Ok so I want to get to my Kidd vs Nash breakdown (featuring Clyde and why I take him over both right under Penny and CP3) with Nash getting traction while Kidd doesn't but I've been holding off this Kawhi write up so:
Ok I've been arguing about Kawhi for a while, mostly negative, but it's time to make a positive argument towards him (sidebar: I'm keeping a list of the write ups of players I wasn't able to get to and I'm mad some of y'all have voted people in before I've had the chance. I'm mostly mad I missed out on my Wade write up, Walton, T-Mac, and West - so I'm throwing my Kawhi write up now before he's in).
In 2016 I'll be real, I wasn't high on Kawhi. I felt defensively he was rated correctly among the best in the league but offensively too much was being made about what I saw as hot shooting and a great system enabling him to score uber efficiently (he averaged 21.2 ppg on +7.5 rTS% while increasing his volume and efficiency). I mean he averaged 16.5 ppg on +3.3 rTS% the year prior and that seemed to be approaching an upper limit for him. When watching him on the floor though, outside of his lack of scoring attempts he had no clear weaknesses in his scoring game. When the ball left his hands, it went in. PNR, post, spot up, cuts, isolation... He was efficient in all play types. Seemed like a small sample error to me, or luck, but as we saw later once he decided to score more it wasn't. That was a legitimate part of his game.
In this game you can see his offense. A good but not excessive amount of isolation, some high value passes (I'd say all 3 assists are great plays, with 2 of them being very high quality passes), and something missing from his game in the seasons after - amazing of ball movement (that dunk off his screen is great). He still played that low to the ground, barely jump game he has now and he was just as strong as he is now to utilize that game.
His numbers overall were great but getting into the weeds he was 47% on midrange jumpers off the bounce (5.0 attempts a night) and 41% on 3s off the bounce in 2016 (0.8 shots a night). To compare in 2017 he was also 47% on midrange jumpers off the bounce (6.0 attempts a night) and 31% on 3s off the bounce (1.9 shots a night). In 2019 he was 45% on midrange jumpers off the bounce (6.3 attempts a night) and 34% on 3s off the bounce (2.4 shots a night).
I say all this to say I don't see much improvement in the offensive game of 2016 Kawhi and 2017 Kawhi (who I'll say was insanely hot in the playoffs), and 2019 Kawhi (who wasn't hot in the playoffs and I think 2016 Kawhi could replicate this production more often than not). His 3 pointer off the bounce improved, but overall his 3 point shooting peaked in 2016 with him averaging slightly less 3s made a game than in 17 and 19 but averaging a whole shot less a night.
The Spurs led by Kawhi as option 1a and Lamarcus as option 1b had a +4 offense and they had a +3.4 offense against OKC in the playoffs. All in all he was a good but not great offensive addition to a strong offense, with the type of floor raising ability the greats have.
Usually that wouldn't be enough to be mentioned here but Kawhi is also one of the 5 best perimeter defenders ever (him, Scottie, Iggy, Moncrief, Artest are top 5 for my money with Jimmy Butler - who might make this list if E-Balla gets his way and Luol Deng as HMs). In 2016 he peaked on that end and helped anchor a -7.4 defense. The 2016 Spurs were a top 7 defense ever by z-score and the 2nd best Spurs defense to the 04 Spurs. With Duncan manning the middle, Lamarcus providing great coverage at PF, and Kawhi locking down stars it became easy to stifle great offenses (of course until they ran into another ATG squad in the 16 Thunder). He had the most lockdown defense compilations in Youtube history this year.
The best show of his defense IMO is what he did to Harden, the only player unfortunate enough to play 4 games against the Spurs with Kawhi guarding him on basically each possession. James Harden in 4 games against the Spurs averaged 21 ppg, 4 apg, and 4.8 topg on 55.8 TS% for a whopping 96 ORTG. Now this is a guy that normally averaged 29 ppg, 7.5 apg, and 4.6 topg on 59.8 TS% with a 115 ORTG.
Overall looking at the numbers Kawhi held opponents to 38.5% from the field and a 43.5 eFG%. Good for -6.4% under average which led all perimeter players by a distance. He was in the 80th+ percentile in all defensive tracking stats. He forced a turnover on 18% of the PNRs he guarded for example and only gave up a score on 32% of them. He just seemed to be everywhere at once.
As far as Kawhi vs KD in their series goes I see people say that KD got the better of him but I don't see it. The Spurs were +3 with Kawhi on the floor with KD in the series and per 36 KD averaged 24.3/5.2/3.7 on 58.3 TS% with Kawhi on the floor while Kawhi averaged 22.5/7.4/3.3 on 54.3 TS% with KD on the floor. KD might have a slight edge offensively but Kawhi had a large defensive edge, as you can see from his work on Russ in the first video.
Westbrook with Kawhi on the floor averaged 22.9 points per 36 on 45.6 TS%. With him on the bench he averaged 35.5 points per 36 on 59.6 TS%. That's lockdown.
Overall I see Kawhi as a legit ATG defensive anchor, that can also carry an offense when needed, or play his role on a +10 team if needed. That's major versatility and usefulness regardless of what the team build around him is.
Nash vs Kidd is up next.
Top twenty by net rating, top fifteen by basically every box score derived metric... His coast is not as good as Lebron’s coast, but it is not too far off.
