Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players in the NBA: Kevin Durant has ZERO significant weakness in his game

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one of the more underrated players in the league. And there's a bunch of different reasons for that, right, Like, it's the classic conundrum we see all the time that I've been dealing with with the lebron situation there in the late teens early twenties where it's like every time there's a new up and coming player, we always get are really quick to shelve the guys who have been doing it, you know, at a bigger stage, at a

higher level, for a very long time. I think it's just a human nature thing where people are just quick to try to embrace the new. I think that's part of it. I think the way KD acts on Twitter, which I don't really have a problem with, I think that rubs some people the wrong way. And then I think overreactions to a couple of playoff runs which really weren't that bad but maybe don't line up with Kevin Durant's like personal standard right particularly the Celtics series from

two years ago. I don't think people realize just how good KD was in this playoff run, even though his

jump shot wasn't following. But as I kind of look at KD and where he is in the league right now, even after what's been a couple of underwhelming playoff runs, I have a top three in the league that involves Steph Giannis and Jokic in some order, right, I think those guys are all a slight level above everyone else, just in terms of their consistency in the regular season the last three years and their playoff success in the last three years. I don't think anybody can complain with that.

All three of them have won finals MVPs in the last three years. All three of them have been pretty consistently available and great in the regular season over the last three years. I think those three guys are clearly at least deserving of the recognition of being above the

rest of the field. But as I look through the rest of the group, the Superstar group, right, which is you know, Katie Embiid and then Anthony Davis, Jason Tatum, Jimmy Butler, Lebron James Luke, Doncicz, Kawhi Leonard, and Devin Booker. As I look at the rest of that group, those guys are all really close. But I also think Katie is clearly the best player in that group of guys.

So for me, of all the different decisions I had to make in my top twelve, all of them were really hard, but there were two of them that were very, very easy for me. It was very easy for me to put Yokich at number one. That was like the very first pick I made. That's just as clearcut a deserving of the Crown type of season as you could possibly put together. And then KD at four because among the guys that aren't in that at like recent Finals MVP tier, I think Kd's clearly better than the rest

of those guys. So I didn't really have a lot of trouble with that particular decision. We'll see. I'm interested to see how you guys feel about it. But to me, I think KD is clearly the best of the rest in the Superstar tier. Now why is that? Why do

I feel that strongly about KD? Well, since leaving Golden State, he has been the most efficient volume scorer in the NBA twenty nine points per game, and nobody in the NBA has been able to beat his sixty six percent true shooting percentage sixty six percent true shooting percentage over a three season span, just thirty points per game. Steph Curry hasn't been able to beat that, Joel Embiid hasn't

been able to beat that. The only guy who's come close in terms of efficiency is Nikola Jokic, and he scores at a significantly lower volume. In the span since KD left Golden State, he's only at about twenty five points per game. So KD like, regardless of how you feel about what happened in the last two playoff runs, especially when you couple it with his playoff resume before that, he is the best scorer in the NBA, still at

volume at absurd efficiency. And then he couples that with being an above average playmaker, an above average defensive player, and he can plug and play with any roster in the league because of his versatility offensively and what he can do on and off the basketball. So to put it simply, he has the best top end skill out of anybody in that four to twelve range, and he doesn't have a significant weakness, whereas all the players beneath

him do. Katie has a couple of weaknesses, and we'll talk about them, and I think that they're you know, pretty standard for players of his particular archetype, and we'll get to that when we get there. But compared to the guys beneath him in this four to twelve range, his weaknesses are much easier to manage and kind of like a build into the scheme of a basketball team. Than what you see with some of these other players. So that's why I have him at number four. Let's

do a quick season recap. He played in forty seven games this season. Now, that's one thing with KD that you kind of have to add as an important footnote here. He has pretty consistently suffered significant injuries in the regular season that have limited the amount of games he's been able to play. But this has not been a situation where he hasn't been able to get it together and

be healthy in time for the playoffs. Now, I would argue that, particularly in the last two seasons, he had about a month going into the twenty twenty two playoff run, and he had about what I think like five games going into the twenty twenty three playoff run. So like in each of the last two seasons, he's gone into the postseason still kind of on a ramp up from

an injury. And I do think that's an important context when we talk about his playoff struggles, because, again, especially with pull up shooting, so much of it is about being in such a good groove with your rhythm and your conditioning, and that being disrupted can have a significant effect on your ability to knock down shots, But I

do think it's important context with KD. He has suffered some regular season availability problems that have not manifested in any sort of missed playoff time, which I think if you're gonna miss games, the regular season is the time to do it right. In forty seven games this year, twenty nine points, seven rebounds, and five assists, sixty eight percent true shooting. Again, there's nobody in the league that scores in terms of volume and efficiency the way that

