Graph editor local vs global curves help

What is the best practice for character animation and dealing with transforms along the local axis? The example is shown in a sphere but I normally face this problem animating human characters.

Let’s see if I understand this correctly. Rotating the sphere along Z axis and then moving it along the local y results in a global transformation of X and Y. This is correctly reflected in the graph editor where I see a curve for both the y and x axis.

If what I really want to do here is control the timing of the sphere moving diagonally here across the local y-axis, is there any way to have this represented as a single curve in the node editor? I can of course try to adjust each curve separately but it’s difficult to adjust the timing of a diagonal movement by doing a vertical and then horizontal adjustment one at a time.

Is there a matter of doing wrong order of operation or are there other ways animators deal with this issue? Are the in-between tools the best way to accomplish what I want?

I guess you’re reaching for the impoasible. The graph editor only works globally, not locally, and it’s actually the way you’d want it.

If most of the animation on the object you have goes diagonally, then just do it in straight lines instead, and rotate the camera 45 degrees.