I think the big thing with the Love situation is that Green took such a big leap in 2014-15. If you knew Green would be Green before the 2014-15 season, you’d probably hold off on getting Love, as well. It was Green’s development that really changed everything for that Warriors team.

That’s not to say they made a bad decision because of course Klay is also awesome and it clearly worked out; you take the 3 championships in the hand every time. But I think there’s a good chance if they made the trade it still works out fantastically for Golden State.

Since we’re done for this season, I’m trying to figure out who’ll be on the roster come next season. I started by trying to figure out what we start with.

The fact is that nobody knows what the 2020-21 cap will look like. It was supposed to be $115 but it could drop below $90 ultimately because of COVID-19. I’ve been breaking down the Knicks baseline roster entering the offseason. Here’s what I see. Let’s see how much I got wrong…

What we have, salary wise under contract is $49.1M/$92.1M where the first figure is Dead Cap and the second is the total cap figure. It is made up of this:
Signed: Ntilikina ($6.2M), DSmith Jr ($5.7M), RJ Barrett ($8.2M), Knox ($4.6M), Brazdekis ($1.5M), Randle ($18.9M), Mitch Robinson($1.7M)
Minimally guaranteed contracts: Payton ($8M), Ellington ($8M), Bullock ($4.2M), Gibson ($9.45M) – That amounts to $29.65M but only $4M is guaranteed.
Dead cap: Noah ($6.4M)
Team option: Bobby Portis for $15.7M.
Restricted F/A’s: Trier, Dotson, K.Allen, I.Rabb (Apx $9.6M cap holds)
2-Way player: Kenny Wooten.
draft picks: 3 players total $9M compensation

There’s no way they’re picking up the Portis option.
Barring trades, I’m assuming that we start with the 7 “Signed” deals and the 3 draft picks. That’s already 10 players. I would add Wooten on the cheap, to balance the roster. After we add in the Noah cap hit and the 4 low cost guaranteed contracts, that looks like a total of $66M which leaves about $30M for free agents. If we just keep the quartet of Payton, Bullock, Gibson and Ellington, they’re set.

I would love the Knicks to go after Bertans or Galanari at the 4 and a quality backup center for when Mitch lands in foul trouble.

Thoughts?

Some (strat *cough*) would say this indicates a failure of statistics. I just think it was an extremely rare case of unquantifiable synergy being more important than production.

It may be more prominent than other cases of synergy mattering to player selection, but I’m not sure “extremely rare” is a fair characterization. Just look at the Knicks. Randle actually has pretty good stats, but it’s clear he would be more valuable on a team with players that complement him better that the current Knicks roster does. I’m sure there are other cases around the league.

but I don’t think the stats missed something, here — the Warriors simply decided that pairing Curry with an off-ball-genius sniper/solid on-ball defender who cannot dribble with his left hand, and can barely dribble with his right, was more important than having a post genius with questionable defensive skills.

This is precisely what I meant. The stats did not miss anything at all: Love was better than Klay. But for the reasons you listed, it made sense to make a decision based on something other than the stats.

Some (strat *cough*) would say this indicates a failure of statistics. I just think it was an extremely rare case of unquantifiable synergy being more important than production.

It did encapsulate a fascinating argument, though. The stats we use do a much better job capturing Love’s value than Klay’s. It doesn’t make the stats less meaningful, as some would argue. It just means maybe in 1 out of 1,000 cases there is a chance the stats don’t tell the whole story.

The Dunc’d On podcast did a good job of covering this topic a few episodes ago. They talked about players overrated and underrated by all-in-one metrics. The topic has come up more than a few times here so I recommend everyone give it a listen when they have a chance (May 25th episode).

Basically, the metrics by their nature have to use shortcuts that do a good job estimating value most of the time (e.g. good defenders get steals) but will sometimes blow it on a player like Klay.

Relatedly, I think they give a short shrift to really good scoring guards who don’t rack up much in the way of other box score statistics. Devin Booker, for example, could probably snag a few more rebounds and assists if he were so inclined. His lackluster defense wouldn’t be that big of an issue if the Suns had better personnel around him–bad defense from guards is just not that hard to overcome.

It just means maybe in 1 out of 1,000 cases there is a chance the stats don’t tell the whole story.

Love was 2nd in the league in BPM, 3rd in VORP, 4th in WS48, and was 25 years old at the time of the proposed trade, just 2 years older than Klay. According to the new BBRef TSAdd stat, Love’s shot attempts were worth 171.6 points more than the league average in 2013-14; Klay had 38.0. Now Klay would go on to set a career high in 2015-16 at 165.5, but I don’t think the stats missed something, here — the Warriors simply decided that pairing Curry with an off-ball-genius sniper/solid on-ball defender who cannot dribble with his left hand, and can barely dribble with his right, was more important than having a post genius with questionable defensive skills.

In this parallel universe, the Warriors would have been a phenomenal team with a starting lineup of Curry, Iguodala, Barnes, Love and Draymond. Hard to imagine that they would have failed to make the Finals that year or 2015-16, provided Love stayed healthy. And it’s sort of irrelevant to argue anything about the effects of Love vs. Klay on the 2016-17 to 2018-19 Warriors, as Durant’s addition made a healthy squad a reasonable bet to go 16-0 in the playoffs no matter who started at SG or PF.

It’s kinda wild how bad he was with the Knicks. Still wouldn’t have been worth anywhere close to the PJax contract even with the Memphis #’s tho. What a stupid deal.