OhayoKD wrote:He made his finals run having less responsibility than even 2013 or 2014 Steph did. Steph was quite clearly one of the best players in the league by 2013 so we're really talking about a couple seasons that really shouldn't count for much in ATG conversations(they certainly wouldn't be a big differentiator for something like "corp") at the start and off course even that advantage largely gets nuked with Durant missing 2015 and the 2019 playoffs.
KD is having a better season than steph right now. he had a better regular season in 2022 though obviously worse in the playoffs.
Huh? Steph played significantly more, absolutely smoked Durant empirically, and led a far better RS team(best record in the league
without Klay when he was on). Are you forgetting that Curry is one of history's premier creators while Kevin Durant is not? There's far more to basketball than 3-point% percentage
i'm not forgetting anything. all of steph's numbers dropped big time. am i really to believe that, over the offseason, steph really improved his gravity and his impact so that not only could he be just as valuable while individually playing way, way worse, but that he could actually be MORE valuable while playing way, way worse. after a lifetime of honing his craft, he took the intangibles up several notches in one offseason? or is it more likely that he had a down year in the regular season? the warriors were 45-19 when steph played and the nets were 36-19 when KD played. steph played in his usual system, with a good coach, and had the #1 defense in the league backing him up. KD had harden coming back from an injury, kyrie sitting out most of the year, steve nash as coach, and then the harden trade and simmons saga, and definitely not the #1 defense backing him up. i would hope steph's record was at least a little better.
hilariously, a stat like RPM says steph was way better than 2021 (seriously?) and twice as good as this current season (seriously?). it also hasn't had KD higher than 14th since 2017 so it's hard for me to take these things seriously with regards to KD.
i would assume you don't think steph is outplaying KD this year, right, given the significantly different records for their teams and KD's better numbers? if so, not sure why it would be so hard to believe KD was better last year with a similar level of play.
steph had a better regular season in 2021 but obviously worse in the playoffs/play-ins.
Can you explain what made Steph "obviously worse" in the playoffs/play-ins beyond him playing less games? Durant was arguably outplayed by his own teammate in the first round, was outscored in 4 out of 7 games by a two-way big in the second round, and went 1-3 when denied superstar help despite the opposing coach deciding to leave him in single coverage as opposed to doubling him.
well, mr. i-make-the-finals-all-the-time-and-i'm-definitely-the-only-one-that-matters-by-impact-metrics curry should probably win 1 of 2 play-ins against the 8th and 9th seeds, while backed by the #4 defense in the league, if i'm going to put him over KD and his epic games 5 and 7 against the bucks. a series he was a toenail from winning without his 2nd and 3rd best players for the last 3.5 games. this seemed to be the time for curry to let us know that klay wasn't that important. instead, we got fairly good games marred by averaging 6.5 TO/gm and losses to "meh" teams. not sure how i'm supposed to give it to curry over KD.
and they both vied for who was the better player from 2017 to 2019
Steph made the finals without him in 2019 before posting an all-time-great offensive series(and anchoring a remarkably impressive offense in non-kd
and non-klay minuites) against one of history's greatest ever playoff defenses, while playing close to a 70-win pace without Durant in 2017. The only year Durant has a serious argument is 2018.
he made the finals against portland, clearly not a real contender. the warriors beat a similar level team in 2018 without curry (spurs). he won game 6 against houston while scoring 0 points in the first half and the score still somehow being tied because iggy and klay hit 12 combined 3's in the game. then the finals started and he lost 4 of the 5 games KD didn't play, with KD's 12 minutes and 11 points providing all of the MOV in one of the wins. after going 8-1 in the finals the previous 2 years, including against a great 2017 cavs.
and 2018 steph is one of the great playoff drop-offs of all time. i have it as the 8th worst drop-off in nba history out of 178 finals runs (for the star players on the teams). and i won't mention the worst.
