Daily Thunder.com

Hey Kevin, if you’re reading this, just know that none of us are doubting your ability to take us to the promised land one day as a member of the Thunder. All of us armchair experts are just looking at the numbers and trying to pick out trends and player pairs that put us in the best position to win games. We all know you give your all and are a passionate player. Keep up the good work, keep working on your game, and let the results speak for themselves.

Can anyone name a single player drafted since 2007 they would rather have than Durant right now? Even with a wonky +/-, he’s easily better than everyone from his own draft class. Last year, the stiffest competition would be from Rose and Lopez, but Rose doesn’t defend either and Lopez’s team was only mediocre because of Harris and Carter. Perhaps Griffin could ultimately be as good, but we are a stellar rookie campaign and huge follow-up away from even thinking about the comparison.

I’ll admit I’ve gotten down on Durant for these numbers, and that in general I like numerical analysis of human trends, but even I am not going to pretend Kevin is anything but great. Look at MJ’s early career. It took him years to be more than just the best guy on the floor. It took years for his teammates to adjust to him as well. If Durant has bad +/- numbers, I have to fault his teammates at least half. Look, everyone knows what Durant can do, and everyone knows the defense will be keying in on Durant entirely. If the entire rest of the team can’t get anything done when the opponent focuses in on one guy, it can’t be all that guy’s fault.

One other thing that the Abbott article left out is that Durant always plays against the other team’s best players. On a young team with limited talent last year, it would make sense that any time the other team puts their best players out on the floor, the Thunder would get outscored.

I would also say that when you have a superstar like Durant, team mates will tend to defer instead of playing team ball. But improvement will come with time. It’s not like Kobe or Lebron stepped in and took a bad team to a championship (hell Lebron still hasn’t managed to pull that off). It took them time to figure out how to make their team mates better, and you can hate Kobe all you want to (I know I do), but he is one of the best at just doing the little things to help the team and finding ways to exploit weaknesses.

And yes, I think we all know that Durant has some areas where he can improve (what player doesn’t) but given his tremendous work ethic, I’m certain it will come….. and soon!!

And yeah, just in case you managed to find a minute of your time to see what us armchair types have to say Mr. Durant…. know that I wouldn’t trade you for any single player in the league.

And that’s not because you are better than every player, but because I think that one day you will be… and I wouldn’t miss out on that show for anything!!

KD has nearly 75,000 twitter followers, and who knows how many others that send tweets his way. The feeling I get is that his fans, or haters, read the article and tweet him about it.

KD may have no idea when articles about him are published, but he suddenly sees 100 tweets all dogging him for his +/- and using it to tell him how he compares to their favorite player, etc…

I just get the feeling the tweets were directed more at annoying fans than to Henry Abbot.

OK, KD if you don’t know what +/- is, then why are you commenting on it???

thanks! good to be back – can’t wait until the season starts!!!