Greatest Peaks series (Thinking Basketball/Ben Taylor)

[limbo]

Giannis is a better version of Doctor J

[70sFan]

Giannis is a better version of Doctor J

Not at all, Julius had solid midrange game

We don't have Giannis in this project by the way.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I don't even talk about 1960s and 1970s players - Ben wouldn't make videos about them because there was not enough footage available. I'm just saying that there's no point of making 15 videos about 2000s and 2010s players, but only 5 from 1980s and 1990s. We have more than enough footage to make video about Julius, Moses, Ewing or Barkley. We don't have modern, better version of them in modern era.

70s Walton, Alcindor
80s Bird, Magic
90s Robinson, Hakeem, jordon
00s Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Kobe
10s Lebron, Durant, Curry

I still have the feeling that Robinson, Garnett, Kobe and Durant (if his peak is the OKC one) are unnecessary, if you do them you need to add a few more guys.

[limbo]

Giannis is a better version of Doctor J

Not at all, Julius had solid midrange game

We don't have Giannis in this project by the way.

Well, Giannis can hit those fallaways from in and around the paint, fwiw. Do you have any numbers on Dr.J's shooting outside the paint by any chance?

[70sFan]

Giannis is a better version of Doctor J

Not at all, Julius had solid midrange game

We don't have Giannis in this project by the way.

Well, Giannis can hit those fallaways from in and around the paint, fwiw. Do you have any numbers on Dr.J's shooting outside the paint by any chance?

Giannis midrange efficiency is horrible and he basically doesn't use this shot. One occasional fadeaway doesn't change that.

I don't have Julius shooting data - yet When I finish tracking top centers, I will make a 1974-82 Julius shooting chart. It will make me months to do that, but I'll try.

My point isn't that Julius is elite midrange shooter in terms of efficiency - my point is that Julius used midrange shot consistently. It was very important part of his game, which is not the case with Giannis. Even if we assume that they are comparable shooters (which is highly unlikely even based on their FT%), Julius shot outside the paint a lot more than Giannis.

I don't know why people view Julius as comparable to Giannis - Erving had this typical wing game in his style which isn't the case with Giannis.

[drza]

In the two previously mentioned posts, I came out with Kobe solidly higher than Durant, and was somewhat surprised when I dug into the first comp and had it come out essentially a draw with advantage Kobe. Dirk had historic impact in the regular season over the course of his career, but closer examination pointed out to me that in the first half of his career (despite his box score numbers being typically excellent), he didn't seem to have the impact in the postseason to match the regular season. I typically credit that, at least in part, to Dirk being defended as a big man in the regular season and often more like a wing in the postseason. That a good chunk of his non-boxscore value rested in his ability to create spacing and warp defenses by pulling opposing bigs into positions that didn't let them maximize their team defense/rebounding, and thus creating higher quality looks for the rest of his team on a consistent basis. That it wasn't until the Carlisle era toward the end of the decade, after the MVP year, that Dirk really developed his post game to a level that he could command that defenses collapse on him no matter how they chose to defend him...and that's a big reason why his impact translated more faithfully to the postseason during his later years, including the championship run in 2011.

The issue I have is that the sample size of non Dirk minutes in his early playoff career is really too small.
He was playing like 43min/game, not sure what to take out of the on/off

Spent a lot of time talking about playoffs +/-, and what useful info we can get from it, for a really long time around here. I used to calculate playoffs on/off +/- by hand for years before basketball-reference started doing it for us. So, with that said, I recognize your point if we're discussing single playoff runs of a handful of games...those can be way too noisy to get much out of.

But once you start getting out to the conference finals and beyond in a single year, there starts to be some useful signal there under the right circumstances. Still can be lots of noise, but enough signal there to start seeing some useful trends. And when you start grouping multiple seasons together, the signal starts to stand out pretty distinctly from the noise. Even for big minutes players. To whit, just as a quick non-rigorous illustration:

Dirk made the All NBA team in 2001 in his age 22 season, and won MVP in 2007 in his age 28 season. After that, during the Carlisle era, I argue that Dirk solidified his post moves for a handful of years while he still had his fastball and reached a new level of postseason impact compared to early in his career...a postseason impact more comparable to his typical regular season impact. So, taking only a quick look at his on/off numbers during that span, we get:

01-07 reg season: on/off +12.6
01-07 playoffs: on/off -0.5, over 82 games

08-11 reg season: on/off +10.4
08-11 playoffs: on/off +11.5 over 42 games

Dirk's playoffs on/off +/- from 01-07 just stands out as a huge outlier, compared to every other epoch. And it's over an 82-game sample. Yes, he averaged 42 minutes/game over that sample, but 82 games is enough to get some useful signal even in a noisy stat like on/off. You can't, IMO, just gloss past that.

