In Friday’s post, The Kevin Durant Conundrum, TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott outlines why — based mostly on the reearch of Dallas Mavericks’ statistical expert, Wayne Winston — Durant is not helping his team.
The Thunder have, over the last two years, consistently performed worse than normal when Durant is on the floor. Any way you slice the +/- numbers, he’s one of the Thunder’s worst players.
You read that correctly. Kevin Durant, uniformly regarded as an out-of-this-world NBA player, has been killing his team.
Sometimes +/- can punish players simply for being on bad teams, but this is more than that. Mavericks’ statistical expert Wayne Winston’s in-depth lineup data shows that every one of Durant’s key teammates — Russell Westbrook, Jeff Green, Nenad Krstic, Nick Collison — gets better, in many cases far better, results playing with less heralded teammates Thabo Sefolosha or Kyle Weaver while Durant sits.
In fact, almost nobody on the Thunder has a +/- rating as poor as Durant’s. Winston rates Durant’s performance “in the lowest 10% of all NBA players.”
Abbott goes on to speculate as to why these numbers are the way they are, narrowing it to four different theories: 1) he plays big minutes on a bad team, 2) his teammates are bad, 3) it’s hard to play with a superstar, and 4) he’s very young and he’s likely to see his team outscored.
Durant must have heard about the column, because he fired back via his Twitter account with a series of tweets, obviously aimed at the article:
Everybody that is doubtin me as a player and my team as a whole..all i can say is that we all are tryin and workin our hardest!
What more do u want? let me be the player i am…i come to practice everyday..and push myself to my limit, God has put me n a gr8 position!!
I love all the REAL basketball fans who appreciate hardwork, passion and love for the game..and not jus “plus and minuses”…wateva dat is!
Abbott responded this morning with an open letter to Durant:
Here’s the deal: For two years, when you have been in NBA games, you have put up amazing numbers, but somehow your team has been better when you sat. When you have been out there, opponents have outscored your team pretty bad. When you sit, they don’t outscore your team as much. That’s what plus/minus is.
(The final score, by the way, is also plus/minus. If you play the entire game, and the team wins by twenty, you’re plus-20. It’s not one of those stats you want to ignore. Not when for two years it has been saying the same thing.)
In it, he discusses how Durant’s problems with the pick-and-roll, both offensively and defensively, are hurting the Thunder. It’s a good read for basketball nuts (like me).
As Abbott states in his Monday post, this is nothing to panic about. Durant just turned 21 and still has a lot to learn, especially on the defensive end. Even so, he’s still one of the best prospects in the league and has the potential to be one of the league’s true (few) franchise players. When a player is a terrific scorer (like Durant is), his faults are often overlooked. But that doesn’t mean they go unnoticed by the coaching staff or the opponent. It’s important for the Thunder to dig into these numbers and identify why they are the way they are. If they can fix the cause, it’s likely going to translate to wins for the franchise.
Oh, and the answer to the question in this post’s title is, yes, of course he’s a great player. But he still has room to grow.
Since it’s the holiday season and I’m feeling generous, I’m going with a two-fer for the LOTN. First up is Jerryd Bayless, who has been getting a ton of minutes with all the injuries that the Blazers have been suffering. Last night, Portland (without Brandon Roy, Greg Oden, Rudy Fernandez, Joel Przybilla) beat a healthy Spurs team in San Antonio, 98-94. Bayless posted 31 points and seven assists.
Meanwhile, in Phoenix, it was youth over experience as the Thunder beat the Suns, 117-113. Durant had 38 points, six rebounds and three assists, and hit 12 of 20 shots from the field, including a crucial jumper that put OKC up four with just seconds to play. Amare Stoudemire had 35-14 for the Suns, and basically had his way inside. If the Thunder can land a good power forward/center this offseason (Chris Bosh?), they’ll be in business. It’s hard to root for OKC given what the ownership did to the city of Seattle, but it’s just as hard not to like the young core of Durant, Russell Westbrook, Jeff Green and James Harden.