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Where would Kevin Durant rank if he played in the 60’s and 70’s. Say he entered the league in 1963

63-08 Durant
64-09 Durant
65-10 Durant
66-11 Durant
67-12 Durant
68-13 Durant
69-14 Durant
70-15 Durant
71-16 Durant
72-17 Durant
73-18 Durant
74-19 Durant
75-20 Durant
76-21 Durant
77-22 Durant
78-23 Durant

Is he bringing his knowledge of basketball from today's time and transporting himself? Or was he born in 40s and entered the league as everyone else did in the 60s?

63-08 Durant - outside top 10
64-09 Durant - outside top 10
65-10 Durant - 5th, below Russell, Wilt, West and Oscar
66-11 Durant - 5th below Russell, Wilt, West and Oscar
67-12 Durant - 4th below Wilt, Russell and Thurmond
68-13 Durant - 4th below Wilt, Russell and West (HM Hawkins)
69-14 Durant - 3rd or 2nd, below Russell and fighting with West
70-15 Durant - missed games, outside top 10
71-16 Durant - 2nd below Kareem
72-17 Durant - 2-3, below Kareem and fighting with Wilt
73-18 Durant - 2nd below Kareem
74-19 Durant - 2nd below Kareem
75-20 Durant - outside top 10
76-21 Durant - missed games, so tough but definitely below Kareem and Julius
77-22 Durant - 4th below Kareem, Walton and Julius
78-23 Durant - up to decide, for now lower than Kareem and Walton

Matt15 wrote:Where would Kevin Durant rank if he played in the 60’s and 70’s. Say he entered the league in 1963

If he were to land on Celtics, then he would be the GOAT; If on Warriors with Wilt, he would be top 5 player for sure every year from 64, and Celtics dynasty would stop there; If on other teams, probably just a few MVPs and not going to threaten Celtics much. Talent wise, as an effortless 6'11 scoring machine:

63-08 Durant outside top 10
64-09 Durant top 5 starting 40+/10
65-10 Durant top 3
66-11 Durant top 3
67-12 Durant MVP
68-13 Durant top 3
69-14 Durant MVP
70-15 Durant if assume not hurt, top 3?
71-16 Durant top 3
72-17 Durant MVP take one from KAJ
73-18 Durant MVP
74-19 Durant -Top 3
75-20 Durant -hurt
76-21 Durant -hurt too much, top 3 player
77-22 Durant -hurt too much, top 3 player
78-23 Durant -hurt too much, top 3 player

The Explorer wrote:Is he bringing his knowledge of basketball from today's time and transporting himself? Or was he born in 40s and entered the league as everyone else did in the 60s?

The only fair way to do this is the latter, even though it's more difficult to conceptualize.

Usually behind Chamberlain, Russell and Abdul-Jabar at a minimum. Probably behind Robertson, West and Erving as well.

Matt15 wrote:Where would Kevin Durant rank if he played in the 60’s and 70’s. Say he entered the league in 1963

63-08 Durant
64-09 Durant
65-10 Durant
66-11 Durant
67-12 Durant
68-13 Durant
69-14 Durant
70-15 Durant
71-16 Durant
72-17 Durant
73-18 Durant
74-19 Durant
75-20 Durant
76-21 Durant
77-22 Durant
78-23 Durant

Transported back or born at that time

capfan33 wrote:

The Explorer wrote:Is he bringing his knowledge of basketball from today's time and transporting himself? Or was he born in 40s and entered the league as everyone else did in the 60s?

The only fair way to do this is the latter, even though it's more difficult to conceptualize.

There's no "fair" way to do it, so why not just do the way that's not a build-your-own fan-fic?


In the 60's KD is at worst the best non-big in the league by a margin and unibro has made a decent enough case for him to be #1. Assuming we actually use Kevin Durant instead of trying to artificially constructing a worse player for "fairness".

70's, not sure I'd take him over Kareem but he i'd favor him over the rest.

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:

The Explorer wrote:Is he bringing his knowledge of basketball from today's time and transporting himself? Or was he born in 40s and entered the league as everyone else did in the 60s?

The only fair way to do this is the latter, even though it's more difficult to conceptualize.

There's no "fair" way to do it, so why not just do the way that's not a build-your-own fan-fic?

KD is at worst the best non-big in the league by a margin and unibro has made a decent enough case for him to be #1. Assuming we actually use Kevin Durant instead of trying to artificially constructing a worse player for "fairness".