Then, compare Dirk's 01-07 playoffs on/off +/- with that of the other guys in the databall era from Ben's best peaks during a similar time window (age 22-28 where applicable; for Shaq & Curry it's age 24-30):

Shaq: +15.3
Garnett: +12.6
Curry: +12.6
LeBron: +11.5
Duncan: +11.4
Kobe: +8.4

Durant: +5.1
.
.
.
Nowitzki: -0.5

I'm sorry. There's useful signal in this. All are big minute players, but Dirk is just way on an island compared to his peers in postseason impact for the majority of his prime...and not in a good way.

[ShotCreator]

Durant is just overrated to an almost mythical level.

85% of Kobe’s creation ability, with the weakest high volume rim pressure imaginable.

Compare KD’s rim pressure and overall gravity to any extremely efficient scorer, ever.

Barkley, Miami LeBron, Harden, Curry, Shaq, current Embiid, current Jokic, Giannis, Jordan.

Durant has the least warping component to his game.

Durant is extremely efficient with one of the least devastating playstyles.

And defensively, nothing will ever support him being elite. He was good for like, 2 or 3 seasons from 15-17. Before and after that, he was a mere slight positive OR negative depending on the year by every impact metric I’ve seen.

With all that said, very very good player. But I’ve never seen him as an all time peak level guy.

A good Paul George season like this year or 19 can easily replace KD’s peak impact. Resiliency is something else though.

[Owly]

In the two previously mentioned posts, I came out with Kobe solidly higher than Durant, and was somewhat surprised when I dug into the first comp and had it come out essentially a draw with advantage Kobe. Dirk had historic impact in the regular season over the course of his career, but closer examination pointed out to me that in the first half of his career (despite his box score numbers being typically excellent), he didn't seem to have the impact in the postseason to match the regular season. I typically credit that, at least in part, to Dirk being defended as a big man in the regular season and often more like a wing in the postseason. That a good chunk of his non-boxscore value rested in his ability to create spacing and warp defenses by pulling opposing bigs into positions that didn't let them maximize their team defense/rebounding, and thus creating higher quality looks for the rest of his team on a consistent basis. That it wasn't until the Carlisle era toward the end of the decade, after the MVP year, that Dirk really developed his post game to a level that he could command that defenses collapse on him no matter how they chose to defend him...and that's a big reason why his impact translated more faithfully to the postseason during his later years, including the championship run in 2011.

The issue I have is that the sample size of non Dirk minutes in his early playoff career is really too small.
He was playing like 43min/game, not sure what to take out of the on/off

Spent a lot of time talking about playoffs +/-, and what useful info we can get from it, for a really long time around here. I used to calculate playoffs on/off +/- by hand for years before basketball-reference started doing it for us. So, with that said, I recognize your point if we're discussing single playoff runs of a handful of games...those can be way too noisy to get much out of.

But once you start getting out to the conference finals and beyond in a single year, there starts to be some useful signal there under the right circumstances. Still can be lots of noise, but enough signal there to start seeing some useful trends. And when you start grouping multiple seasons together, the signal starts to stand out pretty distinctly from the noise. Even for big minutes players. To whit, just as a quick non-rigorous illustration:

Dirk made the All NBA team in 2001 in his age 22 season, and won MVP in 2007 in his age 28 season. After that, during the Carlisle era, I argue that Dirk solidified his post moves for a handful of years while he still had his fastball and reached a new level of postseason impact compared to early in his career...a postseason impact more comparable to his typical regular season impact. So, taking only a quick look at his on/off numbers during that span, we get:

01-07 reg season: on/off +12.6
01-07 playoffs: on/off -0.5, over 82 games

08-11 reg season: on/off +10.4
08-11 playoffs: on/off +11.5 over 42 games

Dirk's playoffs on/off +/- from 01-07 just stands out as a huge outlier, compared to every other epoch. And it's over an 82-game sample. Yes, he averaged 42 minutes/game over that sample, but 82 games is enough to get some useful signal even in a noisy stat like on/off. You can't, IMO, just gloss past that.

