mischievous wrote:therealbig3 wrote:I'm appreciating KD more and more btw...I've been one of his harshest critics, but there's no denying that his style of play is wickedly effective. He has led better PS offenses with Westbrook as his running mate than Curry did with Klay and Green as his running mates, in a system that was far more maligned than GS's. This year, I believe GS's offense with him on the court was better than GS's offense with Curry on the court in the playoffs.
Not to say that he's better than Curry offensively, because a lot of different factors can influence that, but Curry is a guy that's routinely put in offensive GOAT territory (which the PS results just don't support imo, but that's a different discussion), so it's interesting to see how good Durant looks in that regard.
What exactly has changed about him since the conference finals though? Because if i recall correctly you were pretty harsh on him during that series even though he was the exact same player.
I was too harsh on him imo. Because the more and more I look at the results, the more and more I feel that you just can't build a GOAT-level PS offense around Curry, unless of course you have Durant as well. And Durant is the guy with more impressive results before they teamed up.
I think the ability to anchor high-level PS offenses is the biggest factor when determining how GOAT-y an offensive player really is. Obviously, we have to consider the supporting cast and the team strategy and the context in which they pull it off, but Durant led some really high-powered offenses in OKC, including the playoffs, and he surpassed what Curry was able to do in 2015 and 2016. Albeit, he had Westbrook next to him, and you could argue whether or not it was even really Durant that was leading the team in that regard, which is why I'm not totally sold on Durant over Curry, but it's clear to me that Curry is just more stoppable in the PS than Durant, unless Curry plays WITH Durant, and even then, he wasn't all that great in these playoffs for that matter.
This was the first time I really looked into how strong PS offenses have been with their best player on the court, and it was pretty eye-opening for me tbh. I can hate on Durant's play style all I want, and I do think it holds him back significantly compared to certain players, but it's still pretty darn effective. And for as much credit as we give Curry, he just hasn't produced anything all that impressive in the PS without the most talented roster in history perfectly clicking at just the right time.
