No-more-rings wrote:In 04, he played 69 games, not much difference and they seem nearly identical statistically in 04 and 05. I think you’d have to nitpick hard to include 04 and not 05 or vice versa.
This is a great point. I do think he was slightly better in 2004 even if it doesn't show up in the per-possession stats, but I'm leaning harder towards including '05 now that I think about this a little more.
70sFan wrote:Do you consider 2017 to be Kawhi's peak?
As far as regular season and overall level of play, yeah, but in the context of "which season would you take against these Duncan years" I guess it has to be 2019 because of the season-ending injury in '17. Huh. So I guess I should for sure take Duncan's '05 as well, given Kawhi's similarly poor availability in '19. 8 seasons it is.
If we ignored injuries and only focused on actual level of play while on the court, I think the only thing that would change is I'd also include 2000 as the 9th Duncan season. Kawhi was better in '17 than '19 imo, but not better enough to pass any Duncan years between '99 and '07.