Is Kevin Durant the anti-Battier? Well, maybe he was in 2008
SLAM had an article last week where slick writer John Krolik asked if Kevin Durant could be the anti-Battier in terms of plus/minus. Durant has one of the worst plus/minus scores in the league at -6.4 and overall plus/minus of -330 and Shane Battier is known to be valuable based almost exclusively on stats like plus/minus. There’s been some chatter recently about KD’s true value to the team on both ends and a lot of people point to the plus/minus.
But when I look at OKC this year, I really almost consider this as two different seasons. You’ve got the 2008 season and the 2009 season. And Durant’s horrid plus/minus numbers were really built up during that stinky 4-30 2008 start.
Consider: In 2009, in 25 games, Durant has an overall plus/minus of -39 (that’s including a -27 against Minnesota in which he played just 16 minutes). That’s with the team record being 9-16 in games he’s played this calendar year. So he’s averaging a -1.56 a game, which is a far cry from the overall -6.4 he has for the season.
For perspective, KD’s 2008 overall plus/minus was -291 for an average of -9.09 a game (32 games). In fact, he had only four positive games in 2008 and didn’t have his first plus game until the last day of November. That’s a difference of 7.53 between 2008 and 2009. So it’s safe to say, things have changed pretty drastically in this new year for KD.
I think with this whole plus/minus thing (I plan on getting into this more later), one really good way to judge it is to see what each guy did specifically in wins and losses. Obviously, when your team wins, your plus/minus is probably going to be plus but that’s because your teammates played well. You could have went 0-6 with five turnovers (hello Earl Watson) but you walk away with a +8 because Uncle Jeff and KD played awesome. But if you can put together a positive score in a losing effort, that means you played pretty well. And if you have a negative in a winning effort, then the opposite is probably true. Like I said, I want to get something together for the entire team soon, but since we’re on Durant, here’s his numbers:
In wins, Durant has an average plus/minus of +9.5 (+124 total) with only one game having a minus score (-2 against Minnesota in OKC’s first win).
In losses, KD has an average plus/minus of -10.34. In two losses Durant had a plus margin (+1 in both the 103-99 loss at Dallas and the 100-98 loss against NOLA). In 2008 his average plus/minus in losses was -11.4, but in 2009 with OKC much more competitive, his plus/minus average was -8.5 for a difference of 2.9.
So what have we learned? Obviously, Durant’s overall plus/minus isn’t a totally fair way to evaluate him. The team stunk in 2008 and lost almost every time out and with KD playing the most minutes, his plus/minus would naturally be through the roof. But now with the team winning some games and staying competitive in losses, it’s come down a lot. And it helps that Durant has been playing lights out in 2009 too. The team is playing better with role players contributing in lots of ways (thank YOU Thabo Sefolosha) and so when KD comes back, I’d bet that plus/minus keeps getting more positive.
Thanks for the analysis, Royce. This is really what I’ve been trying to say (without the numbers) all day.
All measurements hold some inherent flaws:
+/- is skewed towards players on good teams. A team that doesn’t win much has a very very hard time putting up any positives in that measure.
Hollinger himself has said that PER has a very difficult time rewarding defenders, especially those who don’t accrue high numbers in the supposed defensive statistics (steals, rebounds, blocks). He’s even gone so far as to question the very validity of those statistics in relation to actual defense.
Wins Produced, very much like +/-, is greatly affected by team record. A bad team will never have a player with an all-star level Wins Produced measure. It is a pretty useful measure for players on the same team, but not for players across different teams.
Win Score, similar to PER in that it overvalues bench players, is biased based on position. Statistics measured lean heavily towards those who score, rebound, and shoot a high percentage (which is to say, big men).
I hate to say this (because I’m a bit of a stat geek and I dearly love them), but sometimes we can get so caught up in them that we forget the most important thing: Is he a good basketball player?
And Kevin Durant is a very, very good basketball player.
KD version 2.0 is so much better than KD 1.0 that I think people around the country have crowned him “arrived”. It took him one year and an off season to be the dominant offensive player in the pros that he was in college, and that is impressive enough to overload the hype machine. He didn’t hit his ceiling in his second year, he still has time to find his inner Battier (or his inner Thabo… anyone?).
KD has that competitive fire that an athlete needs to work on the part of his game that is all discipline and work. He has already made defensive improvement (though it pales in comparison to his offensive improvement). Give him the rest of this season and an off season with the Scott Brooks regime (Ron Adams anyone?) and I’m thinking his defense won’t be such a glaring liability next year. That, along with his teammates continued improvement, and KD version 3.0 may be sporting a +/- worthy of a top 10 player.
That’s exactly it, Royce. There’s a different between what a stat geek can conclude with his/her formulas, and what a player really does on the court. We try harder and harder to quantify other people, but certain things (willpower, determination, adaptablity) can never be measured.
I’m a huge fan of numbers also. I actually didn’t even get into basketball until I used it in a Calc III extra credit paper. To this day, there are plenty of players that mean more to me as the numbers they produce than the game they play.
@Keith-Okay that’s just sick dude. (jking)
“I hate to say this (because I’m a bit of a stat geek and I dearly love them), but sometimes we can get so caught up in them that we forget the most important thing: Is he a good basketball player?
And Kevin Durant is a very, very good basketball player.”
Being a good basketball player is not necessarily the best for all players and certainly shouldn’t be the only criteria. In a 5 man lineup and in a 8-11 man rotation you need guys who fill roles and fit s with others. Raw +/- and even better adjusted +/- and adjusted lineup +/- gets at that in a fairly useful but not totally sufficient way.