Then, compare Dirk's 01-07 playoffs on/off +/- with that of the other guys in the databall era from Ben's best peaks during a similar time window (age 22-28 where applicable; for Shaq & Curry it's age 24-30):

Shaq: +15.3
Garnett: +12.6
Curry: +12.6
LeBron: +11.5
Duncan: +11.4
Kobe: +8.4

Durant: +5.1
.
.
.
Nowitzki: -0.5

I'm sorry. There's useful signal in this. All are big minute players, but Dirk is just way on an island compared to his peers in postseason impact for the majority of his prime...and not in a good way.

6/7ths of those minutes for Kobe are with Shaq on the team and as you note Shaq on is +15.3. So with Kobe not as the best player on his team, Kobe playing most his "on" with a GOAT peak peak candidate in and around his peak (don't know how to get the splits easily here), different competition (moreso than RS, and possible series and year imbalance in when a player's on and off time falls) ... and that the era seems to have been carved up to exclude Dirk's best playoff numbers in this regard ...

... it's not exactly apples to apples.

There is typically some signal but also ... KG on the '05 T'Wolves looks neutral with ... how to put it politely ... unexceptional backups ... over 82 games and that's without all the aforementioned playoff specific issues (which is to say that the noise can put a fair distance between on-off and actual goodness in that sample size). To my mind, presently, (and I'm very open to moving, and not an expert on these numbers) this is a small ding on Dirk, but I'd be inclined to want a detailed inspection to if it meant much (was he for instance not proportionally on for much of Boki Nachbar's '01 playoff explosion [22.9 PER, .227 WS/48, on-off +37.7]; '02 looks bad but even so they stay afloat during van Exel's single digit PER, negative WS/48 minutes ... I'd just want to look closer at what's going on, say, is Nowitzki's on matched with Garnett's on versus Minny [certainly seems Minny went to hell in KG's off samples - worse than -50 per100]? ...)

Without knowing the why and with it going against the trend of much larger samples against more even competition and versions of impact metrics that have tighter controls it's har for me to weigh it that much.

[GSP]

The issue I have is that the sample size of non Dirk minutes in his early playoff career is really too small.
He was playing like 43min/game, not sure what to take out of the on/off

Spent a lot of time talking about playoffs +/-, and what useful info we can get from it, for a really long time around here. I used to calculate playoffs on/off +/- by hand for years before basketball-reference started doing it for us. So, with that said, I recognize your point if we're discussing single playoff runs of a handful of games...those can be way too noisy to get much out of.

But once you start getting out to the conference finals and beyond in a single year, there starts to be some useful signal there under the right circumstances. Still can be lots of noise, but enough signal there to start seeing some useful trends. And when you start grouping multiple seasons together, the signal starts to stand out pretty distinctly from the noise. Even for big minutes players. To whit, just as a quick non-rigorous illustration:

Dirk made the All NBA team in 2001 in his age 22 season, and won MVP in 2007 in his age 28 season. After that, during the Carlisle era, I argue that Dirk solidified his post moves for a handful of years while he still had his fastball and reached a new level of postseason impact compared to early in his career...a postseason impact more comparable to his typical regular season impact. So, taking only a quick look at his on/off numbers during that span, we get:

01-07 reg season: on/off +12.6
01-07 playoffs: on/off -0.5, over 82 games

08-11 reg season: on/off +10.4
08-11 playoffs: on/off +11.5 over 42 games

Dirk's playoffs on/off +/- from 01-07 just stands out as a huge outlier, compared to every other epoch. And it's over an 82-game sample. Yes, he averaged 42 minutes/game over that sample, but 82 games is enough to get some useful signal even in a noisy stat like on/off. You can't, IMO, just gloss past that.