Kevin Durant does. Here's the play type data, and I'm going with all from Brooklyn here because the eight regular season games he played in Phoenai uh just too small of a sample and he was pretty banged up and during that stretch. So I'm just gonna zoom in on his shot creation data from when he was in Brooklyn. Absolutely off the charts. Half court static shot creation data. Look at this in pick and roll situations, the Nets scored three hundred and sixty points on two hundred and

ninety one Kevin Durant pick and rolls. Think about how I'm saying that is that's a point in a quarter per possession, one point twenty four points per possession. For a perspective, Luka was the best volume pick and roll guy in the league this year at one point one point five. Now obviously lower volume but in large part because of injuries. But to give you an idea, in the smaller sample size, which you know, not a non existence sam so I, still almost three hundred pick and rolls.

Kadie was scoring or generating points a full tenth of a point per possession better than Luka Doncic, who was the best volume pick and roll ball handler in the league this year. That's insane passing was the one that stood out to me all season long. The teams that were guarding Kevin Durant and pick and roll when he

was with Brooklyn were being outrageously aggressive. They were consistently defending the action three on two, constantly trapping and blitzing and hard hedging and all these different things, just doing everything they could to get the ball out of his hands. And he's so damn tall that he could make all the raids out of it. It was particularly this like kind of looping pass over the top to the role man or a quick bounce pass he could make the

skip pass to the shooters. He was just picking teams apart in pick and roll and doing it really with a selection of players which were good, not great, like he was doing it with a bunch of league average role player type guys, right, And I thought it was honestly some of the most impressive individual shot creation that

I saw during the regular season last year. If you remember, before Kevin Durant's injury, I said on this show that I thought he was playing better basketball than anybody in the league, and it was his injury that derailed what could have been an MVP. He campaign for it, which would have been a wild turn of events after what

happened during that summer. But I do think again, like this is why I say like, I think Kevin Durant's become a little bit underrated, And I understand why the injuries in the regular season keep you out of the frame of mind for a while. Suddenly people start to heavily focus on the guys that are on the court playing every day. He's had a couple of playoff runs

that haven't quite meshed up with his standard. I get it, but this guy is so freaking insanely good at basketball, and I feel like the basketball world has forgotten and I think people are making a mistake there because the dudes got mileage left in those legs. And I don't want it to be one of those situations where things come together and he wins a title and everyone's like, oh, look at this Kevin Durantz back and it's like he's been here the whole damn time, and I think we've

just been overlooking him a little bit. One point zero four points per isolation thirteenth out of twenty five players to run at least two fifty not his best isolation season. One point one four points per post up seventh out of forty three players to attempt at least one hundred, so very very good post up season for him, really all fueled by the simple fact that he is the most efficient shot maker in the NBA. It's not particularly

close either. Fifty five percent effective field goal percentage on catch and shoot jumpers that's really good. Sixty percent effective field goal percentage on pull up jumpers that's like freaking outrageous. That's second best in the league behind Steph Curry and uh. In terms of individual field goal percentage, it's much higher. Steph just takes a bunch of pull up threes That kind of gives him a one percent edge there. Katy was fifty five percent on floaters and seventy nine percent

in the restricted area, which is amazingly efficient. But Katy only made eighty three shots in the restricted area all season. That's only one point eight per game. To give you some perspective, there were two hundred and two players in the NBA this season who made more shots in the

restricted area than Kevin Durant. So I would say that if you had to find one particular weakness for Kevin Durant in his game, in his game, he does not generate nearly as much rim pressure as his peers, which can somewhat limit his effectiveness when his jump shot is not falling. It's it's I wouldn't call it a crippling weakness, but it's definitely the weakest point in his particular game.

