Austin Reaves Discussion: How Much Is He Worth?

You could put those stats up against Kobe and it'd also make Kobe look bad.

I love stats but let's be honest, it's easier to score in today's game.

Kobe would be averaging 40 PPG, in my humble opinion, if he truly wanted.

Back then, 45% efficiency as a guard was good. Nowadays, you shoot 45% from the field as a guard and you're labeled as very inefficient.

 

It’s fun and huge props to AR for stepping up and doing his best at what’s now needed from him with Luka and LeBron out …. but comparing the sample size of his 4 games to Mike’s and LeBron’s full seasons same year is silly. Doesn’t make AR’s performance so far with this next year’s continuing performance increase less mind bottling though.

 

We have a new GOAT lol

 

This may or may not be true, depending on what years we're comparing. Pace was actually higher in MJ's 1st 5 years than the modern game (using last 2 years for reference). So when MJ had his highest scoring years, it was actually easier to score than in the modern game.

Pace declined in the 90's, approx 2-3 possessions lower during MJ's 1st 3 chips, which would only mean a difference of 2-3 pts/gm per team, and 0.5-1 pts/gm for a superstar player. Not an enormous difference. By MJ's 2nd 3 chips, pace had declined by 6-7 possessions/gm, for about 2-2.5 pts/gm for a superstar player.

It stayed relatively similar throughout the 2000's and early 2010's, maybe 1 possession lower at times. The net effect on a superstar player would almost always have been less than 3 pts/gm though. Pace didn't really start appreciably increasing until 2014, peaking in 2020, and coming down a little since then.

Anyway, for a quick and dirty, when comparing today's points scored vs 1995-2013 or so, you can basically add 2-3 pts to the 1995-2013 players' stats. Which is significant, although not as significant as some make it out to be.





https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_game.html

Well, 35.4 pts/gm year would be equivalent to around 38.6 pts/gm today, so maybe. That was an outlier year though when few teammates could score much. The years he won championships, the most he averaged was 28.5 pts/gm, which would be 30.8 in today's game.

From 2, yes. Overall, depends on 3p volume. For example, is Ant inefficient?

Last season: 44.7 FG%, 39.5 3P%, 83.7 FT%, 50.1 2P%, 54.7 eFG%, 59.5 TS%