Then, compare Dirk's 01-07 playoffs on/off +/- with that of the other guys in the databall era from Ben's best peaks during a similar time window (age 22-28 where applicable; for Shaq & Curry it's age 24-30):

Shaq: +15.3
Garnett: +12.6
Curry: +12.6
LeBron: +11.5
Duncan: +11.4
Kobe: +8.4

Durant: +5.1
.
.
.
Nowitzki: -0.5

I'm sorry. There's useful signal in this. All are big minute players, but Dirk is just way on an island compared to his peers in postseason impact for the majority of his prime...and not in a good way.

6/7ths of those minutes for Kobe are with Shaq on the team and as you note Shaq on is +15.3. So with Kobe not as the best player on his team, Kobe playing most his "on" with a GOAT peak peak candidate in and around his peak (don't know how to get the splits easily here), different competition (moreso than RS, and possible series and year imbalance in when a player's on and off time falls) ... and that the era seems to have been carved up to exclude Dirk's best playoff numbers in this regard ...

... it's not exactly apples to apples.

There is typically some signal but also ... KG on the '05 T'Wolves looks neutral with ... how to put it politely ... unexceptional backups ... over 82 games and that's without all the aforementioned playoff specific issues (which is to say that the noise can put a fair distance between on-off and actual goodness in that sample size). To my mind, presently, (and I'm very open to moving, and not an expert on these numbers) this is a small ding on Dirk, but I'd be inclined to want a detailed inspection to if it meant much (was he for instance not proportionally on for much of Boki Nachbar's '01 playoff explosion [22.9 PER, .227 WS/48, on-off +37.7]; '02 looks bad but even so they stay afloat during van Exel's single digit PER, negative WS/48 minutes ... I'd just want to look closer at what's going on, say, is Nowitzki's on matched with Garnett's on versus Minny [certainly seems Minny went to hell in KG's off samples - worse than -50 per100]? ...)

Without knowing the why and with it going against the trend of much larger samples against more even competition and versions of impact metrics that have tighter controls it's har for me to weigh it that much.

Pretty sure Draymond beats Steph comfortably in playoff on/off in those spans too and both of those guys benefited immensely from each other's presence for their impact stats. Robinson/Manu also had some of the greatest playoff on/off numbers in the span for Timmy too (altho not at the same time).

[Ryoga Hibiki]

Spent a lot of time talking about playoffs +/-, and what useful info we can get from it, for a really long time around here. I used to calculate playoffs on/off +/- by hand for years before basketball-reference started doing it for us. So, with that said, I recognize your point if we're discussing single playoff runs of a handful of games...those can be way too noisy to get much out of.

But once you start getting out to the conference finals and beyond in a single year, there starts to be some useful signal there under the right circumstances. Still can be lots of noise, but enough signal there to start seeing some useful trends. And when you start grouping multiple seasons together, the signal starts to stand out pretty distinctly from the noise. Even for big minutes players. To whit, just as a quick non-rigorous illustration:

Dirk made the All NBA team in 2001 in his age 22 season, and won MVP in 2007 in his age 28 season. After that, during the Carlisle era, I argue that Dirk solidified his post moves for a handful of years while he still had his fastball and reached a new level of postseason impact compared to early in his career...a postseason impact more comparable to his typical regular season impact. So, taking only a quick look at his on/off numbers during that span, we get:

01-07 reg season: on/off +12.6
01-07 playoffs: on/off -0.5, over 82 games

08-11 reg season: on/off +10.4
08-11 playoffs: on/off +11.5 over 42 games

Dirk's playoffs on/off +/- from 01-07 just stands out as a huge outlier, compared to every other epoch. And it's over an 82-game sample. Yes, he averaged 42 minutes/game over that sample, but 82 games is enough to get some useful signal even in a noisy stat like on/off. You can't, IMO, just gloss past that.

Then, compare Dirk's 01-07 playoffs on/off +/- with that of the other guys in the databall era from Ben's best peaks during a similar time window (age 22-28 where applicable; for Shaq & Curry it's age 24-30):

Shaq: +15.3
Garnett: +12.6
Curry: +12.6
LeBron: +11.5
Duncan: +11.4
Kobe: +8.4

Durant: +5.1
.
.
.
Nowitzki: -0.5

I'm sorry. There's useful signal in this. All are big minute players, but Dirk is just way on an island compared to his peers in postseason impact for the majority of his prime...and not in a good way.

