RealGM 2020 Top 100 Project: #22 (Kevin Durant)

[Clyde Frazier]

Vote 1 - Stephen Curry
Vote 2 - John Stockton
Vote 3 - Bob Pettit

Curry has played long enough that he now fits into the Magic/Bird mold of truly exemplary play despite so so longevity. His 2016 season is arguably the GOAT offensive regular season, top 5 at worst. The warriors were appointment television every night and it all hinged on steph's gravity pulling the defense in. It got to the point where some teams were checking him once he stepped inside half court. His hyper efficient volume scoring was as good as we'd ever seen post-merger.

He carried that play to truly impressive team impact throughout his career, and you can't argue with the results. Since Curry and Durant are getting compared here, let's take a look at some regular season ON/OFF nubmers from 16-17 to 18-19 via pbpstats.com:

Curry/Klay/Draymond ON, Durant OFF: 808 min, 119.45 ORtg, 105.91 DRtg, 13.54 Net Rtg

Durant/Klay/Draymond ON, Curry OFF: 639 min, 111.94 ORtg, 110 DRtg, 1.94 Net Rtg

Klay/Draymond ON, Curry/Durant OFF: 184 min, 106.18 ORtg, 102.54 DRtg, 3.64 Net Rtg

When you realize finals MVP is voted on by 11 random media members, it loses a lot of its significance. I don't fault curry for not winning one at all. His overall body of work speaks for itself.

[trex_8063]

I also disagree with ElGee Srockton evaluation. He brings up some interesting points, but overall I just don't see a player he describes when I watch Stockton. Stockton wasn't afraid of attacking defense - he attacked a lot. He was one of the best off-ball guards ever - ElGee usually praises that but he didn't mention anything about Stockton's screen setting and constant movement without the ball.

The only thing that Stockton lacked compared to the very best PGs ever is his ability to create shots off the dribble. He could beat his man, but he wasn't elite iso scorer. That's why I'd have him lower than Nash or Paul as an offensive player peak-wise, but the gap is much smaller than ElGee indicates, at least in my opinion.

I tend to agree (obviously). And despite being a PG, defense still kinda matters imo (as that pertains to a comparison to Steve Nash).

The basic philosophy of my criteria is actually quite similar to Elgee's [if a bit different in methodology]. Where he and I differ is on just how good Stockton was; and we don't differ GREATLY in that regard, but we do differ, and seemingly pretty consistently [year-to-year].
Where he implies Stockton peaked at roughly a fringe top-10(ish) player (I assume that's what the middle of his "All-NBA" tier means), I actually think he peaked as a roughly top 6-8 player in the league in a few of his best seasons [EDIT: and fwiw, I would hazard an estimation that main-stream media hedges closer to my opinion, given he was twice All-NBA 1st Team and has THREE finishes at 9th or better in MVP award shares (peaking at 7th)]; and likewise in seasons where he implies Stockton was fringe top-20 player, I think he was closer to fringe top-15.......and thus I have Stockton roughly 4-5 places higher on my ATL than him.

Some of the difference may be that I just don't get as playoff-centric as many do; part of it may be that he marginally under-credits Stockton's offense in my [and your] opinion(s).

[eminence]

Well, everyone talks about Lloyd's defense.

“He’s an unsung star. Anybody can score. Lloyd was an excellent defensive player. That was No. 1 on my roster,” said his Syracuse Coach Al Cervi.

Lloyd was the power forward, the bruiser, and the guy whoguarded the opposing team's best scorer.

Also, here's an image of the team, granted from 1956, a bit later:



That's Schayes in the center (#4) and Lloyd on the right (#11). My general thought is that Schayes does not look like he's towering over other guys here. I look at Lloyd and think, "Yeah, wouldn't surprise me if he was a tougher 'big' than Schayes."

I don't want to get down on Lloyd's defense either, I believe them both to be good defenders. Cervi emphasizing defense so strongly for the team (King did this some too when talking about the squad) is part of why I believe Schayes was solid on that end too, nobody ever singled him out as not part of that defensive strength or effort. And while they didn't touch much on his defense they did usually praise him as an all-around player. I struggle to see Lloyd as something past a good/strong defender due to the limited minutes Cervi used him, topping out around 30 mpg. Unless there's an unknown conditioning type issue (as with Bobby Jones) those anchor types of defenders usually get more run than that at some point.