I don't agree that KD would be "at worst" best non-big in the league.

70sFan wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:
The only fair way to do this is the latter, even though it's more difficult to conceptualize.

There's no "fair" way to do it, so why not just do the way that's not a build-your-own fan-fic?

KD is at worst the best non-big in the league by a margin and unibro has made a decent enough case for him to be #1. Assuming we actually use Kevin Durant instead of trying to artificially constructing a worse player for "fairness".

I don't agree that KD would be "at worst" best non-big in the league.

I'm pretty close to unibro in how I view these things. You'll have your work cut-out to persuade me

OhayoKD wrote:

70sFan wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:There's no "fair" way to do it, so why not just do the way that's not a build-your-own fan-fic?

KD is at worst the best non-big in the league by a margin and unibro has made a decent enough case for him to be #1. Assuming we actually use Kevin Durant instead of trying to artificially constructing a worse player for "fairness".

I don't agree that KD would be "at worst" best non-big in the league.

I'm pretty close to unibro in how I view these things. You'll have your work cut-out to persuade me

I'd love to, but recently life gives me little time for my basketball work and I'm strictly focused on centers evaluation every time I find time to analyze some footage.

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:

The Explorer wrote:Is he bringing his knowledge of basketball from today's time and transporting himself? Or was he born in 40s and entered the league as everyone else did in the 60s?

The only fair way to do this is the latter, even though it's more difficult to conceptualize.

There's no "fair" way to do it, so why not just do the way that's not a build-your-own fan-fic?


In the 60's KD is at worst the best non-big in the league by a margin and unibro has made a decent enough case for him to be #1. Assuming we actually use Kevin Durant instead of trying to artificially constructing a worse player for "fairness".

70's, not sure I'd take him over Kareem but he i'd favor him over the rest.

Probably should have worded it better, the "most" fair way to do this is in that manner. And honestly, even in a time-travel scenario, I'm not sure KD can adapt to the ball-handling and rules well enough to be better than West or Oscar, at least not without a decent amount of time adjustment.

And there is no way to approach a question like this in a manner that isn't a form of "fan-fic", if you have this view you probably shouldn't entertain questions like this in the first place. There's inherently a lot of guesswork involved in trying to transplant players across eras, just the nature of the beast.

capfan33 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:
The only fair way to do this is the latter, even though it's more difficult to conceptualize.

There's no "fair" way to do it, so why not just do the way that's not a build-your-own fan-fic?


In the 60's KD is at worst the best non-big in the league by a margin and unibro has made a decent enough case for him to be #1. Assuming we actually use Kevin Durant instead of trying to artificially constructing a worse player for "fairness".

70's, not sure I'd take him over Kareem but he i'd favor him over the rest.

Probably should have worded it better, the "most" fair way to do this is in that manner. And honestly, even in a time-travel scenario, I'm not sure KD can adapt to the ball-handling and rules well enough to be better than West or Oscar, at least not without a decent amount of time adjustment.

And there is no way to approach a question like this in a manner that isn't a form of "fan-fic", if you have this view you probably shouldn't entertain questions like this in the first place. There's inherently a lot of guesswork involved in trying to transplant players across eras, just the nature of the beast.

Lots of guesswork, but at least we're working probabilistically. When you do the "i'm going to give you new parents', the probable outcome is that you don't make the nba. You're not being honest with probability when you use that framework.

I also don't see why focing new players to be worse is "fair" but okay.

I don't think it would take that long to adjust but that is guessowork.

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:There's no "fair" way to do it, so why not just do the way that's not a build-your-own fan-fic?


In the 60's KD is at worst the best non-big in the league by a margin and unibro has made a decent enough case for him to be #1. Assuming we actually use Kevin Durant instead of trying to artificially constructing a worse player for "fairness".

70's, not sure I'd take him over Kareem but he i'd favor him over the rest.

Probably should have worded it better, the "most" fair way to do this is in that manner. And honestly, even in a time-travel scenario, I'm not sure KD can adapt to the ball-handling and rules well enough to be better than West or Oscar, at least not without a decent amount of time adjustment.

And there is no way to approach a question like this in a manner that isn't a form of "fan-fic", if you have this view you probably shouldn't entertain questions like this in the first place. There's inherently a lot of guesswork involved in trying to transplant players across eras, just the nature of the beast.

