Would the Warriors be favored heading into 16' Finals if...

[3ball]

You take Curry and LeBron off their teams and the Warriors absolutely smoke the Cavs.

Huh?

Love won 40 games as #1 option in the West, while Draymond was a joke without his system

And Kyrie is a #1 option.. Klay isn't... kyrie averaged 28 in 2 Finals, while Klay averaged 15 in every year except 19'.. also, Klay can't iso and hit goat game-winner like Kyrie

[insidious301]

Sure they do but alot of those guys have other things they can do to impact the game. Like say on defense. Curry on the other hand cant. There are also some greats who maintain or even get better but thats the thing curry is indeed an all-time great. Were not comparing to just anyone. And me saying he falls off is relative to his norm in the regular season which is insane. He's obviously still great come finals time. He does in fact get worse though and this drop off can mean all the difference in the world in a tough series.

And im not scoffing at it. Its a cool achievement after the fact and historically speaking but ultimately its a meaningless achievement in relation to the playoffs and winning. Its only benefit is getting the number 1 seed. Other than that what does it do for you? Its like mvps or dpoys or any regular season award. It means nothing come playoff time. What did the last few MVP's mean in the last couple playoffs? What did being the mvp do for greek when he got walled up? What did it do for curry in 16 when he fell off?

Steph does too. He averages 7 assist a game give or take. I agree that Curry can be shutdown easier, but again it isn't like he was horrible. LeBron was just better. He had a GOAT-like finals because he is a GOAT-like phenom. Curry simply doesn't have that range of impact, so if those are the standards then we need to scale it back. Still dont see how that makes 73 games meaningless. In relation to anything. By that logic all regular-season numbers and MVPs should be irrelevant. Nobody actually thinks that though. And that's because you need to be good in the regular-season to qualify for the playoffs. Now if you're saying the playoffs are more imporant, no argument there. Stats should be weighed differently just as long as there is an appropriate sample. But to dismiss one or the other is myopic.

[FireDavidKahn]

only reason Warriors won game 1 and 2 in 2016 is because Cavs bench got outworked and couldn’t buy a bucket


Long story short Cavs outplayed Warriors the entire series despite Loves concussion and Irving’s ankle

LeKing

[Roundball_Rock]

Basically everyone falls off in the PO relative to the RS. It makes sense: better teams=better defenses on average and teams game plan for you day in, day out during a series. The question is the extent of the decline.

[3ball]

Basically everyone falls off in the PO relative to the RS.


.

Not true at all.. Kyrie and many others didn't fall off

Only curry and lesser players do

If everyone knew in advance that Kyrie would drastically outplay curry, no one would be surprised that the Cavs won.. infact, they'd be surprised it took 7 games... (We know it only took 7 because lebron wet bed for the first 4)