It is possible Seymour/King/Lloyd were all very strong defenders, Schayes was only meh, and they carried him to those results. I haven't really seen any reasoning as to why to exclude Schayes from that success though (you've argued some against my/pens position, but haven't really supported the opposite). Given his career long success I find it unlikely he was in any way a weak defender and would be mildly surprised if he were average.

A team photo with Redx2 and Tucker (how'd a 10th man get in that shot) is going to make Schayes look more average in size. Schayes/Lloyd look about like what I'd expect, Lloyd maybe an inch or so taller.

Also goes back to separating the enforcer and the defensive impact roles, I certainly don't view them as necessarily overlapping.

[Jordan Syndrome]

1. Steve Nash
2. Steph Curry
3. Bob Pettit

Quite clearly the two best offensive players in terms of peak left for me--the differences in their prime isn't as long as I originally thought but Nash has a clear lead in CORP. The different styles of Nash and Curry is an interesting clash yet both maximized offenses to a degree no other player in NBA History did while in those roles.

I keep going back between Pettit and Paul. I have Pettit's prime a smidge ahead of Paul here, the peaks roughly equal and Paul's longevity beginning to make the difference in the comparison. I have Stockton, Thomas and Frazier a tier down from these other Point Guards for now.

[eminence]

https://backpicks.com/2016/09/28/iii-historical-impact-wowyr-60-years-of-plus-minus/

Quick link to the only 'impact' type number we have for guys from the 50s-80s ('54 onward, so no Mikan/Davies/Pollard extremely early guys).

[Doctor MJ]

I don't want to get down on Lloyd's defense either, I believe them both to be good defenders. Cervi emphasizing defense so strongly for the team (King did this some too when talking about the squad) is part of why I believe Schayes was solid on that end too, nobody ever singled him out as not part of that defensive strength or effort. And while they didn't touch much on his defense they did usually praise him as an all-around player. I struggle to see Lloyd as something past a good/strong defender due to the limited minutes Cervi used him, topping out around 30 mpg. Unless there's an unknown conditioning type issue (as with Bobby Jones) those anchor types of defenders usually get more run than that at some point.

It is possible Seymour/King/Lloyd were all very strong defenders, Schayes was only meh, and they carried him to those results. I haven't really seen any reasoning as to why to exclude Schayes from that success though (you've argued some against my/pens position, but haven't really supported the opposite). Given his career long success I find it unlikely he was in any way a weak defender and would be mildly surprised if he were average.

A team photo with Redx2 and Tucker (how'd a 10th man get in that shot) is going to make Schayes look more average in size. Schayes/Lloyd look about like what I'd expect, Lloyd maybe an inch or so taller.

Also goes back to separating the enforcer and the defensive impact roles, I certainly don't view them as necessarily overlapping.

Eh, I think we should look at the playoff MPG for these guys in the two #1 defense seasons in comparison to the #1 minute guy:

1954 Playoffs
Seymour 43.0
Schayes 28.8
Lloyd 26.0

1955 Playoffs
Seymour 37.3
Schayes 33.0
Lloyd 32.3

So, you've got a point that Lloyd isn't being used like an anchor...but neither is Schayes, the anchor of the team if one exists is clearly Seymour who was known for his man defense, and is also said to be often assigned to the other team's strongest player.

So yeah, I think what we're seeing here is a team effort, and I think it does make sense to say that Schayes played a part in it, but the fact remains that this was a team that won with defense, and all indications are that other players were a bigger part of that than Schayes.

Do when I look at Arizin vs Schayes, what I'm seeing are more and more indicators that Arizin's title was far more about his excellence than Schayes' title was about his. What Schayes has going for him isn't just the longevity, but the fact that he kept getting better for years. Whereas Arizin likely became a 40 MPG playoff guy basically right when he entered the league at age 22 for the 1951 playoffs, Schayes didn't get there until he was 28 in the 1957 playoffs despite turning pro a couple years younger than Arizin.

There's so much that's hard to draw conclusions on here.

Given that the NBA was getting stronger all this time, this is literally a statement that Schayes did better against a tougher league than Arizin. On the other hand, the fact that it really seems like Schayes was at his best not when the team was in its heyday as a contender.

