RChildress107
Well-known member
Paul is an odd case. He's got tremendous advanced stats, but his teams have never been nearly as good as you'd expect from someone with those stats - either in the regular season or the playoffs (the lack of success for his teams in the regular season is more damning, imo). He feels a bit like Wisconsin in KenPoms system - an outlier due to the nearly perfect overlap of his playing style with the the statistical model that ends up substantially overrating him. Some of it is durability too - he's averaged less than 70 games a season over his entire career, which hurts his teams as he's not on the floor and shows up in the W/L records.
He's a clear first ballot Hall of Fame player and one of the best of his generation. He's not a historically great player.
If he was just dominant in one statistical model I would see your point. But all of the advanced statistics are in agreement. His regular season success has been about what you would expect for those stats given his teammates (his career winning percentage is the equivalent of a 51 win season (vs. a 53 win season average for Steph by comparison)). The durability issues are accounted for in the cumulative stats where he is still on pace to finish in the top 10-15.