And what ends up happening is when his pull up jump shot is not falling, he can experience some limited impact. I think you saw that a lot more in the Celtics series than you did this year in the Denver series. I was really impressed by Kevin Duranton this particular season in that Denver series with his jumper not falling and

him responding by starting to attack the rim more. And I think I think you primarily saw that in free throw attempts, and he generated a shit ton of free throw attempts in that series that helped bolster his offensive production when a shot wasn't falling. So now this is the real, the real like drop off point for KD in these last two postseasons. So this is a guy who pretty consistently in the last couple of years has been about sixty percent an effective field goal percentage on

pull up jump shots in the regular season. In the Boston Celtics series, he shot in the low thirties in field goal percentage on pull up jump shots. In this particular postseason run, he went down from sixty percent effective field goal percentage of forty five percent effective fielgal percentage. Pretty significant drop off. And I think this is the

reason why people got off the KD bandwagon. They're like, oh, if you started missing jump shots, and again, you got to accept it for what it is, which is a small sample size, little bit of variance. Like, again, guys, there's gonna be some drop off. It's more physical, it's

more intense, there's better defenses. So yeah, I would expect his effective field goal percentage on pull up jumpers to drop from sixty to maybe fifty two to fifty three, right, But I think we can all agree that KD was missing a lot of shots that he normally makes and it wasn't really that bad forty five percent in effective field goal percentage, which we can consider again a massive

drop off for KD. Paul George shot forty eight percent for the entire regular season on pull up jump shots, so what we consider to be a massive drop off for KD is only slightly below where one of his significant peers in the league is during a good scoring regular season for him, And again, it wasn't even as bad as it looked this postseason. I think you guys would probably be surprised to know that KD averaged twenty

nine to nine and six on sixty percentury shooting. How many players in the league can even do that, And that's Kd's shots not following postseason sixty percent of shooting twenty nine points per game with nine rebounds and six assists.

Like I think, I think again, this is the same problem we've had with Lebron for a while too, where we become so accustomed to this like kind of like vaunted expectation of what their ceiling is, which we've kind of like we've turned into something mythological that all of a sudden when there's some sort of drop off, which a lot of times it is just a change. Like Katie is better at manufacturing points by pressuring like downhill pressure and drawing fouls. He's better at that now than

he's ever been. So even if there was a version of this story in the past where he made more jump shots, like this is a damn effective postseason. Same thing with Lebron. It's like, oh, jumper wasn't following this year. You're right, Lebron had a bad jump shooting season, but he's like as good scoring out of the post. He's better scoring out of the post than he's ever been. And so even in this like limited version of Lebron,

he was still successfully dissecting defenses in the playoffs. So it's all relative, and yeah, relative to Kd's absolute best postseasons, it wasn't his best. But as I actually look at the list of guys like Anthony Davis led his team to the Western Conference Finals. That was not a perfect postseason, very up and down offensively. Jason Tatum led his team to the conference finals. Wasn't perfect. That was pretty up and down. Jimmy Butler unbelievable in the Buck Series, pretty

normal Jimmy Butler after that for three rounds. So like, if you have this built up expectation like what Jokic did where you kick everyone's ass for four rounds, there's maybe one dude who does that every year, maybe one. In some years, there's not even a guy who does that. So like, again, we gotta adjust our expectations here. This is an NBA two K. You don't have dudes go

out there and play perfect every single night. And when you really get down to it, how many guys in a down shooting postseason are gonna give you a twenty nine nine and six on six two percent true shooting

with above average defense. How many guys? Now? Again, Like, I actually thought this was one of similar similar to what I was talking about with the Lebron video where I was talking about how like it was one of my favorite postseasons rooting for him as I watched him as a competitor work through his struggles same thing with

Kevin Durant. Game three, in particular against Denver was one of my favorite Kevin Durant games that I've ever watched, and I you know, I can think of a lot of great Kevin Durant games, and like, for instance, one of my all time faves is Game four against I want to say it was Game four against the Calves

in twenty eighteen. It was one of the best games I've ever seen a basketball player play where KD just absolutely picked the Calves apart as like this point forward passing, making every decision with the live dribble from the top of the key. I think he had a triple double. I think it was a forty point triple double if I remember correctly, and I remember walking away from that game like holy shit. Two of the greatest games I've ever seen players play in this series. Lebron in Game one,