[trex_8063]

I find the Stockton votes this high sort of dubious. Like what good explanations is there for a top 25 player of all time to play 18 years(!) with a guy who was just voted the 16th best player of all time and not only never won a single ring, but only made 2 finals appearances in 18 years? He's a very fine player, but at some point longevity has diminishing returns when you accomplished less in more time than others.

Stockton in a vacuum simply doesn't give you a better chance at championships than Curry, Wade, and Durant. Cp3's still a question mark for me since he doesn't have proof he can stay healthy for long playoff runs, so i don't know how to compare him with Stockton. Colts makes a good case for Stockton over Nash, though i think if he plays his whole career with Malone i don't see how he doesn't win at least one title.

So for Stockton supporters, what's there to make of this? We know both him and Karl have great durability. Why didn't they get over the hump or at least make more serious pushes for a title? We can't just say "well they ran into Jordan" or something. They rarely were able to get out the West as it stood. I think if Stockton's longevity means as much as people say shouldn't we be seeing more results?

Just a heads-up: I do intend to respond to this post, but I'll put it in the next thread [as it will bear more relevance there anyway, and it's time to wrap this one up].

[trex_8063]

Thru post #87:

Kevin Durant - 5 (DQuinn1575, Dutchball97, Joey Wheeler, Joao Saraiva, Magic Is Magic)
Stephen Curry - 4 (Clyde Frazier, Doctor MJ, freethedevil, penbeast0)
Chris Paul - 2 (sansterre, trex_8063)
Bob Pettit - 2 (Cavsfansince84, Dr Positivity)
Steve Nash - 2 (eminence, Jordan Syndrome)


A sudden drop to 15 votes itt; will require 8 for a majority, so we have to eliminate THREE players all at once. This transfers 4 votes to Durant and 2 to Curry.....

Durant - 9
Curry - 6

Well that was quick and easy. Calling it for Durant, and will have the next up in a moment....

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[quote=”sansterre”].[/quote]

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[70sFan]

For those who talk about Schayes - trex did a play-by-play breakdown of 1961 Nationals game against the Knicks where Schayes (although past his peak) still played significant role. You may look at the game and the stats if you are interested

[eminence]

Eh, I think we should look at the playoff MPG for these guys in the two #1 defense seasons in comparison to the #1 minute guy:

1954 Playoffs
Seymour 43.0
Schayes 28.8
Lloyd 26.0

1955 Playoffs
Seymour 37.3
Schayes 33.0
Lloyd 32.3

So, you've got a point that Lloyd isn't being used like an anchor...but neither is Schayes, the anchor of the team if one exists is clearly Seymour who was known for his man defense, and is also said to be often assigned to the other team's strongest player.

So yeah, I think what we're seeing here is a team effort, and I think it does make sense to say that Schayes played a part in it, but the fact remains that this was a team that won with defense, and all indications are that other players were a bigger part of that than Schayes.

Do when I look at Arizin vs Schayes, what I'm seeing are more and more indicators that Arizin's title was far more about his excellence than Schayes' title was about his. What Schayes has going for him isn't just the longevity, but the fact that he kept getting better for years. Whereas Arizin likely became a 40 MPG playoff guy basically right when he entered the league at age 22 for the 1951 playoffs, Schayes didn't get there until he was 28 in the 1957 playoffs despite turning pro a couple years younger than Arizin.

There's so much that's hard to draw conclusions on here.

Given that the NBA was getting stronger all this time, this is literally a statement that Schayes did better against a tougher league than Arizin. On the other hand, the fact that it really seems like Schayes was at his best not when the team was in its heyday as a contender.

It is interesting to note that Seymour was the consistent minutes leader, but more often than not I don't feel it was by a large enough margin over Schayes to take any conclusions just from minutes.

In particular the '54 playoff minutes huge gap are explained by Schayes breaking his wrist in the closeout game against Boston, leading to pretty limited minutes in the Finals while wearing a cast on his right hand. (I think under 20mpg)

[WestGOAT]

*You note how the Jazz offense seems to rise and fall on Malone more than Stockton.....is this a surprise to anyone? Or a major criticism to sustain? Karl Malone's an all-timer, was the clear focal point of their offense.
If we similarly found the Rockets offense lived or died more on James Harden than on Chris Paul.....is that really a surprise OR a point of shame for Paul?

