I do think KP was largely misused on offense (not enough PnP, coming off screens)

One reason KP doesn’t get PnP opportunities is that he is a straight up pitiful screener. You need the “pick” part for the “pick and pop” to work.

https://twitter.com/RealGM/status/1017252118548418560

I like the minutiae of hoops stats as much as the next guy but arguing about Tatum is beyond silly. Anyone who watched this 20 year old in game seven try to single handedly (yeah Horford had a nice game , too) try to carry a choketastic group in Boston across the finish line like Aeneas lugging the great Anchises on his back out of fallen Troy knows he is a stone fucking stud.

…and bobneptune wins the thread! Aeneas and Anchises?!

Well done, sir!

Tatum was brought up gently.

I don’t really consider taking the LeBron Cavs to 7 without two max players “brought up gently,” but I think we have quite a few definitions that we’re not really seeing eye-to-eye on.

And this whole conversation is about people saying that Porzingis will be a better player than Tatum because of the endowment effect. I’m not saying that Tatum was even the best rookie last year, or even all that productive, on the whole. I’m saying that Porzingis is less so, and two seasons more “mature.”

I think a lot of people are overly bullish on their favorite team, and that it’s a pretty reasonable assertion to make. Sometimes it goes as far as “Derrick Rose didn’t rape that woman” (like an endowment effect of virtue — “my child would never do that”), a defense you don’t really see much of anymore, because he sucked as a Knick and is no longer a Knick. I noticed this on r/nyknicks and it was striking — where there was defensiveness or skepticism, there’s now a tone of “fuck that guy.” Interesting to watch it happen as he switched jerseys.

So in the most important respect, winning when it counts…Tatum didn’t really make them that much better.

lol I don’t even know why I respond to this garbage

Jowles one of those top players for the celts the year before was isiah Thomas who was replaced by Irving who is a better player.

Thomas was a trainwreck on D, but he played 2500 minutes on .625 TS% and 34.0 USG%. That’s insane, Curry-like numbers.

I would take Irving over Thomas ten out of ten times today, but in 2016-17? No way. Thomas was a total beast. Even ORtg, which sings the praises of low-volume scorers like Jordan, Porter, Gobert, Tristan T., Capela, Zeller, etc., had him at 12th overall.

Comparing Porzingis to other “bigs?” What does this mean?

It’s the categorization Cleaning the Glass uses to help contextualize stats.

He plays like a tall wing on offense. Tons of midrange and 3s.

I guess you could say that, but 23% of his shots came from three—only 61st percentile for bigs nowadays. I saw of a lot more of him in the mid/high post than on the perimeter. And he certainly dribbles the ball less than most wings do.

If we’re going to harp on roles and how they make us think that Porzingis will have a better career than Tatum

I think Tatum is better at this point, and that’s not counting the injury. I do think KP was largely misused on offense (not enough PnP, coming off screens), and that presumably has some effect on the +/- metrics. I wasn’t really trying to compare Tatum to KP though—just making the point that Tatum’s value/impact was likely helped by being on the Celtics. (Disclaimer: that doesn’t take away from the fact that what Tatum did within that role was incredibly valuable.) It’s just that most rookies are on losing teams, where they’re being groomed for and being put in bigger roles, in situations where they’re more likely to fail. Tatum was brought up gently.

You have to agree, at least on the extremes, that player role effects player impact. What if you played KP as a PG? Or if you made Westbrook an off-ball shooter coming off screens? Or made Robert Covington your primary initiator?

Roasted.

RJ Barrett is going to be better than all of them, though, and we need to tank to secure his services.