I was just discussing this with the homie after Game 6, that a lot of the pushback to Steph's and Dray's greatness is there's no prototype for either of them.
A lot of the hate comes from a place of not understanding how to scale their impact.
We've all been conditioned by great players monopolizing the ball, their style of play and the volume of box score stats that come naturally with that, so when a player like Steph comes along and has all this success playing without needing to be all up in the videos with the ball in his hands, it's hard for folks to contextualize that. Which only leads them to falling into the trap of believing that it must not be because of him, which is only magnified by the fact he's a undersized guard who's not ultra-athletic (conventional wisdom is wings/bigs are the ones who have the most impact on the game).
Same goes for Draymond. His lack of an offensive skillset has always been at the forefront when discussing his game, but I put it down to folks resorting to jokes about it to cover up not knowing why he's historically great, even when he's not a scoring threat. We've all been conditioned by great defensive players in 1v1 situations; ISO has predominately been the main source of offense since the inception of the sport. It's only in recent times where the NBA has been a positionless state where defending your matchup isn't the be-all and end-all. Now, with the freedom that players have, Draymond doesn't just defend his opposite, but he defends 1-5, he defends all PnR actions, he defends multiple players in the same possession (some times multiple players at once), he directs traffic telling his teammates where to be, he protects the rim while simultaneously defending the perimeter, he'll snuff out actions before a team even has a chance to execute them. Every single imaginable act on defense - Draymond can do it. But because nobody in NBA history has done that before, folks don't understand how to measure his impact, which like Steph, is only magnified by the fact he's an undersized big who's not ultra-athletic.
They've both broken the scale on how we judge players. It's why the arguments against them are more reflective of a lack of understanding on how two undersized, lesser-athletic players, who have no predecessor, can be this successful.
I think you have them confused with the refs
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