How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis?

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How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#1 » by Matt15 » Sat Sep 3, 2022 2:17 am

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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#2 » by LukaTheGOAT » Sat Sep 3, 2022 2:53 am

Maybe a hot take, but I might take Peak AD over Peak Durant.

Though, KD has several years that could be considered his peak, and therefore 14, 16, 17, and even 19/21, I imagine are all possible answers.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#3 » by No-more-rings » Sat Sep 3, 2022 4:44 am

LukaTheGOAT wrote:Maybe a hot take, but I might take Peak AD over Peak Durant.

Though, KD has several years that could be considered his peak, and therefore 14, 16, 17, and even 19/21, I imagine are all possible answers.

What case does 16 or 21 have? 21 he missed a ton of games for one thing.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#4 » by No-more-rings » Sat Sep 3, 2022 4:45 am

Probably none, but 3-4 of KD’s years are very much debatable.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#5 » by LukaTheGOAT » Sat Sep 3, 2022 5:07 am

No-more-rings wrote:
LukaTheGOAT wrote:Maybe a hot take, but I might take Peak AD over Peak Durant.

Though, KD has several years that could be considered his peak, and therefore 14, 16, 17, and even 19/21, I imagine are all possible answers.

What case does 16 or 21 have? 21 he missed a ton of games for one thing.


In 16, I think he was improved defensively compared to 14, while being similar offensively to 14 (14 probably was a bit more athletic and able to slash to the rim).

In 21, he is considerably improved as a midrange shooter, even though he was a great one even when younger. At this point he has an argument as the GOAT midrange shooter. I think his defense is similar in the PS compared to his GSW days (was notably impactful in the Milwaukee series). Also people penalize RS injuries differently and what not so I get it. Considering KD, is a ceiling raiser I think there is less need for him to be healthy during the RS, to get near full value, since he wasn't really floor-raising any teams to championship heights. Still to me personally, he doesn't get to the rim enough for my personal liking, so I wouldn't pick this version.

I probably pick 17 as his peak although I am a bit cautious as that GSW was a perfect fit for him.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#6 » by SNPA » Sat Sep 3, 2022 9:21 pm

Tough. Which is better, to be made of glass physically or mentally?
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#7 » by sp6r=underrated » Sat Sep 3, 2022 9:25 pm

5+ I'm lower on Davis's peak than others and I say that as someone who doesn't even rate his Brooklyn tenure
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#8 » by SickMother » Sat Sep 3, 2022 11:50 pm

Four. The two monster OKC seasons, 12/13 (121 TS+ | 395 TS Add) and 13/14 (117 TS+ | 384 TS Add), plus KD's two FMVP seasons with GSW in 16/17 and 17/18.

Would slot in AD's 19/20 bubble FMVP after those four to close out the top five.

Next five for me would be 14/15 and 17/18 AD plus 09/10, 11/12 and 15/16 KD in some order.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#9 » by MyUniBroDavis » Sun Sep 4, 2022 10:32 am

Depends on what you define as peak

I think 2020 AD is high because he just happened to be incredible over the most important period of time

In that regard I guess 2017 KD is the only one I’m comfortable with, maybe 2021 KD too.

But AD wasn’t a better player than like peak Kd that year if that makes sense he just got hot lol
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#10 » by Texas Chuck » Sun Sep 4, 2022 3:36 pm

sp6r=underrated wrote:5+ I'm lower on Davis's peak than others and I say that as someone who doesn't even rate his Brooklyn tenure



Yeah I'm not interested in trying to break this down by each exact year, but I'd take the typical KD prime season over anything I've ever seen from AD. AD is a theory player never a fully realized one, other than maybe the bubble playoffs.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#11 » by Dooley » Sun Sep 4, 2022 3:40 pm

I suppose if you're guaranteed a shooting hot streak like AD was on in the bubble playoffs, it's hard not to take AD.

If you take away the superhot shooting, I probably take 3-5 years of Durant.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#12 » by f4p » Tue Sep 6, 2022 12:13 am

basically any healthy version of KD from 2012-2021 i would take over peak davis. so if you want to take out the missed playoffs years of 2015 and 2019 and 2020, then 7 years.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#13 » by ShotCreator » Tue Sep 6, 2022 12:48 am

AD’s peak was a relative sliver of time, but it did happen over two seasons.

2019 AD for whatever reason had a clear, demonstrable uptick in creativity with the ball compared to past years. While maintaining his health and motor unlike disaster seasons in 2016, 2021, and 2022.

The skill increase was subtle enough, and the fall off was steep enough that it makes his 2020 seem like a fluke. It absolutely wasn’t.

A guy whose core athleticism and instincts could get him into top 5 scoring in any season got confidence as far as facing up and reacting to an overreacting defense.

Even without the mid-range shooting, which is more on the margins of why he was really good on offense - I mean Anthony Davis isn’t a “shooter”, he’s much more of a banger or rim pressure guy.

AD defended Jimmy Butler to save a series while being pretty much unschemeable offensively. Not unstoppable, but just not having any flaws that lead to gimmicks that could contain him. His range of dominance was insane. Defending Westbrook and Butler while terrifying whole rotations out of layup attempts. That’s not a fluke thing.

AD pretty much unlocked all LAL’s scheme dominance series to series defensively, while having the lob gravity, catch and finish game, and shot creation of, almost no one else.

