Peaks Project #20

[trex_8063]

Thru post #40:

Kevin Durant - 13.5
Kobe Bryant - 13
Patrick Ewing - 13
Tracy McGrady - 10
Charles Barkley - 8.5
Chris Paul - 8
Steve Nash - 6
Moses Malone - 4
Karl Malone - 2

Half-points result of:

1st ballot - Moses Malon 1983
2nd ballot - Patrick Ewing 1990
3rd ballot - Charles Barkley/Kevin Durant

I'm undecided with my 3rd choice. Can anybody do a nice analysis of their offensive prodiction? I'm slightly biased to take Barkley, on the other hand Durant had amazing year in 2014...

I'm going to give 70sFan a little more time to take a stand with either Durant or Barkley....if he picks Durant, I'm calling it for Durantula; if he sides with Barkley, we'll have to (gulp) go into a 3-way run-off between Durant, Kobe and Ewing.
Or he can opt to not decide, in which case will again call it for Durant.

[trex_8063]

Spoiler:

Repost: Kevin Durant vs. Kobe Bryant

[spoiler]I've been seeing more votes for Durant lately, but I just don't think he's as good as some of the others still left on the board, starting with Kobe. I made a Durant '14 vs Kobe post back in April of 2014, before we knew that his playoffs that season were going to be less than impressive (relatively speaking). I emphasize that, because my arguments were that Durant after the regular season alone wasn't as good as peak Kobe. And after the postseason, if anything, that feeling got stronger.

No, Durant hasn't surpassed Kobe yet. The fact that such a consensus believes that he has, IMO, is a symptom of how over-reliant we have become on individual scoring efficiency as a measure of player performance. Individual scoring efficiency is important, and to be as absurdly efficient as Durant at such a high volume is more impressive still. But there are other aspects to the game, and I don't think they're given enough weight in many of the discussions on this board.

Part of the reason that individual scoring efficiency is so focused upon is that every "advanced" box score metric relies heavily on it. But since they have different names, people often site them as if they are giving different results. For example, Durant's advantages in TS%, PER, Offensive Rating and Win Shares all tie strongly to Durant's scoring efficiency advantage. Thus, citing each of them individually doesn't strengthen the case much IMO, since it's repetitive.

So if we stipulate that Durant is more efficient as a scorer, what does the rest of the comparison look like? I'd say that peak Kobe was still more gifted at initiating and running the team offense, that he could act as the lead guard and offensive focal point to a larger degree than Durant. I'd say that Kobe was the more gifted passer (when he chose to do so), and the better floor general. I'd also say that Kobe was the better 1-on-1 defender, and that his relative weaknesses as a team defender were less negatively impactful from the SG slot than Durant's lack of defensive impact from the 3/4 position on his team.

So, where does that leave us? If I believe that, as someone said earlier in the thread, essentially Durant is the more efficient volume scorer (by a solid margin) but that Kobe might be better at most everything else...how would that translate to who has the bigger impact?

Well, to date, the best measures that we have for impact are the +/- stats. You can't directly compare RAPM values from one season to another, but there are ways to try to normalize the data. The most basic approximation is just to look at the rank order within a given year, but DoctorMJ has come up with a better method that involves normalizing based on how far a player's RAPM value is from the mean (e.g. using standard deviation). DocMJ hasn't calculated for 2014, but I did using the GotBuckets 2014 RAPM list.

If I did it correctly, 2014 Durant's RAPM was 2.44 standard deviations fro mthe mean. This value would put him among the top-50 highest peak seasons measured in this way since 1997, and is a solid score for a first-team All NBA and MVP candidate type performance.

Kobe, on the other hand, had a RAPM value right around that level in 2007. But from 2008 - 2010, Kobe peaked higher with a three-year run right around 2.7 standard deviations from the mean. This time period is often cited now as Kobe's peak (obviously, his peak years could be debated). It includes his MVP and both of his Finals MVP years, and 2008 is the year that was chosen as Kobe's peak in the last RealGM Top 50 peaks project.

Conclusion: If I compare Durant and Kobe by skill sets and across-the-board abilities, I'd say that Durant is clearly the more efficient scorer but Kobe has advantages in other areas. If I try to quantify which had more impact, it appears that Kobe's is still slightly higher than what Durant has accomplished to date. So to this thread, I'd argue that no, Kevin Durant has not yet peaked as high as peak Kobe Bryant.