Lots of guesswork, but at least we're working probabilistically. When you do the "i'm going to give you new parents', the probable outcome is that you don't make the nba. You're not being honest with probability when you use that framework.

I also don't see why focing new players to be worse is "fair" but okay.

I don't think it would take that long to adjust but that is guessowork.

We're not giving them new parents, we just move them back x years in terms of youth development, sports medicine, basketball skills/tactics, etc. I think you're misunderstanding the point I'm making. I'm not randomizing who their parents are lol, I'm still assuming that KD develops into roughly a 6-10 lanky, coordinated athlete who of course will make the NBA and be an extremely good NBA player at that.

The point I'm making is you can't possibly compare today's players to past players in absolute terms. They have enormous advantages over previous players because they are building on top of the foundation laid beneath them by previous players as well as parallel advances in science, medicine (steroids), etc. Just whizzing them into a game 50 years ago as is makes 0 sense.

As such, I'm assuming that KD still has more or less the same physical attributes and innate ability/work ethic, but grew up in a more primitive environment to hone his skills. And in this case, we kind of already know what he would look like. This is where player comparisons are pretty useful IMO.

And I think he's a better, healthier version of McAdoo to be clear (and McAdoo was a damn good player when healthy), so probably a little bit worse than West/Oscar sounds about right to me. In the 70s, he's 3rd behind Kareem and Dr. J most years.

capfan33 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:Probably should have worded it better, the "most" fair way to do this is in that manner. And honestly, even in a time-travel scenario, I'm not sure KD can adapt to the ball-handling and rules well enough to be better than West or Oscar, at least not without a decent amount of time adjustment.

And there is no way to approach a question like this in a manner that isn't a form of "fan-fic", if you have this view you probably shouldn't entertain questions like this in the first place. There's inherently a lot of guesswork involved in trying to transplant players across eras, just the nature of the beast.

Lots of guesswork, but at least we're working probabilistically. When you do the "i'm going to give you new parents', the probable outcome is that you don't make the nba. You're not being honest with probability when you use that framework.

I also don't see why focing new players to be worse is "fair" but okay.

I don't think it would take that long to adjust but that is guessowork.

We're not giving them new parents, we just move them back x years in terms of youth development, sports medicine, basketball skills/tactics, etc. I think you're misunderstanding the point I'm making. I'm not randomizing who their parents are lol, I'm still assuming that KD develops into roughly a 6-10 lanky, coordinated athlete who of course will make the NBA and be an extremely good NBA player at that.

The point I'm making is you can't possibly compare today's players to past players in absolute terms.They have enormous advantages over previous players because they are building on top of the foundation laid beneath them by previous players as well as parallel advances in science, medicine (steroids), etc. Just whizzing them into a game 50 years ago as is makes 0 sense.

As such, I'm assuming that KD still has more or less the same physical attributes and innate ability/work ethic, but grew up in a more primitive environment to hone his skills. And in this case, we kind of already know what he would look like. This is where player comparisons are pretty useful IMO.

Omg preach lol

capfan33 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:Probably should have worded it better, the "most" fair way to do this is in that manner. And honestly, even in a time-travel scenario, I'm not sure KD can adapt to the ball-handling and rules well enough to be better than West or Oscar, at least not without a decent amount of time adjustment.

And there is no way to approach a question like this in a manner that isn't a form of "fan-fic", if you have this view you probably shouldn't entertain questions like this in the first place. There's inherently a lot of guesswork involved in trying to transplant players across eras, just the nature of the beast.

Lots of guesswork, but at least we're working probabilistically. When you do the "i'm going to give you new parents', the probable outcome is that you don't make the nba. You're not being honest with probability when you use that framework.

I also don't see why focing new players to be worse is "fair" but okay.

I don't think it would take that long to adjust but that is guessowork.

We're not giving them new parents, we just move them back x years in terms of youth development, sports medicine, basketball skills/tactics, etc. I think you're misunderstanding the point I'm making. I'm not randomizing who their parents are lol, I'm still assuming that KD develops into roughly a 6-10 lanky, coordinated athlete who of course will make the NBA and be an extremely good NBA player at that.

Yeah, you made a bunch of assumptions to get the comparison you want, and are then going to make a bunch more about how he develops or doesn't develop before finally doing the part where he make guesses about how he does in the nba, except this time, instead of KD, you've constructed your own build-a-bear variation.

