middies and drives.

Calm down, they have no Jdub and that 100% matters of course, but the Thunder have a fucking insane schedule the rest of the year and a very very easy schedule to start BY COMPARISON (keyword by comparison). We will see. Definitely witnessing one of the best primes ever no question.

Lol at the GSW fans coming for you. Steph is incredible and all time, but he’s not prime anymore. The last 5 years or so has had periods of shooting poorly and his defensive energy is fading. Everyone is okay saying LBJ isn’t prime anymore, but Warriors fans get so touchy with Steph

72.9% not 80

Was just talking about this last night, as a scorer he’s clearly peaking at or above their level, the only thing holding him back from their level is sustaining it, which with how consistent and healthy he is, I see no reason he won’t be meeting or surpass them by the end of his career

Not Jordan but he’s clearly among the best scorers ever, especially considering that the thunders spacing is often quite bad

These takes gotta be from 15 year olds.

SGA isn’t even remotely close to Jordan’s ability to score. And nobody cared about nerdy efficiency stats. We actually watched games and saw players move with our eyes instead of getting a story from a box score.

Guy has 10 scoring titles in an era that averaged less points and people wanna talk about scoring.

He doesn’t have their volumes. He’s also playing on stacked teams with lots of rest early in the season. Everybody has better stats 15 games in. Additionally, those 3 all iso significantly more and better than SGA. Looking at things context-wise, he doesn’t have the playmaking responsibilities of Jordan much less Harden so we can dock his volume and shot difficulty even more. Plus, we gotta further take into account that we’re looking at a low sample size in a stat inflated era’s most inflated season yet.

Over 5 a game, but we can asterisk it if you’d like.

Zero asterisks, if anything he is a better shooter than then basic numbers say.

He is shooting 5.2 threes.

He doesn’t shoot any corner threes (only 6 for the season) Only 22% are assists(self creating most of his shots, which is harder. Luka is at 38%, curry hovers around 50% for his career as a reference.

Only 30% off shots are catch and shoot and he shoots them a pedestrian 35%.

However 30% of his 3pts are pullups and he is hitting them at an elite 45% rate and 40% of his shots is the hardest 3pt shot possible, the step back, which he is hitting at an absurd 49% rate.

He self creates most of his 3pts (didn’t check, but almost certain he is top 5 in the league in this, considering unassisted shots) and the ones he hits the most are pull ups and step backs.

His 3pt shot profile isn’t conservative at all, it’s the exact opposite

You really guessed wrong

He shoots 5.2 which is more than KD and Jokic.

He isn’t a high volume three point shooter, but he is a medium volume one. He is shooting the same sort of volume as Kevin Durant has over his career, who you would not asterisk.

sounds like youre just overrating luka. he’s properly rated and clearly a tier below shai and jokic right now

SGA is an all time great getting all time hate so it makes him seem underrated depending where you’re looking.

That said Luka does get overlooked, but I do think he really is behind jokic and Shai just from an efficiency and minutes standpoint. He plays more so stats are higher but he’s gotta clean up his game a bit (leads the league in turnovers)to really fit the unworldy stats. Being put up.

If jokic wasn’t in the NBA I think Luka easily takes 24 mvp. (And I still think he should’ve won it)

Stop looking at PRA bud. This is like looking at RBIs and Runs lol.

He’s underrated because ppl still think Luka and him are close. They’re not, Shai is a tier ahead

Luka just hasn’t been as offensively efficient as the other two especially when you include his turnovers. His lack of defense also puts him behind them both statistically.

It’s not that Luka does anything wrong but for the last 2.25ish seasons shai and Jokic have begun to set themselves apart not in the box score but definitely through advanced metrics.

Neither of them is overlooked. All are ungodly basketball players with very few nitpicks and can lead a team into the finals by themselves. Shai and Jokic might be better by a hair right now, but that doesn’t mean Luka and Giannis are overlooked.

it will happen again because he’s just not as good.

35/9/9 on 47/33/79 with 4 TOs on a worse team while averaging more Free Throws.

SGA > Luka

Yeah idc what anyone says 34-9-10 not getting MVP is ridiculous. I’m all for advanced stats, but if a guy generates the most points in nba history he needs to be mvp.