, with KD winning both finals mvp's and KD being better in the 2019 houston series
Curry outscored and outcreated Durant in the first three rounds(including the best rs defensive opponent they faced) before the Cavs specifically decided that curry was a more dangerous player(probably because unlike you, they had been paying attention to what happened in the last 3 playoff series, the last 3 regular seasons, the last 3 playoff runs, and the head to head matchup that had KD running to San-Fransico in the first place). Even in the final, Curry posted higher on/off while creating 13 OC's a game to KD's 3(Blocked Film tracking). Which is all to say, 2017 being "arguable" is pretty silly. Just because Stephen A Smith and Rachel Nicols only go off points per game doesn't mean you have to.
Maybe even weirder to try and hang KD's hat on the 2019 Rockets series, where the Rox were dead-even with the Dubs when KD was on, and then the Warriors went supernova when KD went off. And off course that was ontop of another regular seaosn where the Warriors were basically unaffected by his absence. The Warriors basically posted the same record in the 2019 playoffs without Durant as they did with him. Unless you're trying to gas KD's ppg against a below average Clippers defense, I'm not sure how this helps Durant's case at all.
come on. this can't always be the argument with curry. he never plays poorly. somehow his value is just completely independent of his level of play? maybe they were even with KD playing because curry was friggin' awful in that series? as of halftime of game 6, the series was 5.5 games old and curry was averaging 20.0 ppg (over 5.5 games), 4 apg, 4 rpg on 48 TS%. that would be one of the worst top 20 ATG prime series you would ever see. KD was basically dragging an anchor through the first 5 games. curry holding the team back with KD and then finally playing well in the 2nd half of game 6 isn't somehow KD's fault. if curry can't play well when KD is around, at the very least that would seem to call into question his scalability. KD isn't exactly the graduate-level course in scalability. and i'll just point out once again that they lost 9 games in 2016 in the playoffs without KD, then tore everyone except the 2018 rockets (by far their best opponent) a new one for 2 years, were at least even/slightly ahead of the 2019 rockets with steph being awful, then withou KD lost the finals 1-4 in the games without KD against an opponent not the caliber of the 2018 rockets and probably only equal to the 2019 rockets. it's hard to believe he wasn't extremely valuable.
Being a clear-cut second fiddle with Steph healthy, Durant had his chance to show his chops when Steph got hurt in 2018. The result was an underwhelming regular season followed by them going down 3-2 to the Rockets before Chris Paul tore his hammy. I suppose there's a "advantage" to be had here in an absolute sense, but it really doesn't help when trying to push for Durant's prime as comparable.
huh? steph played in the 2018 WCF. unless this is another "if steph plays poorly, then he's hurt" argument. and if it is, then he either should take a big hit for devastating playoff drop-offs because he's not durable, or they were just really big drop-offs. either way, doesn't seem to help his case.
KD 2014 is at least as good as steph 2015
And now we're really going off the rails. I get you don't think creation matters, but this is why we look at impact on winning as opposed to just going off the box score. A case
could be made in the regular season(Curry actually has a "adjusted" impact advantage as he pairs all-time great creation with great scoring and solid defense, but I'm feeling nice and KD did win an impressive amount of games without his co-star).
this is the problem with treating impact as gospel. as just seen with RPM, KD looks like a fringe all-star if i go by RPM, a stat i believe that scored well on the "predictive" test with EPM and such. is KD really a fringe all-star? was steph curry really leaps and bounds better than everyone, even lebron (?), in 2015 and still somehow the best every year for like another 5 years? or did all the priors and the details of the warriors lineups conspire to make him look like a better player than he was (which is still a great player)? you act like KD just runs down the court, shoots a shot, and does nothing else, like play defense or get the defenses full attention. somehow his team makes the finals against an elite as hell spurs team in 2012, somehow the thunder are a +9 SRS team in 2013, and he wins a ton with an epic season in 2014, but really his impact just isn't that great? is it all westbrook? yes, steph does things better than KD, but KD does offset some of steph's creation with pure scoring. i know we're supposed to hate the box score, but KD's 9th best playoff PPG beats steph's career high. he has more impact on defense just because he's tall and long as hell.