His negative splits were till 2005 (the only year of his prime were I think he actually played poorly, especially in the first round), starting 2006 he was already massively positive. We're still talking about 200 minutes or so taken on a couple of 2/3 minutes rests per game, and a stat that is incredibly noisy to begin with.
And about a player who was having top level RAPM stats during that time, unlike Durant who was never as dominant even in the RS.
I recognize there can be something relevant behind, but I would need to have a deep dive looking at the detailed on/off, the matchups and 5 man units to investigate it further. And STILL I think it's very hard to get out something significant when players are in for like 90% of the game over such a small sample.

Then, I haven't studied this and gone back to watch old films like you or ElGee did, besides some random game I happen to watch on NBAtv (nor I have your knowledge to be honest), so I'm going off my memory. But I never got the impression that Dirk was not dominating and having the opposing team adjust to him, unlike Durant who always looked to me more like very opportunistic and focused to improve his efficiency. That's also why I would have loved to see a deeper analysis on Dirk's peak, and I think it's really missing once you have Kobe, Robinson, Durant and Garnett in.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

Spent a lot of time talking about playoffs +/-, and what useful info we can get from it, for a really long time around here. I used to calculate playoffs on/off +/- by hand for years before basketball-reference started doing it for us. So, with that said, I recognize your point if we're discussing single playoff runs of a handful of games...those can be way too noisy to get much out of.

But once you start getting out to the conference finals and beyond in a single year, there starts to be some useful signal there under the right circumstances. Still can be lots of noise, but enough signal there to start seeing some useful trends. And when you start grouping multiple seasons together, the signal starts to stand out pretty distinctly from the noise. Even for big minutes players. To whit, just as a quick non-rigorous illustration:

Dirk made the All NBA team in 2001 in his age 22 season, and won MVP in 2007 in his age 28 season. After that, during the Carlisle era, I argue that Dirk solidified his post moves for a handful of years while he still had his fastball and reached a new level of postseason impact compared to early in his career...a postseason impact more comparable to his typical regular season impact. So, taking only a quick look at his on/off numbers during that span, we get:

01-07 reg season: on/off +12.6
01-07 playoffs: on/off -0.5, over 82 games

08-11 reg season: on/off +10.4
08-11 playoffs: on/off +11.5 over 42 games

Dirk's playoffs on/off +/- from 01-07 just stands out as a huge outlier, compared to every other epoch. And it's over an 82-game sample. Yes, he averaged 42 minutes/game over that sample, but 82 games is enough to get some useful signal even in a noisy stat like on/off. You can't, IMO, just gloss past that.

Then, compare Dirk's 01-07 playoffs on/off +/- with that of the other guys in the databall era from Ben's best peaks during a similar time window (age 22-28 where applicable; for Shaq & Curry it's age 24-30):

Shaq: +15.3
Garnett: +12.6
Curry: +12.6
LeBron: +11.5
Duncan: +11.4
Kobe: +8.4

Durant: +5.1
.
.
.
Nowitzki: -0.5

I'm sorry. There's useful signal in this. All are big minute players, but Dirk is just way on an island compared to his peers in postseason impact for the majority of his prime...and not in a good way.

6/7ths of those minutes for Kobe are with Shaq on the team and as you note Shaq on is +15.3. So with Kobe not as the best player on his team, Kobe playing most his "on" with a GOAT peak peak candidate in and around his peak (don't know how to get the splits easily here), different competition (moreso than RS, and possible series and year imbalance in when a player's on and off time falls) ... and that the era seems to have been carved up to exclude Dirk's best playoff numbers in this regard ...

... it's not exactly apples to apples.