Kevin Durant in Game four. I can think of a bunch of games like that over Kevin Durant's career, and those are impressive in a different way as they reflect dominance and I enjoy those performances. But to me, like as a competitor, I've always appreciated the games where things aren't going well, where the command of the game isn't there. But like, you have a choice as a player in

those situations, what are you going to do? Are you going to just be like, man, I don't have it tonight, or are you gonna be like, shit, man, I've got to do something to find a way to win this game. There was a game game three against Denver and Katie's jumper was broke. It's one for five from three, missed a bowlo to mid range pull ups, had nothing going.

But like, if you watch the game, you could visibly see KD just pressuring and pressuring and pressuring off the dribble, just forcing the issue to manufacture points by manufacturing rim pressure and making nice kickout passes by drawing fouls by getting to the rim. And in a game where he could not make a damn jump shot, he finished with thirty nine to nine and eight in a win against

a championship level team. How many guys in the league right now can give you thirty nine, nine and eight at all, let alone thirty nine nine and eight in a playoff game against a championship level opponent, in a game where his jump shots not falling, and like I remember after that game thinking that was awesome. He had nothing going. He had to literally just through sheer force of competitive will, find a way to help his team win a game and put up thirty nine, nine and eighth.

That's what I appreciated in general about that postseason. Like again, it shot creation situations in the postseason. Zero point eighty six points per ISO. Oh that's not good. Zero point seventy three points per post up. That's even worse. His shots wort falling in post up in ISO situations, he was twenty seven for seventy five from the field. And if you ask Kevin Durant, and he's talked about this,

he talked about it during his injury. He was obsessed with the concept of one on one basketball, just perfecting beating a matchup in individual situations. So Katie's bread and butter failed him, and he still put up twenty nine to nine and six on sixty percent TRU shooting. How he had one of his best transition postseasons. He scored seventy points in transition in two rounds. For example, Jimmy

Butler had eighty in four rounds. So he manufactured points in transition, he manufactured points by moving without the basketball coming In off screen situations he shot four forty percent, was deadly attacking closeouts like he just found a way

to help his team win. And so again, like I said earlier in summary, I think KD is one of those guys like Lebron where really the older generation just in general, where we're just so quick to try to embrace the new and we're so numb to what they're capable of that we just assume, because they're down a level from their individual peaks, that they're not at the same level as the guys above them. But I think

it's just flawed perspective. And if we actually really looked at these dudes and viewed them as anonymous, like just this playoff run, which we I've all agreed is below

Kevin Durant's normal level, if that was brandon Ingram. If brandon Ingram averaged twenty nine nine and six on sixty percent through shooting, shot forty five percent effective field goal percentage on pull up jump shots, and had a thirty nine to nine to eight game against Denver in the second round, we'd be leaving the postseason talking about whether or not he was like capable of being the best player in the world, Like we'd be celebrating the dude,

But because it's Kevin Durant, and because we've seen him hoist the trophy twice, and because we've seen him have all these big playoff moments, we're just like, ah, not the same KD. And And I think that has been hopefully one of the themes that I've gotten across over

the course of the last couple of years. Don't be in a rush to displace guys that are proven and that are still doing it at that level, because chances are if they end up in a playoff series this year, they're going to be more confident, more comfortable in that situation than their peers because they've done it so many damn times. One thing I would say, again, like I mentioned earlier, that he could still improve at this phase of his career, is just finding a way to attempt

more shots at the rim. I think KD is very aggressive as a scorer, but I also think he's extremely picky about when he shoots, and I think that's a good quality. I think that's what helps him be very easy to plug and play into other teams like you don't have to worry about Kdie taking shots outside of

the flow of the offense. He's one of the unique players in the league in his ability to be super aggressive but in the flow and so it doesn't really disrupt the flow, Whereas, like if Luca decided to be super aggressive in a quarter, it would be kind of like ugly as he just dribbled the ball off the court and shot every single time, right, Whereas like KD he could take six shots and ten possessions, but like two of them would be coming off a wide pin down,

