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Who is the better player: 2014 Durant or 2025 SGA?

25 shai for sure

I’m tempted to take SGA but I do think Durant would maybe have a better postseason than SGA if he played with the ‘25 Thunder. My only question mark on that is the lack of ball handling for the Thunder in the half court is exacerbated by KDs handle.

Durant.

SGA easily. Much more dominant MVP regular season, and an even bigger gap in the playoffs:

2014 KD: 22.6 PER on .570 TS%, .145 WS/48, 6.9 BPM

2025 SGA: 25.3 PER on .574 TS%, .222 WS/48, 8.3 BPM

I think i got shai slightly but is close

Offense, RAPM is close.

Shai blows out KD on defense, where he was part of an amazing defensive unit. Outside of Ibaka and his blocks, there weren’t many super high level defenders with Westbrook missing time, and Sefolosha limited by minutes.

I have 2014 KD as a solid MVP level season, while 2025 Shai is very high MVP level, borderline ATG season.

SGA quite easily. Durant is the most overrated player of all time. He’s not even a top 5 scorer all time despite being dubbed by silly mainstream media as “the greatest scorer ever”.

Durant is basically inferior to SGA in every way possible other than shooting, not to mention much worse in the playoffs when it matters and couldn’t lead his team to a ring as the main man.

Both had very weak playoff runs, relatively speaking. Very high usage guys with flawed play styles that hurt their resiliency.

Shai’s defense and passing probably give him an edge here. Definitely the same level though. Not super impressed with either season overall

ShotCreator wrote:Both had very weak playoff runs, relatively speaking. Very high usage guys with flawed play styles that hurt their resiliency.

Shai’s defense and passing probably give him an edge here. Definitely the same level though. Not super impressed with either season overall

Edit *nvm realized this is a troll.
6.5 ast to 2.6 turnovers vs 3.9 ast to 3.8 turnovers = "definitely the same level" of playmaking - troll exposed, not gonna bother arguing more as its just lies. ZZ

I’d take SGA pretty clearly here. Having yout lead playmaker be your lead scorer is nice.

MMyhre wrote:

ShotCreator wrote:Both had very weak playoff runs, relatively speaking. Very high usage guys with flawed play styles that hurt their resiliency.

Shai’s defense and passing probably give him an edge here. Definitely the same level though. Not super impressed with either season overall

Shai very weak playoff run, what? Take the stats from round 2 to the finals and put it in there - and add context in how little creation they had besides Shai and their 3pt shooting was **** and tell me it was a "very weak" playoff run. Horrible take!

By series:

vs Memphis: 27.8 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 6.0 apg, 2 tpg, 52.1% TS (-4.5% rTS relative to playoff league average), 40.2% FG, 25.0% 3P, 90.9% FT

Pretty rough opening series.

vs Denver: 29.7 ppg, 6.4 rpg, 6.6 apg, 2 tpg (7.8% TOV!), 62.8% (+6.2% rTS) TS, 52.9% FG, 33.3% 3P, 82.5% FT

The one you wanted posted, a very good series. Had some stinkers in the middle; sucked ass in game 3, but finished with three straight bangers to close it out against a Denver team with an injured MPJ.

vs Minnesota: 31.4 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 8.2 apg, 2.8 tpg, 45.7% FG, 31.8% 3P, 86.3% FT, 56.7% (+0.1% rTS)

Solid series. Not the most scintillating scoring performance, but Minny was the 6th-ranked D during the RS, and Shai was carrying a heavy load on offense, both as a scorer and as a playmaker.

vs Indiana: 30.3 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 5.6 apg, 3.4 tpg, 44.3% FG, 24.2% 3P, 91.4% FT, 56.1% TS (-0.5% rTS)

Not the greatest series, but far from the worst. Faded as the series went on and had a horrible shooting performance in the final game, as they defeated the Pacers without Haliburton. 8/27 performance (and the 8-turnover performance from Game 6, too) wiped away due to the victory, and of course his playmaking in the final game. Indy had him bombing from 3 and he was 2/12, which was brutal.

Don't know that I'd call that "very weak" overall, though. He kicked ass in the second round, then played pretty well in the last two rounds. He didn't have an ATG run, for sure, but he was mostly quite good.

Knowing that jalen williams was playing on a inju4ed wrist on his shooting hand puts in perspective how much offensive load shai had to carry

Rough shooting and ballhandling around him, injured jalen and bench player wiggins the only other self creation scorers

We already knew it but it puts it in more perspective

eminence wrote:I’d take SGA pretty clearly here. Having yout lead playmaker be your lead scorer is nice.

That’s basically the problem. Shai dribbles more than anyone in the league but he’d struggle to be a top 10 playmaker in any given season the past 15 years.

