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I think this is an interesting and necessary conversation to have.

Durant is the better floor-raiser by far, was a top-two scorer in back-to-back championship runs, and was solid on defense vs the Cavs.

On the other hand, I wonder who was more irreplaceable.

Remove Draymond from the team, you probably make the WCF, and possibly the Finals. On the other hand, the Cavs win both times if they make it.

Take Durant off, and you can still win the title. Requires a greater lift from the supporting cast and means the Spash Bros need to go off, but it’s in play.

What do you think? Who was harder to replace on these legendary teams?

I'd lean Draymond, though he did kind of dog it in the '18/'19 regular seasons.

KD made Draymond extremely expendable. I was a huge advocate of moving Draymond as his usefulness to the Warriors declined.

Curry has never had a real score next to him so they have depended in Draymond to be a play maker. With Durants scoring and size there was no real need for Draymond.

oaktownwarriors87 wrote:KD made Draymond extremely expendable. I was a huge advocate of moving Draymond as his usefulness to the Warriors declined.

Curry has never had a real score next to him so they have depended in Draymond to be a play maker. With Durants scoring and size there was no real need for Draymond.

Draymond generates the vast majority of his value on defense which has been the foundation for their playoff success...

Durant, not close. When KD was injured Warriors didn't win a title in 2018-19.

Johnny Tomala wrote:Durant, not close. When KD was injured Warriors didn't win a title in 2018-19.

When KD was injured in 2017 the warriors won all their playoff games, they also swept the WCF in 2019 without him.

I would say Draymond, though I question if they overcome the Rockets defense snuffing out their motion stuff without KD's isolation scoring (which had both pros and cons with his tendencies)

The answer feels like it’s probably Draymond, but I don’t have high confidence in that. The reason it feels like the answer is Draymond is just because we know the Warriors could win titles without Durant. So in that sense, we kind of know Durant wasn’t irreplaceable. But we don’t know if the Warriors could’ve also won titles with Durant and no Draymond. And if they could then Draymond wouldn’t be more irreplaceable than Durant.

There’s perhaps some reason to believe that the Warriors would’ve been just as good or better with Durant and no Draymond as it was with Draymond and no Durant. For instance, from 2016-2017 to 2018-2019, in RS+playoffs, the Steph+Draymond w/o Durant minutes were +11.30, while the Steph+Durant w/o Draymond minutes were +13.11. The minutes with Draymond were much better defensively, but the Durant minutes are so good offensively that it more than makes up for it. So maybe/probably the Warriors could’ve won titles with Durant and no Draymond, just like they did with Draymond and no Durant. The only guy that was clearly indispensable is Steph.

RS it’s draymond

Playoffs it’s durant, Durant was a monster in the playofgs

Johnny Tomala wrote:Durant, not close. When KD was injured Warriors didn't win a title in 2018-19.

That's because his replacement [Klay] was also injured.

Draymond
The Warriors' success, despite large treatises on Curry and their offense, has been based on their defense for at least an equal part. All those outrageous differentials would have been impossible without him anchoring a top 2-3 defense.

OhayoKD wrote:

oaktownwarriors87 wrote:KD made Draymond extremely expendable. I was a huge advocate of moving Draymond as his usefulness to the Warriors declined.

Curry has never had a real score next to him so they have depended in Draymond to be a play maker. With Durants scoring and size there was no real need for Draymond.

Draymond generates the vast majority of his value on defense which has been the foundation for their playoff success...

Iguodala was the one defending all the great players (LeBron, Harden etc) before and Draymond got torched against Toronto and was a complete non factor in 2019. No doubt the Warriors win with KD and without Draymond. They needed a second scoring option outside of Curry. That's why the box and one was successful.

He's a great defender, but not enough to close the gap with Durant.

Also, the Warriors had a top 4 defense with David Lee at PF and the 6th best defensive lineup in the NBA with David Lee at PF. They were a defensive oriented team before Draymond Green.

oaktownwarriors87 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

oaktownwarriors87 wrote:KD made Draymond extremely expendable. I was a huge advocate of moving Draymond as his usefulness to the Warriors declined.