Sadly, that "case" gets shot through with a machine gun once we account for the playoffs where Curry has an empirically all-time-great run, dominates his conference, and wins a title while Durant by almost any emperical analysis(including a box-based one) got outplayed by his own teammate including when they were dumped in the Conference Finals. I have reason to be kind to Durant so I'm willing to consider it "arguable" on the basis of "port" and/or a potential defensive attention gap? (Though at least the Spurs gave both comparable focus I think), but Westbrook was statistically better, and perhaps most damningly, the only series Durant looked better was when Westbrook was not his full-self against the Grizzlies. OKC barely survived a non-contender with Durant taking point, and were crushed by that same non-contender in 2013 when Durant had to deal with the responsibilties typically ascribed to an all-time-great. And whatever defense I'm willing to make for Durant in the 2014 playoffs, there's really no excusing the 2016 playoffs where Westbrook faced more defensive attention and played significantly better. And if you're concerned about a defensive gap, feel free to reference the on/off, where again, Westbrook absolutely cooks Durant during those two postseasons.
fair enough on 2014 playoffs, KD does have a steep drop-off, although i don't think the warriors beat any teams of the level of the 2014 spurs. and draymond and the defense i believe had a better rDRtg in 2015 than the offense had rORtg. draymond helps a lot in the playoffs.
and KD beating the spurs in 2012 is a better opponent victory than anything from steph in 2015.
Quite remarkably, the Cavs
without Kyrie and Love were pretty comparable to the 2012 Spurs, sweeping a 60 win team and posting a +10 PSRS. Regardless though, this is moot as KD literally was asked to do less for that Thunder team than Curry was under Mark Jackson. Comparing a glorified role player showing to one of the most impactful postseason runs ever is pretty questionable. Especially when we saw what happened when Durant upped his usage the following three playoffs.
[img]https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/morris-mvp-curry-0412-2.png?w=575[*][/img]
the main difference for the 2 seem to be circumstances.
i'm sorry, kevin durant was a glorified role player in the 2012 playoffs? that's what you're going with? 28.5/7.4/3.7 ppg on 63.2 TS%, adding 1.5 bpg and 1.2 spg. the spurs won 20 games in a row (10 regular season, 10 playoffs) and had people talking about them going 16-0 in the playoffs. then the thunder beat them 4 straight. with KD putting up 30/7/6 on 67 TS%. that was an insane turnaround for such a young team against a would-be veteran-laden juggernaut. i would think pop could figure out what to do with a glorified role player. the 2015 cavs had lebron in his worst shooting playoffs in a long time and in the minutes he wasn't on the court in the finals, had an offensive rating of like 50.9. 50.9! that shows what the warriors defense could do and how limited the cavs were. they did toy with atlanta but atlanta was also clearly not in top form by the time the playoffs rolled around. they were a deep team that got off to a ridiculous 40-8 start but finished a much more normal 20-14 after whatever magical potion they took wore off. kind of like the 2014 pacers.
let harden and kyrie be healthy in 2021 instead of steph getting a healthy warriors in 2022 and the titles are flipped.
So if Durant had a comically stacked deck, he might have won? Yeah, again, not sure this helps your point. Curry has repeatedly demonstrated for us he can do more with less
and more with more.
yes, if he had a team less stacked than the 2017 or 2018 warriors, it looked like he would win comfortably. he still almost beat the eventual champion with neither guy.
and when did curry prove this? the 2015 warriors had the #1 defense and the 2022 warriors had the #1 defense. that's both of steph's non-KD titles. and they had klay for one and klay plus poole (who went crazy in the 1st and 3rd rounds) for the other. top level shooting help and elite defense seems like a good recipe for success. and the 2022 warriors weren't exactly going through the 2012 spurs or well, the 2016 warriors or ridiculous 2016 spurs. nor did draymond get injured get injured in 2015 like westbrook in 2013.
let wade and bosh miss the 2012 finals and kyrie/love play in the 2015 finals and the titles are probably flipped (maybe warriors still somehow win in 2015, but seems unlikely). klay and draymond have never gotten injured in the playoffs and derailed a steph run like westbrook in 2013, although i guess you could count 2019 finals with klay missing a game but then the KD injury seems the bigger news. and even then, they've won series with steph missing the series in a way few superstars would get away with.