Durant is #1 scoring option, But he also probably needs to become close to the #1 creator for other teammates and not as bad on defense. The recent numbers suggest pretty good progress is being made.
By adjusted lineup brooks had 9 lineups used over 25 minutes that work/win and 15 that almost all really stink. Only four of the good ones are currently available. Too early to know what lineup and how many lineups Thabo will make good.
http://basketballvalue.com/teamunits.php?year=2008-2009&team=OKC
Can’t just chase small sample numbers
but I think it would be easy to improve the rotation’s results by increasing usage of the successful lineups and diminishing the worst unless you really believe it for some reason and it shows some sign of turning around before too long.
If my previous post shows up the 4 good lineups all have 2 of Westbrook, Weaver and Watson suggesting that the extra ballhandler / quick defender helps. 3 of them have Durant-Green so it can work- if you put the right pieces around themn (Collison, Krstic and surprise Watson).
Don’t need to get too tricky just ride these 4 good lineups hard and then find 4 more.
Keep it simple right Crow?
This is a good post. It shows that there is really no holy grail of stats. The adjusted +/- is a nice tool, but it’s not the end all be all either.
Those of us that have been watching him for almost two years know that he is really coming along nicely, and that his defense is improving.
Whether or KD is responsible for the poor defense entirely or not isn’t the issue anymore. I believe the great thing to come from this past week’s success will be a concerted effort on both Durant and Green’s part to play defense with the same fervor and effort they give on the offensive end.
Plus, Henry Abbott had a great post earlier in the week how players get better at defense as they age. I believe that will be true for our young trio.
I will say this though, with Durant and Green on the floor at the same time, it is going to be very difficult to matchup with some teams. Green simply isn’t big enough to be a great power forward defender, nor is KD quick enough to be a great defender of many shooting guards. I don’t think anyone will doubt that when we have Collison and Kristic patrolling the paint versus Green and Collison/Kristic, we are better defensively. The same can be said for when we have Thabo when he guards the SG.
Yeah Joe. Study all the detail anybody wants but in the end do right big things as much as possible and the little stuff has less chance to hold you down. Tinker with the small stuff after you get the big stuff figured out.
It will change next season but for right now, based on the numbers but not messing with them in detail I’d use this set of lineups. Vary the minute distribution to matchups and performance:
Krstic Collison Durant Sefolosha Westbrook
Krstic Green Durant Weaver Westbrook
Krstic Green Weaver Sefolosha Westbrook
Krstic Collison Green Sefolosha Westbrook
Collison Green Durant Sefolosha Westbrook
Krstic Green Durant Sefolosha Westbrook
Krstic Green Durant Weaver Watson
Collison Green Durant Weaver Watson
Krstic Collison Durant Weaver Watson
Having been the person to set off the “Ewing Theory meets KD blowback” comments a couple of posts back, I’ll confess I’ve never seen Durant play. Haven’t had TV in my home since 1996, and I only watch the deep playoffs (something KD never got to in college).
So my comments on KD are based strictly on his stats, not on the gut call of watching the kid play. My attention was just piqued when the lousiest team in the league suddenly goes on a 4/5 tear that coincides with their best player sitting. Don’t tell me they played dogs over this time. OKC is a dog, and it’s been losing to those other dogs all year long. And even when it won once in a while, it never strung any wins together.
That is, until KD sat. The beauty of all of this is that we get to see what is what when KD comes back. Does Krstic fall back into a minor role? Rose not see the light of day? Other hands start to go cold?
Or, does OKC go on a royal tear now that their best player is back? It’s going to be very interesting to watch.
Last thing: my Spider sense was piqued about KD when I went through his stats. The stats show that this kid is one of the best shooters in the league. A brilliant shooter.
But sometimes, a shooter that good can work against a team if he becomes a crutch for the other players. It took Jordan what, 6 years?, to figure out that he had to just stop shooting during the middle of the game to let his sorry teammates get a little bit warm. That way, in crunch time, if the other team tripled him, and he kicked out, those warm teammates would nail it.
Some days, it looks like Kobe gets that. But then he’ll go all Kobe on us.
I don’t know if KD gets this yet. But even though he’s only 20, he’s so freaking good, he should have learned it already. I mean, I’m sure he went for 50 regularly in high school. Did he learn then the necessity of making sure your teammates stay warm, confident, and ready to go?
Well, as I said, it’s not like this stretch is completely out of nowhere. The team had a nice January (with KD) and got itself straight winning a couple of games back-to-back. OKC isn’t as bad as people seem to still think. Sure they stunk in 2008, but this is an entirely different group.
Great points, Peter. I think the crutch argument is probably the most apt in this situation, though I think you have overlooked the difference in play between 2008 and 2009. KD is a fantastic player, but he’s been trained since the age of 14 to be a one-man team. In college he was given complete freedom to dominate the competition. As a rookie, Presti basically did the same thing. He’s certainly learning (assists going up, defense improving), but he has a lot to be coached out of. As you mentioned, it took MJ years to figure it out. Kobe, considered one of the best players in the league, only gets it to a point.
Do I think the team overall is better with Durant? Yes. But do I think everyone not named KD gives their maximum effort while he’s in the game? No. And that’s something both sides need to work on. Durant needs to inspire his teammates to play as well as they can play, and that it will be rewarded. On the flip side, the team needs to accept what Durant can do while also demanding he be Lebron and MJ, not swept-in-the-first-round Kobe.
oh my god, did anyone see that ny times article about battier’s defense? it was eight pages! EIGHT! who cares about shane battier’s defense that much? this article is proof that relying on stats alone is silly.