There is typically some signal but also ... KG on the '05 T'Wolves looks neutral with ... how to put it politely ... unexceptional backups ... over 82 games and that's without all the aforementioned playoff specific issues (which is to say that the noise can put a fair distance between on-off and actual goodness in that sample size). To my mind, presently, (and I'm very open to moving, and not an expert on these numbers) this is a small ding on Dirk, but I'd be inclined to want a detailed inspection to if it meant much (was he for instance not proportionally on for much of Boki Nachbar's '01 playoff explosion [22.9 PER, .227 WS/48, on-off +37.7]; '02 looks bad but even so they stay afloat during van Exel's single digit PER, negative WS/48 minutes ... I'd just want to look closer at what's going on, say, is Nowitzki's on matched with Garnett's on versus Minny [certainly seems Minny went to hell in KG's off samples - worse than -50 per100]? ...)

Without knowing the why and with it going against the trend of much larger samples against more even competition and versions of impact metrics that have tighter controls it's har for me to weigh it that much.

Pretty sure Draymond beats Steph comfortably in playoff on/off in those spans too and both of those guys benefited immensely from each other's presence for their impact stats. Robinson/Manu also had some of the greatest playoff on/off numbers in the span for Timmy too (altho not at the same time).

It was discussed in Duncan's video, how his playoff on/off were not as spectacular in the mid to late 00's... Of course they were not, the Spurs had an All NBA level guy (and regular top5 in RS RAPM) coming off the bench and they were staggering their guys to a science!

[letskissbro]

Nah, I can't get behind KD being on this list. By Ben's own analysis, how am I supposed to believe that a guy whose impact comes primarily from his offense but can't bare the burden of being the de facto #1 option and can't anchor a defense has one of the best peaks ever? It makes no sense. The problem with KD is that unlike the top tier peak guys and even some contemporaries from his own generation he needs very specific roster construction to look as good as he's looked the last few years.

He needs an all-NBA level guard next to him because he can't create at a high level, be the primary ball handler, or get out of traps or doubles. He needs shooters so he can do what he does best and isolate on mismatches in the high/low post. He needs a high level defensive anchor because his offensive needs typically create defensive holes that he isn't strong or smart enough to cover himself even at 6'11. It's no coincidence that his team checked these boxes in all of his best playoff runs (2012, 2017-2019). Whenever he's found himself outside situations like this his turnovers have skyrocketed and his efficiency has plummeted. Brooklyn is so broken offensively that they might not even need the defensive anchor but by no means has he played under normal circumstances for a superstar.

Whoever compared KD to AD offensively hit the nail right on the head. Both are great individual offensive players but struggle when asked to create for their teammates. Durant is better offensively than Davis but he still isn't at the point where he can be the clear #1 offensive option. So you're better off going with the guy who can't score at quite the same clip but can anchor you to a top 5 defense. KD is one of the best offensive co-stars you can get but his ceiling raising abilities that Ben gives him so much credit for only apply when you already have outlier level talent

[Ryoga Hibiki]

We kind of went off tangent from discussing Nash's portability and impact to discussing Dirk's peak but I don't see Dirk's peak on the level of guys like KD and Kobe. Both score at a bit higher volume than Dirk and in Durant''s case there isn't even a drop in efficiency. In Kobe's case I'd say he's a significantly better passer than Dirk and Ben Taylor himself agrees with that. He gives Kobe a much higher passer rating and his box creation is a lot higher which I completely agree with. Kobe gave a ton of open shots to his teammates too probably more than Dirk. It definitely agrees with my eye test as well. Kobe even though he made some selections off of reputation was also a much better defender than Dirk. KD is also a better defender though the gap is smaller. And KG is also a better passer than Dirk.

The thing that hurt Dirk's impact throughout his career is that he generally offers little outside of scoring. When his shot isn't falling his value frankly isn't very high. Spacing... yea he provides some. He's a good defensive rebounder. He's an average passer at best and a mediocre defender in general. Can't protect the rim and generally very stiff and upright on defense. He's around a neutral defender.

This is not totally true because even when his shot was not falling Dirk was still commanding enough attention that defenses were scheming on him. But definitely if he was not scoring he was not going to win it for you, I agree.
But were Durant or Kobe, really? If his jumper wasn't falling Kobe could EASILY shoot you out of games as he would have kept going, while Durant's defense wasn't certainly going to make the difference.
We're not talking about creators like LeBron or defensive monsters like Garnett, if any of these guys is not scoring he's not helping that much in a team built around their strengths. So I am more interested to understand whose scoring is more resilient in a playoff setting while creating opportunities for others, and that was Dirk in my view.