The difference being that KD wins doing dramatically less than Steph has done for any of his 6 final runs, and Steph still has 5 other final appearances and 3 other titles to lean on. And again, the warriors were a 70 win team without Durant in 2017 and a near-champion in 2019(and then an actual champion in 2015 and 2022). Not sure how you've determined beating a .500 team in the playoffs is similar.
i guess if steph is just automatically so far ahead of KD in all these things he is doing, then i guess KD can't catch up, whether steph has bad playoffs or good playoffs or steph has less longevity. i guess KD having more rebounding and rim protection responsbilities doesn't count. are you really arguing that no wade/no bosh doesn't result in a title for KD? or that no draymond/klay in 2022 doesn't mean the warriors lose? what were the 2013 thunder doing to do with no injuries? i imagine it would have been pretty good.
from a total career value perspective, if KD is at least still as good as steph now and he had like a 4 or 5 year head start on mvp-caliber seasons, and steph's biggest peak argument over KD went down badly in the 2016 playoffs, then it's hard to see why steph would be over KD.
Problem is there's no real case to be made, with the exception of 2018, that Durant has been as good as Steph since the 2014 regular season. 2023 was shaping up to be the first year in maybe a decade where Durant had a case shaping up, and that's been ruined via injury. (And no, you pretending the massive chasm in creation that's repeatedly been cited doesn't exist doesn't really qualify imo).
so that's it, it's just creation and steph wins? playing better each of the last 2 regular seasons and getting to game 7 of the 2nd round in 2021 instead of missing the playoffs mean nothing? just obviously in steph's favor? KD's 4 top 2 mvp finishes can't make up the gap, it's that large?
Also would say calling Durant's final performance "great" is a bit much given his extremely limited non-scoring responsibilities (tertiary ball handler, 9.8 ast%: 13 tov% is actually pretty terrible for an offensive superstar), and the Heat focusing on other attackers(Harden was their primary target IIRC).
i'm not saying it was the greatest finals i ever saw, but 31 ppg on 65 TS% would be a pretty ridiculous TS Add for that playoff series. none of the main 6 guys other than KD broke 55.8 TS% for the series so this wasn't some up and down offensive series with crazy numbers. and he did it a year younger than steph even made the playoffs.
No one is disputing durant was better pre-prime. The problem is when you try to use it as some sort of counter to years like 2015 when durant was carrying a much, much smaller offensive load. And again, if you want to see what happens when Durant is asked to do as much as Curry, feel free to reference the following 3 playoffs.
what about when steph doesn't have the world's easiest playoff run in 2017? the drop-offs are always pretty substantial outside of 2022. 2016 and 2018 are epic. durant has his own bad playoffs, including 2016.
Though I imagine most people pushing steph's case would mainly be doing so based on having a better peak/prime(vastly better creator, significantly more holistic impact in the RS and the playoffs per raw or regressed analysis (notably includes 2017 and 2019)). Having 2 more rings, 3 as his team's best player(feel free to push on 2017 if you want, but I don't think its a winning case), and 3(or 4 depending on how you count 2019 I guess) more final apperances also doesn't hurt.
not sure how steph's winning prime when KD's has been going for longer. and steph's best peak argument faltered in the playoffs at least as bad as any durant
Uh, no. Curry won and made the finals. Durant lost. Not sure how you think those are equivalent. Considering that Durant has won exactly one finals game(without really facing the responsibilities of an all-time-great) without Steph, I'm not sure why you're trying to dismiss the value of a final appearance here.
well his team made the WCF basically without him. KD needed a pretty amazing 2nd round to get to the WCF against a +7.3 team.
2017 doesn't even matter who we say is the best. it seems pretty obvious that the warriors going from 9 playoff losses in 2016 to 1 in 2017 means KD must have been pretty valuable and some impact metrics saying it's all steph aren't going to change those facts. but "the best" on a team with a non-competitive title doesn't mean much. neither one faced any real adversity or stress in that season so whoever was technically the best in a bunch of blowouts isn't going to affect their legacy very much. it's like crediting melo for being good on team USA.