So in short, AD stepped a little bit outside of his “great for a big man” offensive level into like, say being as good as say Kyrie or Mitchell offensively, and while I believe he’s generally a bit overrated on average defensively, he was fringe-DPOY material and leveled it up defensively in the 2020 playoffs actually having a HIGHER impact when asked to do more difficult schemes. As opposed to getting schemed out.

Which to me lends to just being better than KD. 2015 also gets lost in the fray, he was really good both ways that year. Probably defensive peak due to the crazy mobility compared to even 2020.

So AD being best in the world good was always previewed. I tend to think he just, peaked in 2020. It happened it just wasn’t sustained for obv reasons.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#14 » by Ron Swanson » Tue Sep 6, 2022 1:25 am

2014-15 and 2017-18 AD to me have just as good of an argument over any KD season. I'm curious as to what people think separates the two outside of supporting cast. AD was also incredibly good in the postseason both those years (lost to the dynasty Warriors both times), so it's weird to me that people act like 2020 was the only time he showed out in the playoffs.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#15 » by LukaTheGOAT » Tue Sep 6, 2022 2:13 am

Ron Swanson wrote:2014-15 and 2017-18 AD to me have just as good of an argument over any KD season. I'm curious as to what people think separates the two outside of supporting cast. AD was also incredibly good in the postseason both those years (lost to the dynasty Warriors both times), so it's weird to me that people act like 2020 was the only time he showed out in the playoffs.


I think there is a higher confidence interval with Durant because of his RS scoring dominance, and the fact that there is a bigger prime sample of him in the PS than AD. Also, some might have their opinions skewed by Durant's PS performance in GSW, while others are a bit skeptical of how much they should take those numbers at face value.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#16 » by HeartBreakKid » Tue Sep 6, 2022 1:02 pm

Durant is just a way more dynamic scorer and creator. More importantly his sample size supports his dominance (or at least what we can expect from him) much more than AD's. What most people consider Davis' peak seems more like a sample size exploit.

I'd take any season where Durant played reasonably close to a full season going all the way back to 2012. I'm almost positive if Durant had played more in the 2020s he'd be above Davis in all those years as well.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#17 » by JLei » Tue Sep 6, 2022 1:54 pm

I'm pretty darn high on peak/prime Davis (2018-2020). People are forgetting how good he was.

His offense seeming that resilient in the playoffs is a huge plus to me. He's just probably one of if not the best off ball scoring big man/ PnR partner ever created that has some ISO ability as well. 27.5 pp75 on 64%TS over 30 playoff games is no joke and basically no drop vs. his scoring in the regular season.

Before he forced a trade in 2019 he was looking like the best player in the league (there's a 20 game stretch of 33-15-4 on really good efficiency) and he was probably ranked 2 after rejuvenated Lebron on most peoples list after 2020.

As for the thread question really none definitely but generally GSW Durant (16-19) and 14 Durant (Davis one man show never lead to this level of success as a floor raiser). They are equal-ish as ceiling raisers on really good teams to me. Durant being a better ISO threat gives him more value on a less good team (21 playoffs Brooklyn and 14 OKC being good examples).
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#18 » by JLei » Tue Sep 6, 2022 1:56 pm

HeartBreakKid wrote:Durant is just a way more dynamic scorer and creator. More importantly his sample size supports his dominance (or at least what we can expect from him) much more than AD's. What most people consider Davis' peak seems more like a sample size exploit.

I'd take any season where Durant played reasonably close to a full season going all the way back to 2012. I'm almost positive if Durant had played more in the 2020s he'd be above Davis in all those years as well.


Are we just ignoring the 193 regular season games where he destroys the league from 2018-2020 that have basically the same production as the 30 playoff games? I think that's a pretty good sample size to me.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#19 » by Jaivl » Tue Sep 6, 2022 2:46 pm

JLei wrote:
HeartBreakKid wrote:Durant is just a way more dynamic scorer and creator. More importantly his sample size supports his dominance (or at least what we can expect from him) much more than AD's. What most people consider Davis' peak seems more like a sample size exploit.

I'd take any season where Durant played reasonably close to a full season going all the way back to 2012. I'm almost positive if Durant had played more in the 2020s he'd be above Davis in all those years as well.


Are we just ignoring the 193 regular season games where he destroys the league from 2018-2020 that have basically the same production as the 30 playoff games? I think that's a pretty good sample size to me.

Does Davis have a 200 game sample of him shooting +55% from midrange while mostly generating his own shots from there, plus +38% from three and +80% at rim? Damn.
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Re: How many years of Durant over Peak Anthony Davis? 

Post#20 » by AEnigma » Tue Sep 6, 2022 6:00 pm

Jaivl wrote:
JLei wrote:
HeartBreakKid wrote:Durant is just a way more dynamic scorer and creator. More importantly his sample size supports his dominance (or at least what we can expect from him) much more than AD's. What most people consider Davis' peak seems more like a sample size exploit.

I'd take any season where Durant played reasonably close to a full season going all the way back to 2012. I'm almost positive if Durant had played more in the 2020s he'd be above Davis in all those years as well.


Are we just ignoring the 193 regular season games where he destroys the league from 2018-2020 that have basically the same production as the 30 playoff games? I think that's a pretty good sample size to me.

Does Davis have a 200 game sample of him shooting +55% from midrange while mostly generating his own shots from there, plus +38% from three and +80% at rim? Damn.

Does Durant have a 200 game sample of being one of the five or so best defenders in the league?
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