[PistolPeteJR]

Yeah, I've probably been underrating his passing skills for years because he's not elite passer (but good overall for a volume scorer). I've been vocal about Durant's weaknesses as a ball-handler for years so this part didn't surprise me.

On the other hand, I don't agree with Ben's conclusion about his defense. I know that he improved a great deal since the early 2010s, but I still wouldn't call him a meaningful contributor on that end. His versatility is nice as a man defender, but it's overstated because he can't guard quick perimeter players and he struggles with true bigs. His off-ball defense is also mediocre, as he doesn't provide much rim protection at 4 and his rotations are not sound, but he can't play against perimeter players full time either, as he's weak screen defendee due to his size.

Ben has him as slightly positive on D. I agree with that. I don’t think he made a significant difference on that end at his peak, but I also don’t think he was a negative. I do think that 2/3 years in GS being weighed at his peak help him on that end because of his lack of defensive mobility being masked by simply camping inside to take advantage of when small guys get in the paint.

[Texas Chuck]

Ben has him as slightly positive on D. I agree with that. .

Me too. It's actually pretty hard to be negative on defense at KD's size/length unless you just have no instincts/effort and that's definitely not KD. He was never a huge difference maker, but he's 7 feet tall.

[HeartBreakKid]

Yeah, I'm not big on Durant either as a top 15 peak guy since merger. It's not outlandish by any means, but it seems like when you look at the nuances his game doesn't stack up that well.

Durant is a guy who hits the broad strokes very well but when looking at the finer details of what makes a great player great, he doesn't add up that well. He's kind of like the reverse Bill Walton.

[GYK]

Durant led the league in PER VORP WS WS/48 and BPM in 2014. 32/7.4/5.5 on 63TS%.
Can’t lead as the #1 option? He has never not been the #1 option. OKC KD led them to 4 WCF in 5 seasons.
He gets way too much personal feelings crap. He’s been leading offenses his entire career for amazing results. Is he, as a forward, not allowed to not be a lead guard but lead guards are allowed to have multiple playmakers around them? Can talk about the lack of spacing in OKC but not marvel at 28ppg on 57TS% in the playoffs for again 4 WCF in 5 seasons. But the worse of it is that he’s the only one who takes a hit being more efficient with other greats or spacing. As if others efficiency didn’t improve with him. Or that they weren’t more successful.

[limbo]

The arguments against KD's creation are not unreasonable by any means, but how much doea he deserved to be knocked for it compared to other ATG players is the real question.

Westbrook was clearly superior to Durant in terms of shot creation and 'defense-wraping' gravity, so would people take peak Westbrook over peak Durant? Or are the two closer in that sense than Durant would be to a Dirk? It's not like Durant has zero shot creation ability. He has elite outside gravity, he developed into a solid passer as a Forward, he can obviously penetrate well and he can draw fouls on an elite level. It again becomes a question of floor and ceiling raising in a sense. I would much rather have Durant on a contender than Westbrook, unless that contender is really starved in terms of playmaking (maybe a team like the 2012-2014 Pacers).

Since we are talking about greatest peaks ever here, i do agree that KD being in that group is speculative at best, but i do think he's clearly better than AD as an offensive player. People putting him in that tier are reaching at this point. He's probably around that Barkley tier somewhere, which is still pretty damn good.

[Amares]

Yeah, Dirk's video would be really nice to watch. Then again, I'd love to see Julius, Moses and Barkley videos as well. We simply can't expect too much, 15 episodes is already a lot.

I think Ben mentioned once he will create other players in future. It would be too much to create all of them at once, so hopefully we will see few of them one day

[70sFan]

Yeah, Dirk's video would be really nice to watch. Then again, I'd love to see Julius, Moses and Barkley videos as well. We simply can't expect too much, 15 episodes is already a lot.

I think Ben mentioned once he will create other players in future. It would be too much to create all of them at once, so hopefully we will see few of them one day

Yeah, he will. He even told me once that he would try to make videos about 1960s players as well. The format would be slightly different of course (not enough footage to make 20 min long video from 2 seasons) but he will probably make it in future.

Of course we can't expect them soon. Making such a project is a very taxing task and Ben has other, more contemporary projects to do.