[/Spoiler]

As I'm sure you're aware, the majority of this is purely subjective (Kevin Durant hasn't peaked as high as Kobe because.....well, because you just don't think so; RAPM being the only tangible or objective thing to go on---more on that below), even if your subjective opinion has come after much consideration.

But I just want to remind everyone what the considered subjective opinion of various other pools were regarding '14 Durant. And take note that this is just one year after the slim consensus peak year of Lebron James (a player peak we voted #3), and it's not like he fell of a cliff in the next year. And yet it was Durant who won the MVP, and nobody around here really had much issue with it. We all more or less shrugged and said, "Whatever. For rs, yeah, he probably deserved it."
The playoffs rolled around and Lebron was more impressive there, which sort of shifted things back in his favor a bit overall for the year. Though not TOO much; take for instance the RPoY vote, in which Lebron had .960 shares, Durant .733, and no one else even remotely close to them. That's one of the closer #1/#2 finishes in recent years, fwiw.

Suppose '13, '09, and '12 (and '10?) never happened for Lebron; suppose '14 was his best season......what place do you think he'd have finished in this peaks project? I'm guessing he'd still be top 10 (perhaps even top 6 or 7??). And if Durant is deemed that close to him in '14 (unless you believe the collective opinion of both voting bodies to be grossly incorrect), it seems a stretch to say he doesn't even belong in the top 22.

And I disagree with the assertion that Kobe is better at "basically everything else" (outside of scoring). I don't believe he's a better rebounder, for example. Even when considered relative to positional norms/averages, I don't think it can be stated that he has any edge there.

And relative to positional norms/averages I don't know that he's definitively a better playmaker either. I mean, I believe he is.....when he wants to be. You couldn't resist inserting that touch of honesty, even within a post aimed at lauding his abilities. I mean, if someone is the greatest shooter the world has ever seen any time he shoots with his right hand, but he only chooses to shoot with his right hand once every three shots.....is he then necessarily the best shooter? Kobe's decision making (where shot selection----or even choosing to shoot at all---is concerned) is my biggest critique of him, btw.
fwiw....
*Durant had the marginally higher assist numbers (for per game, per 36 min, per 100 possessions)
**Though his Ast:TO ratio is marginally worse (1.56 vs. 1.72 for '08 Kobe), his AST%:TOV% ratio is marginally BETTER than '08 Kobe's.

So I'll give Kobe the edge in playmaking for others (mostly based on eye-test), but I don't think it's much of an edge, particularly in light of position played.

Defensively, I don't think there's a clear (or certainly not a clear sizable) edge for Kobe. A few days ago, off the cuff I'd have quickly labeled Kobe the better defender; though the isolation defense numbers that MyUniBroDavis had posted recently was---if trustworthy---fairly eye-opening. Durant is measured as a negative via PI DRAPM (-0.74), but then so is '08 Kobe (-0.39)....as well as '09 and '10 Kobe, too, fwiw. And though I cannot find a link, I want to say NPI RAPM listed Durant as a net positive defensively in '14.


The only area in which there is a clear LARGE gap is in scoring......and it's in Durant's favor.

As to his capabilities exerting a positive influence toward an elite offense.....
The '08 Lakers were a +5.5 rORTG team (ranked 3rd of 30).
Kobe had Lamar Odom, 35 games of a Andrew Bynum, a limited but good floor-spacing decent ball-control veteran PG in Fisher, some other floor spacers, a GOAT-level coach, and **Pau Gasol for the back third of the season. **And it needs to be noted that the Lakers were a +2.9 rORTG team prior to obtaining Gasol in the mid-season trade......then insane +9.9 rORTG after obtaining him.

In '14, Durant had Westbrook for 46 games (Reggie Jackson as starting PG otherwise), Serge Ibaka, then two offensive zeros in Sefolosha and Kendrick Perkins to round out the starting line-up (Perkins is downright offensive poison by this point in his career). Coach is Scott Brooks, and best help off the bench is Nick Collison and a now 6 years older version of Derek Fisher. They managed a +3.8 rORTG (6th of 30). And they were only slightly less than that in the games Westbrook missed, too, fwiw. Durant with Reggie Jackson, Serge, Sef, Perkins and that bench were managing basically the same caliber offense as Kobe with Odom, younger Fisher, few games of Bynum, and a bunch of shooters spreading the floor (with Phil coaching). I'll let you draw your own conclusions from this.

Where PI ORAPM is concerned, Durant's mark in '14 is higher than '08 Kobe ('09 is the only year of Kobe's career with a higher raw number). I don't know what that would come to in a scaled version, or in SD's from the mean, but I would guess very comparable.

