therealbig3 wrote:MrDollarBills wrote:Prokorov wrote:Stolen from the GB...
I like PJ Tucker. The guy is a pro and plays hard. But this is a clear example of how talent trumps everything. It doesn't matter what he does defensively. Durant's pull up and release is probably the most unstoppable basketball shot in modern basketball, easily on par with post Jordan's fadeaway, Duncan's bankshot and Dirk's one footer.
I don't have the numbers for any of those, but this dude pulls up with defenders within inches from him and they have no effect on his shot a majority of the time.
I've been a pretty harsh critic of Durant going back to his OKC days, mainly because despite what you say about his ability to pull up and shoot over anyone, he's had legit struggles in the PS before he joined GS. And then with GS, he was on the most stacked team of all time, and so obviously he was gonna put up dominant numbers, because defenses often times looked more scared of Curry than they were Durant, and so he had so much more freedom to do whatever he wanted.
But now in Brooklyn, without James Harden (meaning it's definitely not a super team, it's Kyrie and a bunch of role players), he's still dominating against a good defensive team with the reigning DPOY, and good defenders all over the place.
So it's making me rethink my criticisms of him from before...maybe the reason he struggled in the PS with OKC is because despite having Westbrook and good role players, those teams had awful spacing, and so it allowed defenses to collapse on him and force him into really tough shots, force him into being a ball handler and passer which are not his strengths, and it led to a drop-off in his efficiency. So he didn't necessarily need a team as stacked as GS...he just needed a team that had good spacing and a lead guard capable of taking up the ball handling and playmaking responsibilities, so that he could focus on what he does best.
And that's a reasonable expectation, everybody needs help. So the criticisms of his struggles in OKC may be too harsh, it may have had more to do with poor roster construction than fundamental deficiencies in Durant's game.
It is hard for me to agree that he struggle in the playoffs in OKC. I think thats more just focusing on speciic games maybe?
He led the NBA playoffs in scoring 4 of his 6 seasons in OKC. Overall 28 ppg his career in the playoffs in okc. his rookie year he shot awful in the playoffs, but that was 1 season as a rookie. His last year in okc he shot poorly from three for the run but that was weighed down a bit by 1 bad series.
28/8/3/1/1 on 46/35/84 with 56.5 TS%
not super elite, but still very good. especially if you remove his rookie year. deep playoff runs 5 of 6 seasons. he was outstanding in the CF/finals every time he was there.
I think he was just bad in losses. but he was outstanding in wins and outstanding overall.
