Alright, Doc MJ. I wrote my above vote comments in short-hand, based on the what I had written in the discussion thread. So, for posterity sake, here are my 2 posts. The first detailing why I'm not so sure that Durant was really the run-away #2 winner that he's going to end up in this thread and the other discussing the placement of my other 3 top-5 guys (I'm assuming it's ok not to write a thesis on why LeBron's clearly #1).
Doctor MJ wrote:I also don't agree with (Westbrook) outplaying Durant, though if people really feel that way, it's worth them expounding on it.
I figured this was as good a place as any to talk about this year's Thunder, their relative values, and the chasm-like difference between LeBron and Durant. Despite not being a Heat fan at all and the fact that LeBron's cockiness can drive me crazy at times, I found myself pulling for the Heat in these Finals because I knew that if the Thunder won the narrative would be that this suddenly made Durant better than LeBron. When in reality they aren't even in the same zip code in my opinion...I'm not even sure that Durant separates himself from his own teammates (let alone the rest of the candidates in this year's top-5).
When I watch Durant play, I am consistently amazed by how easy scoring comes to him. To quote Bill Walker (who was talking about Melo, but still), Durant's shot is wet all the time. From out to like 27 feet. He's a nightmare cover by being a reported 6-11 guy who can handle the rock, has a great first step and quickness for his size, and just having a pure scorers mentality. High volume scoring on high efficiency. Just a scorer's dream.
But in the other aspects of the game, Durant hasn't impressed me yet. I saw a comparison the other day about Wade and Nash, about how Wade is a stylistic descendent of Jordan while Nash is a descendent of Magic, with a question about which style can produce the better, more impactful offensive player. The thing with Durant is, despite his all-world scoring ability, in terms of offensive style he's more of a megatron Ray Allen than a descendent of Jordan. Which means that he scores brilliantly and is a sniper from everywhere on the court, but he doesn't do much to create offense for his teammates. And this is important as we look at the best players in any given season, because despite the eye-popping scoring volume/efficiency combo I'm not yet convinced that Durant's actual offensive impact is as large as it should be.
Similarly, on defense, Durant just hasn't impressed as much as he should. I don't think Ibaka deserved 2nd in the DPoY vote, nor that Perkins is anything more than just a solid defensive role player, but put them together and that's still one of the better defensive frontlines in the NBA. Mix in a plus defender like Sefolosha starting on the wing, and you're looking at the framework for an excellent team defense. Yet the Thunder finished only 11th in Defensive Rating. Durant has the length/quickness ratio to be a devastating defensive player, on the order of LeBron...but he's not there yet. He's merely average, as his -0.1 defensive RAPM on the year indicates.
So in Durant we've got an all-history scoring talent, mixed with just "alright" everywhere else. He's an ok defender. He's an ok playmaker. He's maybe slightly above average as a rebounding SF, but he's not a good enough rebounder/defender to consistently play the 4. And that affects his spacing benefit, because unlike Dirk (who's probably the best Durant comp right now) when Durant goes to the perimeter he's only bringing another wing out of the paint. If/when Durant does make a shift to full-time PF I expect we'll see his offensive +/- numbers go through the roof...but he's not there yet.
Which brings us to the other Thunder. Russell Westbrook might make bone-headed decisions at times, may not be a real floor-general type point guard, and might not be as impactful as 2001 Kobe. But on the other hand, his ridiculous athleticism and aggressiveness puts pressure on opposing defenses in a way that even Durant's sleek efficiency doesn't. Plus, Westbrook also creates more for his teammates than Durant does...which may be a function of team role as the Thunder try to force Westbrook into the point guard slot...but still, he does it. And then there's James Harden, who just turned in the closest thing we've seen to a prime Manu Ginobili season since...prime Manu Ginobili. When Harden is in the game, like Ginobili, he assumes that great balance between shooting threat/penetrating threat/creating-for-others threat that always has him on the verge of being the best player on the floor.
The end result is an offensive balance on the Thunder where no one of the three, including and especially Durant, really separates himself from the others. On the season Durant rocked an offensive RAPM of +3.5 (+3.4 total RAPM), good for about 10th in the NBA. Westbrook was slightly worse on offense at +2.5 (+2.3 RAPM overall), while Harden measured out the best at +4.6 on offense (+3.0 overall) which put him in the top-5 at that end of the court (just behind Nash). In the playoffs we have more limited +/- data to work with due to sample size, but here again the broad-terms arguments you might make with this level of data suggests that Durant at the least didn't separate himself from his teammates. Both Westbrook and Harden had better on/off +/- values than Durant on both offense and defense, and basketballvalue's postseason APM (for whatever that's worth) had both Westbrook and Harden solidly higher than Durant.
Bottom line: this NBA Finals was styled as the best two players in the game going head-to-head. But to me, the reality was that we saw by-far the best player in the game go heads up with an excellent player that just completely isn't on his level. And even among the Thunder, I don't see much in the way of evidence (either visual or statistical) that Durant really separated himself in terms of impact from either Westbrook or Harden. Durant was obviously the player that the Thunder looked to as a leader, was the guy they went to late, and was the guy that opponents game-planned for the most. Put that with his better advanced box score scores (and the egg that Harden laid in the Finals), and I'm fine with calling Durant the best player on the team. But I don't see where he really creates much space from his teammates, nor necessarily any space from the rest of the field in this top-5 thread.