one would be on a post up, another would be in pick and roll, two of them would be ISOs, one would be on the live dribble on the wing, another one would be kind of like a face up ISO, and you'd be like, man, like, all six of those were different. Four of them came off of action, one was in transition, whatever it is. There's just so much variety in what he does. It's easy to plug in, right, But I mean, this is the part where I see

an area of opportunity. His rim efficiency is outrageously good, like seventy nine percent in the regular season at the rim. In the restricted area. He was ten for eleven on shots in the restricted area against Denver ten for eleven, that's ninety one percent. So at a certain point, I'd like to see him be a little less picky and just get more shots up at the rim. You know, most most of his peers are around like seventy seventy five percent, and it's because they're taking a lot of

shots down there. And again, like we talked about a lot, like missed shots at the rim carry residual value provided that you run back on defense, and that is it occupies the rim protector. And when you occupy the rim protector, you do a lot of different things for your team.

You're either going to open up an offensive rebound opportunity or if you're reading the defense at a higher level, as soon as the rim protector comes over, the guy from the low man out of the weakside corners coming to tag the big man to box him out, and now you have kickout opportunities for threes. Rim pressure comes with all sorts of residual positive effects, and I think in general, on that Sun's team that's going to be

one of their specific weaknesses. And so I think that's one thing i'd like to see Katie do a little bit more here in the lat of the later phase of his career is just force it in there a little bit more, and just for a couple of different reasons, not just the residual values we talked about, but also because of that simple concept of heels versus toes on defense, which is more theoretical than in the actual footwork, because most defenders are up on their toes as much as

they can be. But the point is is like, as a defender either prioritizing being up on the pull up jump shot or being prepared for retreat steps to try to cut people off on the drive, demonstrate more of a willingness to drive, the defender is going to be more on their heels, so to speak, at least favoring backward steps, which is going to open up your opportunities

for off the drible jump shots. And we've seen his separation on pull up jump shots hasn't been as good in the postseason because guys are sitting on it a little bit. And so again like this is this is like it's one of those things where I do think that when you're as good at making all the other shots the way that he is, that even without the rim pressure, there's still a certain amount offensive success. It's just one small area of opportunity. So here's the last

thing I'll say. Katie has been the best volume scorer in the NBA since he left Golden State, as we established earlier. So you think one of two things. You either think that his last two postseasons are just outlier shot performances, or you think that's the new normal. I tend to think their outlier shot performances. Why because he shoots sixty percent on him in the regular season effective field goal percentage, And that's not fluky, that's real freaking basketball.

So again, you have an option here. You can choose to write him off, or you can believe in the

larger sample size of what this dude's capable of. And except the realities of that weird NETS team after James Harden had left coming off of an injury in twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three, a Son's team that traded away all of their depth for KD then lost Chris Paul and it basically was Katie and Devin Booker and like random dudes like Terrence Ross and Landrew Shaman, who were fine but end of the bench guys who are having to play significant minutes in the postseason for

the Suns. And I'm not trying to make excuses, because here's the thing. This year is a no excuse here for the Sons. You brought it. You converted Chris Paul into Bradley Beal, You made a bunch of really smart role player signings. Eric Gordon's a really good player to help in that situation. You to want Nabi a really good player to help in those situations. Chimezi met to a good try hard forward, the U Banks from Portland

a good try hard forward. They have loaded up on guys that are going to be able to give them more competent play around them and a much more available in higher ceiling low a higher floor two player in Bradley Beal to replace Chris Paul. So here's the thing. If we get to the postseason this year and the Suns underachieve again and Kevin Durant can't make pull up jump shots again, then I think we can have a serious conversation because that would be three postseasons in a

row where he underachieved in the postseason. It would be a roster that actually should have a certain higher ceiling. I'm with you at that point, but I'm a big believer in the benefit of the doubt, and we have like a decade of Kevin Durant basketball that should give us the benefit of the doubt to overlook a couple of rough postseason series relative to what his ceiling is when he was that great during the regular season. So again, you guys are welcome to write Kevin Durant off if

you want to. I'm not gonna be one of those guys. I haven't met number four this year. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. We will be back tomorrow with number three. The volume