Though I will once again caution about reading too much into impact stats in the first place, as impact does not = goodness. To simplify, it's more like "impact = goodness + fit + utilization".


Overall, I think there's more than enough grounds to hold the opinion that Durant peaked higher.

2) You noted that a lot of my post was subjective.....(snip)

3) You then went and did your own subjective version of a comparison between the two, featuring some numbers to back your opinion, which is cool.

The bolded part is the operative phrase. Purely subjective assessments have greater need of thorough qualitative analysis (which you're usually great at, though I just didn't think your usual penchant and aptitude for it was present in the aforementioned post). Short of that, statistical backing (my usual MO) is important.

fwiw, I didn't bother presenting data on scoring, as it seemed as though that was a given (that Durant holds a solid edge, as that was a point you were willing to concede in your post). I didn't cite numbers wrt the rebounding comparison, but could upon request. But I suppose I'll just ask straight up: would you agree that the rebounding comparison (factoring in position played) is more or less a draw (i.e. Kobe is NOT better at it)? Because if we conclude Kobe is indeed NOT better at it, well, the "better at everything else" narrative begins to erode already.

Unisbro did the same. I think that's a good thing. But my original point was that if we separated the comparison into groupings of skill sets, it would be difficult to make any type of determination on who was better. Durant's better at some things, Kobe's better at some things.

So is Durant better at some things, or just one thing? "Some things" is a bit different from what you previously implied.

My gut would have told me, of the years in question, that Kobe was a bit better. But I wouldn't have any way to quantify that based purely on individual categories of numbers. But the +/- stats, specifically, are meant to show how much a player's presence was correlated with moving his team's scoring margin. You make the point about impact being fit plus effectiveness, and I feel that, but to some extent ALL stats are based on fit and effectiveness. So I don't think that means that we ignore what the impact seems to be.

I don't think we ignore it either. We merely bear it in mind (and thus perhaps don't use it as the only yardstick). And wrt the bolded statement (about other stats).....what about those other stats?
I mean in impact studies Kobe barely has an edge, and as UniBro stated, part of that may have to do with the "prior informed" part (Durant's '14 RAPM is being depressed by what he was in '12 and '13); there is less of a hampering effect where Kobe is concerned.
And then there are other advanced stat metrics which basically ALL favor Durant pretty substantially (in the rs at least).


Anyway, I'll stop there. Not trying to shift your opinion necessarily, but just providing the counter-point for the masses.

[70sFan]

Thru post #40:

Kevin Durant - 13.5
Kobe Bryant - 13
Patrick Ewing - 13
Tracy McGrady - 10
Charles Barkley - 8.5
Chris Paul - 8
Steve Nash - 6
Moses Malone - 4
Karl Malone - 2

Half-points result of:

1st ballot - Moses Malon 1983
2nd ballot - Patrick Ewing 1990
3rd ballot - Charles Barkley/Kevin Durant

I'm undecided with my 3rd choice. Can anybody do a nice analysis of their offensive prodiction? I'm slightly biased to take Barkley, on the other hand Durant had amazing year in 2014...

I'm going to give 70sFan a little more time to take a stand with either Durant or Barkley....if he picks Durant, I'm calling it for Durantula; if he sides with Barkley, we'll have to (gulp) go into a 3-way run-off between Durant, Kobe and Ewing.
Or he can opt to not decide, in which case will again call it for Durant.

After your post about Barkley, I have chosen 1990 as his peak year. His efficiency is just absurdal, Phila stats show that he was unguardable on the post and his finishing ability is probably GOAT (even better than Shaq).
About 2014 Durant vs 1990 Barkley: both players biggest strengh is scoring. I think Durant is slightly better volume scorer, but gap isn't big. Durant is very good rebounder and passer for his position. Barkley is even better rebounder and still nice passer. The biggest question is defense. Durant is above average defender and I don't know how to rate peak Barkley on that end. If you (or someone else) could say more about this, I would be glad.
Right now, I'm picking Durant. But I'm open minded for more opinions

[trex_8063]

OK, calling it for Durant.

Thru post #43:
Kevin Durant - 14
Kobe Bryant - 13
Patrick Ewing - 13
Tracy McGrady - 10
Charles Barkley - 8
Chris Paul - 8
Steve Nash - 6
Moses Malone - 4
Karl Malone - 2

Will have #21 thread up shortly....