If he can finish the season with this then yeah probably

Shai also probably hasn’t even had his peak season yet. Next 2 years will probably be his peak

It’s certainly up there with Steph in 2016 and some of Jordan’s best years.

If he kept it in postseason i would say so, or close to it 

Best scoring season, yes, if he keeps it up (that or 2016 Curry, when you account for differences in league environment). Not yet sold on best offensive season because of differences in playmaking, especially off ball (Jordan, Curry); leveraging your scoring threat to create advantages for your teammates is especially dangerous because the returns don’t diminish as much. Shai this year is absolutely in the conversation, though (and I do want to note that just because Shai doesn’t play off ball as much as Jordan and Curry doesn’t mean he couldn’t; as was the case for LeBron till he played with Luka, it could just mean no one on his team is a good enough on-ball playmaker to have the ball in Shai’s hands less)

No. It isn’t. Not when 2016 Curry exists, where he was doing the same efficiency on half the free throws and double the range. That’s an astronomical gap in offensive utility, to achieve the same historic efficiency while taking volume threes.

I tried to find players that came close to this.

Curry in 2016 was ~50/45/91, Nash in 06 had a season with ~53/46/90 splits. Jokic is averaging ~61/41/86 so far this year.

Nash is the closest I could find. He averaged 12.8FGA (4.7 3PA) vs Shai’s 19.2 (5 3PA)

Edit: I thought I should add that Nash averaged 3.3 FTA per game to Shai’s 9.9. And Nash averaged 18.6ppg in 06/07 to Shai’s 32.6 so far this season. It goes without saying that they had different roles and played in different eras. Although it’s interesting to imagine what Nash’s stats would be in the modern NBA.

I he manages to finish the season with 55/45/90 im ready to say he’s better than Steph period.

Same people who hate anyone that reminds them of what they could’ve been if they just stuck with it longer

“solved basketball” alright calm down bro

Boring foul baiter small market team

It’ll be impossible for him to win MVP unanimously (just because Joker and Luka stuff the stat sheet too much themselves), which will make it disputable vs other all time great seasons.

I think he’d need to lead the Thunder to 73 wins minimum and have a dominant playoff run losing only a handful of games for him to take that crown.

Curry fans because they spent the last decade calling him the second or best PG of all time. Now they are watching someone bigger, younger, and more athletic than him take his crown AND throne. And then makes you dance for his amusement.

To almost every nba fans. And the reason why is because people don’t like the okc and sga. I also hate them but godamn the dude has top 5 potential. He is the perfect player and he is placed in the perfect situation. He has everything to dominate the playoffs for half a decade minimum. I can see him winning 4-5 rings. Great player and now he is also having one of the best seasons from a guard ever.

Guys like Curry, Kobe, maybe even Magic could get knocked down a peg. Shai is amazing and the Thunder are also great.

For anybody that doesn’t like talking about him in the same air as MJ

(He’s on his MJ arc)

Kobe was so right about this one

Not to mention his 3 is legit this year and a serious problem

Not really. Curry was the reason spacing is as popular as it is today, it’s a lot easier to get to your spots now because every team is trying to space the floor. At the time even the warriors had plenty of non shooters or guys who only wanted to play near the paint (like David Lee), his environment was not optimal at all but he made it work by hitting 400 threes in a season

For example the modern day read and react offense where you spam off ball screens with your main option (using pindowns or back screens), which then flow into DHOs or PnRs that the offensive player can make reads off of. This has become very popular in today’s nba, damn near every team runs this. This action was not popular or used nearly as often back in 2015. Curry and the warriors single handily created a new way of playing the game which is a lot harder to do then just following a blueprint laid out before you

We’ll get downvoted because of our flairs but Jokic has literally done that on his way to 3 MVPs

Unlike other though I don’t think saying that puts Shai down in any way

Kawhi is a good shout - I’d say Shai has reached higher heights esp when you account for availability. But Kawhi had a good 6-7 years of improvement for sure

They (and steals as a counterpart) are literally the most valuable action in basketball other than a made 3 point play

Better than blocks, 2 point buckets, assists and offensive rebounds (and way more than defensive rebounds)

Since they stop a possesion (worth around 1 point) and create a easy shot (worth around 1.3 points, aka .3 more than i  a regular average possesion)

It’s actually a quite complicated stat introduced this season, it isn’t just where they are on the floor. It uses optical tracking for the players body to calculate difficulty of shots. I wouldn’t be surprised if some factor for height was in it, but they do use player velocity, rotational speed, and a lot of other things that would mean it would expect a player having to do all that (like a shorter player) to score less, lowering the xFG% giving a better FG%+ if they made it. And it adjusts for the defense being on the player.