The point I'm making is you can't possibly compare today's players to past players in absolute terms. They have enormous advantages over previous players because they are building on top of the foundation laid beneath them by previous players as well as parallel advances in science, medicine (steroids), etc. Just whizzing them into a game 50 years ago as is makes 0 sense.

Sure you can. That's the point. If you want things to be "fair", you can make era-relative comparisons. If you want to see how KD translates, you take KD. It "makes no sense" only if your aim is to make modern players look worse than they actually are. If "it's not fair, they've become too good" is your rationale, why are you even era-translating in the first place?

If your aim is to force artificial parity between modern and older players(that is where all your assumptions are directing you towards), then staying era-relative achieves that aim without any of the extra steps.

As such, I'm assuming that KD still has more or less the same physical attributes and innate ability/work ethic, but grew up in a more primitive environment to hone his skills. And in this case, we kind of already know what he would look like. This is where player comparisons are pretty useful IMO.

[/quote]
This indeed is the comparison if you want him to rank about as high as he does in the modern NBA. You just had to make him much worse at basketball to do that.

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:Lots of guesswork, but at least we're working probabilistically. When you do the "i'm going to give you new parents', the probable outcome is that you don't make the nba. You're not being honest with probability when you use that framework.

I also don't see why focing new players to be worse is "fair" but okay.

I don't think it would take that long to adjust but that is guessowork.

We're not giving them new parents, we just move them back x years in terms of youth development, sports medicine, basketball skills/tactics, etc. I think you're misunderstanding the point I'm making. I'm not randomizing who their parents are lol, I'm still assuming that KD develops into roughly a 6-10 lanky, coordinated athlete who of course will make the NBA and be an extremely good NBA player at that.

Yeah, you made a bunch of assumptions to get the comparison you want, and are then going to make a bunch more about how he develops or doesn't develop before finally doing the part where he make guesses about how he does in the nba, except this time, instead of KD, you've constructed your own build-a-bear variation.

I think everyone on this forum does this in virtually every player comparison, it's just a question of to what degree. We all make assumptions because if we didn't, it would take 10 hours to even compare two players to each other. And also, a good portion of player evaluation before the data-ball era is guesswork, educated guesswork of course, but still guesswork nonetheless, so I consider that inherent to any comparison with old-school players.

Also, I am thinking of this in probabilistic terms, I'm basically just taking KD's skillset in rough percentiles and trying to imagine what it would look like in the 60s. With data being a luxury in this time period, I think that skillset evaluation is even more valuable.

Someone who's an all-time shooter at 6-9 with good but not great ball-handling and passing skills, who struggles with physicality and high-level decision-making, who's a good defender when motivated but nothing special on that end, what does that look like in the context of that era? To put it in more statistical terms, ~99th percentile shooter, ~60-70th percentile ball-handler, passer, and defender among 60s players, where would that rank? I would say probably right behind West and Oscar. Hardly pretending this process is perfect, but I do think it's more than a reasonable ballpark.

OhayoKD wrote:
Sure you can. That's the point. If you want things to be "fair", you can make era-relative comparisons. If you want to see how KD translates, you take KD. It "makes no sense" only if your aim is to make modern players look worse than they actually are. If "it's not fair, they've become too good" is your rationale, why are you even era-translating in the first place?

This somewhat confuses me. Is the "point" to show how large an advantage today's players have over players from 50 years ago? If that's the point, I feel like this question and all questions of its ilk should just be outright dismissed for being pointless, as it's convoluted and one could just ask that question directly.

Moreover, if you agree with me that comparing today's players to yesterday's players in absolute terms is unfair, why even engage with a question like this in the first place? Perhaps you've done this before in which case I guess it's just my ignorance, but why don't you just say "If you transport a modern player 50 years back they have enormous built-in advantages and would easily be the best as such" and just cease engaging with such questions in the future? It just seems kind of inane to me to even bother with a question like this if that's your view.

I also still don't think this would be the case, between the rules and physicality I don't KD would have quite the game-breaking impact on offense one might think he would, and on defense, he wouldn't approach Russell or Wilt. I think he's probably 3rd at best.

OhayoKD wrote:If your aim is to force artificial parity between modern and older players(that is where all your assumptions are directing you towards), then staying era-relative achieves that aim without any of the extra steps.