I've seen a couple of posters claiming that Stockton was pretty much 1a/1b to Karl Malone, like colts18 kept insisting in this thread, so I thought I might as well just look at the available data and see if I can make a meaningful contribution by sharing whatever I could find, regardless if it flies against my own pro-bias, which you rightfully mention, for Isiah Thomas or my skepticism of John Stockton. I was particularly interested to see if these correlation plots could provide a more quantitative approach to establish which players a team relies on the most for its offense.

Of course, since we are merely looking at associations you cannot really make claims about causation, but it could hopefully provide us some clues.

**In a prior thread you'd stated that Stockton "took much more of a backseat" once Hornacek arrived (which seemed only minimally supported by the data, which I'd pointed out). I then pointed out that Isiah seemed to similarly [that is: to the same degree] "take a backseat" with the arrival of Joe Dumars.
This data that you show indicates the Piston offense was more reliant on Dumars than the Jazz one was on Hornacek, AND that there's basically negligible difference between Thomas and Dumars in terms of how much the offense relies [whereas there's a large difference between Stockton and Hornacek].

I think the data definitely indicates that Dumars offensive performance (from 1986 to 1990) is slightly less or just as equally associated as Thomas's offensive performance with the Piston's ORtg. But for the exception of Dantley from 1987 and 1988, these results are in line with the notion that Thomas was at least 1a/1b on offense, unlike for Stockton who was a clear second to Malone from 1988 to 1998.

I do think it's fair to say it was mainly Malone and Stockton during 1994-1998, though I only compared them to one teammate, that drove Utah's offense in the playoffs based on this data. I mean just looking at the plot you can see that Hornachek (empty purple circles) had quite a few bad games based on his individual ORtg (below 80), and the Jazz still had pretty good ORtg (>105). Of note, Jeff Malone was not so far behind from Stockton in 1990(?) to 1993.

***While you're probably right that it may be of limited value to compare the slopes from players on different teams, I'll nonetheless point out that Stockton actually has the steepest slope of any of the three PG's being compared (IT's 0.21, Nash 0.27, Stockton 0.27 in the smaller sample and 0.28 in the bigger one).

True, but I think the main value of these plots is to see which players "carry" the heaviest offensive load, relative to their teammates. IT is 0.23 btw, while Dumars is 0.21

****It seems you're subtly trying to downplay the validity of Dantley's correlation [which exceeds IT's] based on sample size; but it's a not insignificant 38-game sample. Further, if we have to question it based on an assumption that 38 games is not enough to be relevant, then tbh we have to throw or question MOST of the data presented (basically everything except Thomas, Dumars, and Laimbeer, the '94-'98 Jazz numbers, and maybe Nash alone).

That's true, it's not insignificant actually. It's just IT was basically the leader of a team did pretty well on offense in the playoffs from 1985 to 1990, whereas Dantley "only" played two post-seasons, of which the Piston's worse offensive showing was in 1988 (ranked 13th based on their relative ORTg compared to other playoff teams). Interestingly enough they were much better on offense the next season and based on this data it was not because of Aguirre, but rather the "arrival" of Dumars. It would be interesting to see how the charts looked if I only plotted data from 1988 to 1990 actually, perhaps Dumar's slope would be even higher than IT's .

[LA Bird]

I missed this thread but I think Schayes should be fairly close to Pettit. Similar to Harden and Durant, I think it's a combination of one being underrated and the other being overrated narrative-wise which leads to a large gap when they should be around the same level. And it's kind of strange to see the 54 playoffs being used against Schayes. Before he was undercut, knocked to the ground and broke his wrist, Schayes averaged 26.2 points, 17.4 rebounds, 3.2 assists on 64.7% TS in 39 minutes. That's a better playoffs stretch statistically than Mikan ever had after the lane widening in 52. Schayes was practically out for the next few games due to his injury (1.7 ppg in 11 minutes) but his numbers slowly went back up as he got used to the cast on his wrist and he had 18/13 on 6-14 shooting in G7 of the Finals. Mikan that game had 11/15 on 2-10 shooting. If he wasn't injured by the Celtics, Schayes could very well have won a title against Mikan H2H putting up better postseason numbers after a regular season where his team also had a better offense and defense than the Lakers (the only time the Lakers weren't the #1 SRS team).