Here is the article. I don’t think it suffers as much as you think, it is pretty advanced using optical tracking data.

Intro to Expected Field Goal Percentage | NBA.com

One thing I would like to see for this is an eFG%+ that adjusts for 3pt%+ (also shown on the website) vs 2pt%+ (not shown on site). That would actually help shai btw because he has a higher 3pt%+ relative to his FG%+, but it still wouldn’t overcome the gap.

Not gonna type a long reply, agree and disagree on a bunch of things. I think Shai is possibly a more reliable scorer simply because the refs call things differently (perimeter driving scorer vs center–post up or face up), but more efficient, no. The assists Jokic gets are common on his shots but often because he needs to take a shot and the ball has been moving (the nuggets system is about ball movement) and dont mean his shots are easier, and I think the motiont tracking may well adjust for that. For the nuggets, the whole idea is that the ball is just passed around to get the absolute best shot for the team, and Jokic facilitates that (people know if he gets it that they will get it back if they have a better shot).

Agree as well on the idea they may not have optimally calibrated the difficulty rating for shots, but that will come with time and right now Jokic is blowing everyone else out of the water.

Jokic is a system and one of the greatest (or the greatest) offensive players ever while SGA is the perfect slot in to any team and is a good enough defender while being a perfect isolation scorer.

I just have them as different players but I do hold the opinion that Jokic is a top offensive player while the thunder may be one of the greatest teams ever (due to their defense, and not necessarily due to SGAs impact, ALTHOUGH he slots perfectly into their system and gives them an offensive boost they need) but they are incredible and actually (maybe unpopular) very fun to watch sometimes defensively how they avoid fouls yet play great defense. Idk.

Have a good day/good night, I respect the opinion even if I don’t fully agree.

Jokic averages double the assists, which are usually the main factor for turnovers. They’re very similar

Jokic is also the primary creator and leads the league in assists. Jokic is also at a point in his career where he’s just trying shit out on the court. Watching both play Jokic has a different control of the entire game, on both ends.

I’d argue it’s easier to score as a guard than as a center in today’s NBA since the only physical defense more or less allowed is when a big is guarding another big. That also translates in the calls Shai gets in comparison to Jokić.

Why? We’re not comparing how impressive or skilled they are for their height, we’re talking about how good they are, period. Being taller is an advantage in basketball, its part of the game, its why chris paul isnt a GOAT

So we penalize people for being tall? Does Wemby need to be at 80 TS% for us to respect him? It’s an advantage to be tall, just like it’s an advantage to be athletic or fast or skilled. We don’t penalize players for it.

They also shoot the exact same amount of threes per game

2.8% is the difference, which is significant. 

Yeah, you’re literally proving my point. Making their efficiency relative to position group instead of relative to each other is illogical because they are not normal players in conventional roles

You can still create advantages with assisted shots. For example, when Jokic sets a ball screen on Murray and gets the switch on the guard, and Murray passes it to Jokic for an easy floater, the advantage is created because of Jokic’s size, but it’s still an assisted basket.

If you wanted to argue the other way, you could say it’s easier for Shai to get unassisted basket because he routinely/always plays in lineups that have 5 shooters on the court, meaning they can play 5 out, meaning he has a ton of space to work isos and get advantages for unassisted baskets that are partly created by his teammates’ spacing. Jokic, on the contrary, always plays in lineups with 1-2 non shooters (Peyton Watson, Spencer Jones, Christian Braun, etc)

I’m not arguing either way, just pointing out that tracking “assisted” and “unassisted” points is interesting in finding out a team’s offensive style, but one is not more impressive than the other automatically.

Not sure what you mean. They literally shoot the same amount of threes per game