Geoff and Banzai - good set of posts by each, the rationales make sense from both of you, and as you said, you're mainly splitting hairs. Let me split some with you.
Would it be acceptable to summarize the discussion in general as:
Durant > Curry on bad/avg/good teams
Curry > Durant on superteams?
If so, I agree with the above, and you guys are mainly finding out where the line is between good and superteam, where Curry's fit and shooting make him > Durant.
I don't think the line has to be superteam, in terms of having other superstars, it just has to have other regular stars. For example, on the 2015 Warriors, if you replace Curry with Durant, which team would be better?
Curry/Klay/Iggy/Dray/Bogut
Livingston/Klay/Durant/Dray/Bogut
Or smaller units of:
Curry/Klay/Barnes/Iggy/Dray
Livingston/Klay/Iggy/Durant/Dray
I would say that the Curry team is better. The defense of 2015 Klay/Iggy/Dray/Bogut is just so filthy that I'd want Curry's offensive orchestration, shooting, gravity, spacing, etc. Basically, the defense is already so good that you want Curry's offense. The offense wouldn't be nearly as good with Durant.
And you're not just trading Curry for Durant, it's more like Curry+Iggy for Livingston+Durant, due to the lineups you would use for a large number of minutes. There's such a large dropoff in 3's from Curry+Iggy to Livingston+Durant, as well as ball movement, spacing, etc. And the defense is arguably not even any better, you're not really going from Curry to Durant on D, you're going from Curry to Livingston, and Iggy to Durant, which is arguably worse.
The above even applies to LeBron, if you switched Curry for LeBron on that team, I don't think the defense would improve as much as people have said earlier itt about a similar situation. The Warriors already had the #1 defense in the league, and as mentioned, Klay/Iggy/Dray/Bogut is fantastic defensively. Changing that to Klay/LeBron/Dray/Bogut doesn't move the needle as much as Curry+Iggy vs Livingston+LeBron moves the needle offensively, ball movement, 3's, spacing, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Victor
the idea that lebron or durant would need to "swallow their ego and alter their games to suit each other" is laughable. their games fit fine together.
and the idea that they would not be able to adjust their games, if need be, due to ego is utter bs. clearly you have not paid actual attention to lebron' mentality and his career development and rather just believe the idiotic narrative driven by haters such as woj and skip bayless.
Yes, their games fit fine enough to win championships, but that's not really what's being discussed. It's more like whose games fit
better and do not overlap as much and complement each other more, among superstars, and which superstar requires other's games to adjust more. LeBron makes role players better but arguably does not make stars better, and possibly makes them worse. Curry is not as good as LeBron in a vacuum, but makes role players better and either makes stars better or complements them and does not make them worse. It's not as much about LeBron or Curry adjusting, although Curry does that more, it's that other stars have to adjust to LeBron more than they do Curry.