What "facts". Nothing places KD within range of Curry in 2017. You have no facts on your side beyond the scoring volume and effiency in a single series. KD's consistent inability to replicate Steph's influence on winning(kind of the point of basketball) is a damning indictment on the quality of his peak/prime.
nothing but KD showing up the warriors going from 9 playoff losses to 1. how is it that it's really the guy that was already on the team that caused this difference? and not the guy who was added? you notice one thing about the warriors is how they run a system designed for steph and then expect KD to fit in. so of course they can go on their little regular season runs when KD misses a game or twenty (kind of the whole point of the "why did you even need to add KD!" argument). they won 73 games just fine without KD the year before. they all like each other and fit together. the playoffs and lebron is why they got KD. the finals mvp winner both times. the guy who won a series when steph was injured just like vice versa. the guy who could play better against the rockets while steph struggled and make sure there was a WCF to play in.
So assuming "who is better" is a relevant consideration, it's pretty important to weighing their legacies. But I suppose you also view the championships for the 01 Lakers, the 83 Sixers and the 91 Bulls as worthless? Those were also situations where an unfair degree of help and weak(or injured) opposition prevented the champions from "facing adversity". Or does "adversity" only matter when we're trying to tear down Steph. Perhaps we should actually celebrate when juggernauts underperform. I guess 08 KG is the GOAT for overcoming "adversity" vs the Hawks and the Cavs.
KG did avoid getting taken out by Zaza in the 1st round, unlike kawhi, so have to give him some credit. but no, 2008 was disappointing. but i think we all know the difference between the warriors and everyone else. this wasn't an "oh my god, look how they elevated in the playoffs" type situation like the '91 bulls or '01 lakers. the '91 bulls had literally not even won before, a 15-2 run wasn't in the cards. the '01 lakers got pushed in '00 and '02, they just balled out like crazy in '01 which made it seem impressive to see 2 guys plus role players be so good. 2017 is much more like 1983, where the overhwhelming talent made it a forgone conclusion (i don't give Dr. J hardly any credit and moses only gets credit because Dr. J sucked so much in the playoffs, 4th worst out of 178). one of KD or steph could have played like you or me and they would have won. who slightly outplayed who means nothing. it wasn't like a big moment came and one of them saved the season, and if it did, it would be KD's 3 in the finals, but that's massively overrated. it's not like KD or steph took it to some level we had never seen from them and that's why they went 16-1.
There's also the matter of 2016 where a hobbled Steph outscored and (vastly) outcreated Durant to set the stage for Durant's arrival in the first place. Similar to hakeem outplaying d-rob head to head except KD also has the indignation of arguably being outplayed by his own teammate.
the thunder's D to start that series was amazing, that can't be forgotten. their length, which very much includes KD, was impressive. steph slightly outplaying KD in one series where the thunder weren't supposed to win anyway doesn't seem like it's an automatic scale-tipper, considering KD was doing things early in his career in the playoffs while steph wasn't even a high level player yet.
What is it with you and trying to hold players having better regular seasons agaisnt them. The Warriros were favored because Steph was much better in the regular season than KD was. You can try and suger-coat this all you want, but at the end of the day, Curry walked in with a signficant injury and then blew KD's house down outscoring him, and massively outcreating him(not sure why you keep forgetting that part). I'm sure KD played solid defense, but trying to cling to this as some sort of equalizer when the stats which can actually account for that don't see KD as even
Westbrook's equal, and KD has virtually no track-record of significantly improving his team's defenses throughout his prime is pretty desperate.
The difference between Curry and KD is not circumstance(honestly a ludicrous point for someone whose maybe been awarded the best set of supporting casts for any superstar in nba history), it's that Curry is a better player. This isn't hard.
i'm a big regular season vs playoff guy, what can i say. as we can see from our debate, it's hard to get a hold on players. i can much easier tell who rose or fell in the playoffs. and i never said KD has been beating steph every step of the way from 2010 to the present. steph clearly has him beat in 2016. epic regular season, KD fell off in the playoffs almost as much, hell maybe more, steph outplayed him in the series. good for steph. that thread about top 30 all time, i filled it out and had KD one spot ahead of steph all time. it's not like i think there is a huge difference.
in fact, that seems to be how a decent number of debates go around here.
"this guy is terrible, way overrated, not good at winning and no team should want him. i have him #28 all time".
"well, you're crazy. he had a large impact on winning, had some bad circumstances, won everywhere, and is amazing. i have him #27 all time."