This hurt OKC a lot in the playoffs.

CKRT wrote:I’m tempted to take SGA but I do think Durant would maybe have a better postseason than SGA if he played with the ‘25 Thunder. My only question mark on that is the lack of ball handling for the Thunder in the half court is exacerbated by KDs handle.

Replacing SGA with '14 KD and I don't know who can bring the ball up the court for OKC consistently, I honestly think they'd struggle with Memphis (maybe 6 games) and would get handled by Denver in 5. SGA just had such a massive load handling the ball that couldn't really be taken up by anyone else on the roster.

This Thunder team would have to be very different with KD at the helm instead of SGA. So much so I don't think it should really play any part in this comparison.

I think a few months ago I would have said Shai, but I might lean Durant slightly now. Both saw notable drops in production during the playoffs, but I think Durant's situation was far less conducive than Shai's

falcolombardi wrote:Knowing that jalen williams was playing on a inju4ed wrist on his shooting hand puts in perspective how much offensive load shai had to carry

Rough shooting and ballhandling around him, injured jalen and bench player wiggins the only other self creation scorers

We already knew it but it puts it in more perspective

Jalen still outplayed Ant in Wcf was prolly the 2nd best player in the series and was the 3rd best player in the finals behind Sga and Siakam. He had a rare 40pt finals game. Injured wrist or not he was still producing and playing elite defense.

Kd had Russ who was obviously better but Shai had an infinitely better 3-12 rotation. Serge is the only player on 14 Okc that would even make 25 Okcs roster and he had to play 35 minutes a game for 14 Okc. Hed be getting like 20-25 at most w/ Chet and Ihart there 14 Ibaka wasnt really shooting 3s yet either and Shai had far better spacing around him and the snipers he had were great defenders. The few 3pt shooters 14 Okc had were one way players who couldnt play any defense like 40yo Dfish and Reggie Jackson. Thabo was a good 3 and D player but their only one compared to abundance 25 OKc has and Thabo looks like a fossil compared to guys like Caruso or Cason

Shai didnt play any defense close to 14 Memphis w/ a defender like Tony guarding him,Marc or 14 Spurs w/ Kawhi guarding him,Timmy either.

Then theres coaching. Daigneault is one of the best coaches in the league and made more adjustments this playoff run than Scott Brooks made his whole coaching career prolly. He was one of the worst coaches to ever coach a contender.

GSP wrote:

falcolombardi wrote:Knowing that jalen williams was playing on a inju4ed wrist on his shooting hand puts in perspective how much offensive load shai had to carry

Rough shooting and ballhandling around him, injured jalen and bench player wiggins the only other self creation scorers

We already knew it but it puts it in more perspective

Jalen still outplayed Ant in Wcf was prolly the 2nd best player in the series and was the 3rd best player in the finals behind Sga and Siakam. He had a rare 40pt finals game. Injured wrist or not he was still producing and playing elite defense.

Kd had Russ who was obviously better but Shai had a far better 3-12 rotation. Serge is the only player on 14 Okc that would even make 25 Okcs roster and he had to play 35 minutes a game for 14 Okc. Hed be getting like 20-25 at most w/ Chet and Ihart there 14 Ibaka wasnt really shooting 3s yet either and Shai had far better spacing around him and the snipers he had were great defenders. The few 3pt shooters 14 Okc had were one way players who couldnt play any defense like 40yo Dfish and Reggie Jackson. Thabo was a good 3 and D player but their only one compared to abundance 25 OKc has and Thabo looks like a fossil compared to guys like Caruso or Cason

Shai didnt play any defense close to 14 Memphis w/ a defender like Tony guarding him,Marc or 14 Spurs w/ Kawhi guarding him,Timmy either.

Then theres coaching. Daigneault is one of the best coaches in the league and made more adjustments this playoff run than Scott Brooks made his whole coaching career prolly. He was one of the worst coaches to ever coach a contender.

Ya, I'm of the opinion that you have to rate Shai higher based on his rs+ps(mvp/fmvp) but I'm not entirely convinced that he's better than 2014 KD. It might be situational too which is often the case when comparing top 20 peaks of all time. KD was really something special that year and I do think we're now in an era which makes things slightly easier for high scoring/helio type wings. The load KD carried in 2014 may have worn him down more as well. He played in 81g that year at 38.5mpg while Shai played 76 at 34.2.

Honest, I think this is kind of disrespectful to Shai

IlikeSHAIguys wrote:Honest, I think this is kind of disrespectful to Shai

I think that's more your feelings speaking than anything else. The gap is very small at best imo. Based on obpm it's Shai at 8.9 and KD at 8.8 while vorp has KD at 9.6 to 8.9 for Shai. So just in terms of box score production it seems very close.