I think those extra steps are part of what I enjoy about evaluating basketball players lol, and there are plenty of other factors that make comparing players in their own eras an imperfect science, so to each his own.

Also, it isn't about "forcing" anything, I just want as fair a comparison as possible, in which case, yea maybe I should be the one not engaging with fundamentally unfair questions such as this one lol.

It would be completely unfair to time travel KD back as a rookie and still assume he develops and grow the same way as a player, or that he would still have access to modern medicine, training, technology etc. - things that allow him to perform at a higher level and prolong his career where injuries may have ended them earlier. Unless we're saying each of these seasons would be a one year older version of Durant being time travelled back. If that's the case, what's the point of the comparison if the others you're being compared to are being handicapped?

capfan33 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

capfan33 wrote:
I think everyone on this forum does this in virtually every player comparison, it's just a question of to what degree. We all make assumptions because if we didn't, it would take 10 hours to even compare two players to each other. And also, a good portion of player evaluation before the data-ball era is guesswork, educated guesswork of course, but still guesswork nonetheless, so I consider that inherent to any comparison with old-school players.

Also, I am thinking of this in probabilistic terms, I'm basically just taking KD's skillset in rough percentiles and trying to imagine what it would look like in the 60s. With data being a luxury in this time period, I think that skillset evaluation is even more valuable.

Someone who's an all-time shooter at 6-9 with good but not great ball-handling and passing skills, who struggles with physicality and high-level decision-making, who's a good defender when motivated but nothing special on that end, what does that look like in the context of that era? To put it in more statistical terms, ~99th percentile shooter, ~60-70th percentile ball-handler, passer, and defender among 60s players, where would that rank? I would say probably right behind West and Oscar. Hardly pretending this process is perfect, but I do think it's more than a reasonable ballpark.

His handles and passing are very special for bigger players historically. But quibbling over that is probably less useful at this point.

OhayoKD wrote:

Sure you can. That's the point. If you want things to be "fair", you can make era-relative comparisons. If you want to see how KD translates, you take KD. It "makes no sense" only if your aim is to make modern players look worse than they actually are. If "it's not fair, they've become too good" is your rationale, why are you even era-translating in the first place?

This somewhat confuses me. Is the "point" to show how large an advantage today's players have over players from 50 years ago? If that's the point, I feel like this question and all questions of its ilk should just be outright dismissed for being pointless, as it's convoluted and one could just ask that question directly.

The point is explicit in what is quoted: to see how a player would perform in another setting. But here, I think making a like for like phrase for "era-relative" comaprison should explain why your reduction is comical:

"This somewhat confuses me. Is the "point" to show that players 50 years ago were generally more valuable?"

"Era-relative" comps are "unfair" to modern players as it's harder to stand out in a more crowded field. Yet we make those all the time. I put fair in quotes, not as a validation, but to imply your application is biased. The point isn't to be fair, the point is to see what player x does in era y(or if you really want to be "fair" you average how they'd do in all the eras). Just like in an era-relative comparison, the point is what did player x do in era x vs what player y did in era y. Changing player x into player z for "fair" and pretending it's still "player x" is just silly.

Moreover, if you agree with me that comparing today's players to yesterday's players in absolute terms is unfair

We don't. That's why I used quotation marks.

"If you transport a modern player 50 years back they have enormous built-in advantages and would easily be the best as such"

And yet...

I also still don't think this would be the case, between the rules and physicality I don't KD would have quite the game-breaking impact on offense one might think he would, and on defense, he wouldn't approach Russell or Wilt. I think he's probably 3rd at best.

It's almost like era-translation isn't simply "modern player is best in the league because they're modern", and there are a wide variety of factors to consider just like in an era-relative comparison.

OhayoKD wrote:If your aim is to force artificial parity between modern and older players(that is where all your assumptions are directing you towards), then staying era-relative achieves that aim without any of the extra steps.

I think those extra steps are part of what I enjoy about evaluating basketball players lol, and there are plenty of other factors that make comparing players in their own eras an imperfect science, so to each his own.

Also, it isn't about "forcing" anything, I just want as fair a comparison as possible, in which case, yea maybe I should be the one not engaging with fundamentally unfair questions such as this one lol.

[/quote]
Your comparison isn't any more fair. "Era-relative" is just as "unfair". If you want to be fair, then hedge, which, assuming you don't have Mikan top 10, you probably already do.