Curry has never had a real score next to him so they have depended in Draymond to be a play maker. With Durants scoring and size there was no real need for Draymond.

Draymond generates the vast majority of his value on defense which has been the foundation for their playoff success...

Iguodala was the one defending all the great players (LeBron, Harden etc) before and Draymond got torched against Toronto and was a complete non factor in 2019. No doubt the Warriors win with KD and without Draymond. They needed a second scoring option outside of Curry. That's why the box and one was successful.

He's a great defender, but not enough to close the gap with Durant.

Also, the Warriors had a top 4 defense with David Lee at PF and the 6th best defensive lineup in the NBA with David Lee at PF. They were a defensive oriented team before Draymond Green.

Are you talking about the 2014 line-up of Iguodala/Bogut/Klay/Barnes/Lee line-up that literally couldn't score [85.4 Ortg] in 90 minutes?

Colbinii wrote:

oaktownwarriors87 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:Draymond generates the vast majority of his value on defense which has been the foundation for their playoff success...

Iguodala was the one defending all the great players (LeBron, Harden etc) before and Draymond got torched against Toronto and was a complete non factor in 2019. No doubt the Warriors win with KD and without Draymond. They needed a second scoring option outside of Curry. That's why the box and one was successful.

He's a great defender, but not enough to close the gap with Durant.

Also, the Warriors had a top 4 defense with David Lee at PF and the 6th best defensive lineup in the NBA with David Lee at PF. They were a defensive oriented team before Draymond Green.

Are you talking about the 2014 line-up of Iguodala/Bogut/Klay/Barnes/Lee line-up that literally couldn't score [85.4 Ortg] in 90 minutes?

I'm talking about the Curry/Klay/Iguodala/Lee/Bogut lineup that played 818 minutes and had an NBA best +15.5 net rating

https://www.nba.com/stats/lineups/advanced?CF=MIN*GE*300&Season=2013-14&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&dir=A&slug=advanced&sort=DEF_RATING

KD was more irreplaceable for the warriors by far.

While Draymond was highly important as he was one of the passing/illegal screening valves in the offense while being a elite help side defender… Lots of his abilities are predicated on the people around him and he is exploiting that; Which leads me to believe that Draymond extracts value from his teammates but he doesn’t directly create a lot of it independently.

For Example, The reason why Draymond gets away with Illegal screening is because his partner is curry… The flow and actions all in the Offense are based around getting X Offensive Threat in a Split action with the Y Playmaking Threat, and Ultimately the threat decides how valuable the Playmaking can become.

As for defensively, I am a fan of Draymond but it’s the offensive components and capabilities of his teammates around him that allow him to be able to be the elite defender he is.

Synopsis: KD creates Value, Draymond Extracted Value!

MyUniBroDavis wrote:RS it’s draymond

Playoffs it’s durant, Durant was a monster in the playofgs

no. you just like scoring lol

Proxy wrote:I would say Draymond, though I question if they overcome the Rockets defense snuffing out their motion stuff without KD's isolation scoring (which had both pros and cons with his tendencies)

Didn't their defense perform much better than their offense that series?

OhayoKD wrote:

Proxy wrote:I would say Draymond, though I question if they overcome the Rockets defense snuffing out their motion stuff without KD's isolation scoring (which had both pros and cons with his tendencies)

Didn't their defense perform much better than their offense that series?

In that series, the Rockets had a 9.8 lower offensive rating than in the RS, while the Rockets had a 8.4 worse defensive rating than in the RS. So, on paper, the two sides of the ball were roughly evenly good for the Warriors, with maybe a slight edge to their defense. But that’s with variance obviously doing a bit of a number on the Rockets’ three-point shooting in that series and them losing Chris Paul (who was much more important for the Rockets’ offense than their defense) for two games. So, overall, I’d probably say the Warriors’ offense performed better than their defense, actually. Both performed well, though.

OhayoKD wrote:

MyUniBroDavis wrote:RS it’s draymond

Playoffs it’s durant, Durant was a monster in the playofgs

no. you just like scoring lol

Nasty take