Playoff changes | Which stars have improved or declined the most?

[Music] it's a classic basketball question which star players improve the playoffs and which ones decline the most to answer this we often rely on specific memorable moments whether it's a legendary shot or a series turning myths but what if we looked at the totality of a player's performance what if we compared his overall level of play during the regular season to his overall postseason play if we did that for every star in NBA history who changes the most in the second season before we answer that we have to figure out how we're going to assess overall play one common practice has been scanning a player's Basketball Reference page and eyeballing any changes in key playoff stats especially a scoring ones but one problem with this approach besides ignoring any of the context around those stats is that it doesn't account for opponent's strength so to control for various levels of playoff competition I've adjusted a players scoring efficiency based on the opponent's regular-season defensive quality for example a 60% true shooter would be four percent better than the defenses he faced in the regular season this year but if his playoff competition were stiff he could shoot 56% and still be four percent better in this case we'd say his playoff efficiency didn't change now to account for the quality of the players own teammates I've called upon my version of box plus/minus which includes teammate strengths in assessing a player's performance on offense in other words it gauges the value of a player's stats slightly differently depending on how his teammates performed we want to sift out non-prime seasons too in order to avoid comparing players when they weren't performing like stars so only high quality years were included in the comparison and if we filter out players with less plathe experience we're left with a list that includes most of the great players in NBA history among these stars the average player improved his to BPM by 0.3 points in the playoffs the largest offensive decline among these all-time players belongs to Stefan curry that might come as a surprise but it's almost entirely caused by nice brains in 2016 and 2018 causing his all-around production to plummet he's actually improved a touch and other playoff runs with a pretty typical regular season to post season profile among greats save for an increase in turnovers if we overlook steps injuries James Harden sees the sharpest drop in the playoffs it's not just harden scoring though his three-point shooting dips by three percentage points and his shot creation falls off to hardens offensive BPM has declined in six of his prior seven post seasons but he's so good in the regular season that he's still a superstar on that end he's plus four point seven in this stat over the last three years which ranks 21st all-time on offense David Robinson was known for shrinking in the playoffs and he owns the third largest decline per this method robinson scoring is the primary culprit although unlike harden he was never an offensive superstar according to his stat the fourth largest drop belongs to Larry Bird which is surprising given all of his notable heroics over the years Birds scoring and creation took a dive in the playoffs although he still put up some of the best numbers ever in fairness to Larry he battled injuries in a number of these playoff runs as well Karl Malone had a reputation for choking in the second season and he suffered the fifth largest overall drop using this method Malone was more hit or miss although his drop-off largely coincided with aging he actually improved by about a quarter point until 1997 his age 33 season which was ironically his first MVP year Kevin Garnett saw a statistical dip on offense in the playoffs although not quite as Extreme as his reputation can make it out to be his scoring was slightly worse with a healthy uptick in turnover another Kevin Kevin Durant has seen a larger drop off in his scoring numbers caused by a healthy 4% drop in three-point shooting come playoff time if we ran this exercise after the 2016 season Durant would actually challenge hardens place on this list due to massive drop-offs in scoring and play making during the 2014 in 2016 playoffs so what about the players who have improved their numbers in the postseason some view Chris Paul is a choker after a handful of infamous playoff moments but his numbers actually go up in the second season his box plus/minus improved every postseason from 2013 through 2017 when he was with the Clippers more on Paul in a moment Paul's numerical shift is similar to Kobe Bryant's postseason change except Kobe basically maintained his volume scoring and efficiency in addition to his playmaking LeBron James is in the same boat too he's seen a minor dip and playoff scoring efficiency but otherwise looks fairly similar to his regular season self if you're wondering why his offensive BPM goes up remember the metric accounts for teammate performance when estimating the value of a player's contributions Tim Duncan and Shaquille O'Neal have similar regular to postseason profiles as well so who are the players who have improved the most well the fifth spot belongs to Isiah Thomas the original one who consistently outperformed his regular season numbers when he reached the postseason his scoring improved his passing improved and as a result he created more offense for teammates notably he did this well drastically minimizing his turnovers number four in the list is Kim Olajuwon who has a strong claim for the top spot when we apply little context between age 23 and 32 the ten-year heart of his career Hakeem is offensive box plus/minus improved by a whopping 1.4 points in the playoffs with all of his numbers spiking across the this 10-year stretch is arguably the most impressive statistical change in NBA playoff history coming in at number three on this list is john havelcheck who improved his BPM an incredible 11 consecutive times to start his playoff career havelcheck does have the lowest starting point of any of these players in this stat but he qualified just enough times to land here fun note the only notable player in NBA history with a larger bump in scoring efficiency come playoff time is Robert Horry the second-largest improvement in box score numbers belongs to Reggie Miller who has the biggest volume scoring increase of any star ever from 1993 to 1996 Miller played a blistering 38 playoff games in which he averaged 27 points 7 points per 75 on efficiency 10 and 1/2 percent better than his opponents scoring numbers similar to Stephon Curry's first MVP season back in 2015 and the top spot belongs to none other than Michael Jordan who despite sitting at the top of the heap in regular season scoring volume somehow improves his scoring in the playoffs what's notable about Jordan is that his playmaking jumps in the second season too specifically during his apex from 1989 to 1993 when he cracked open Eastern Conference defenses designed to trap or double teaming thus far our analysis has not only been boxscore eccentric but offense centric for instance the overall BPM changes are slightly different than the offense only ones havelcheck and Isaiah rise the most malone falls off more than anyone but if we narrow our time period to the play-by-play era we can also include plus/minus data to provide a more holistic snapshot of value for recent players augmented plus/minus an estimate of per game value accounting for teammate and opponent's strength using plus/minus data shows Michael Jordan with a sizeable playoff increase in 1997 and 1998 improving in value by one point two points during those years Reggie Miller also improved in this metric at the end of his career but interestingly James Harden's postseason change is just like almost any other star and he's just below average in another hybrid stat P IPM which accounts for shooting Luck when blending the box score with plus/minus numbers in both augmented plus/minus and P IPM Steph Curry falls off more than any notable player of the last 20 years again dragged down by those injuries in 2016 in 2018 outside of curry the star who loses the most shine when we incorporate plus/minus data is Chris Paul who falls off nearly as much as curry losing two more points per game than the average star player Paul's decline stems from a disastrous 2012 playoffs in which he played through a finger and hip injury but cp3 still goes down slightly an impact even in his other seasons despite that uptick in his box score numbers finally if we loosen the filter ever so slightly klay Thompson actually has the largest playoff decline of any recent player massively trailing off in scoring and efficiency well there's more holistic impact metrics take a nosedive as well of note his teammate draymond Green has one of the largest all-around improvements of any player of course none of these stats perfectly measure performance but they do a great job of helping us understand changes women of players own performance and when we add a little additional context we're left with a really clear picture of who the biggest fallers and who the biggest risers were in the crucible of the NBA Playoffs if you want to help me make more content you can head over to patreon.com slash thinking basketball and sign up as a patron you'll get access to historical stats like the ones used to make this video patron only posts and private discussion threads for questions and conversation topics otherwise enjoy the 2019 playoffs and I hope you're having a great day [Music]

Channel: Thinking Basketball

Views: 224,412

Keywords: NBA, NBA playoffs, GOAT, All-time greats, All-time players, best NBA players, greatest basketball player, playoff changes, NBA Analytics, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Reggie Miller, James Harden, Steph Curry, Chris Paul, NBA Stats, playoff stats, Clutch, NBA clutch, NBA chokers, clutch playoffs, playoff choker

Id: BtL_zCF6qgQ

Length: 10min 51sec (651 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019