The Kevin Durant Conundrum

Very well written article by Henry Abbott of TrueHoop on ESPN. He's a stats oriented basketball analyst and a Portland Trailblazers fan. While I say this is a good article, I'm sure many will dislike his analysis of Kevin Durant, which mostly focuses on plus-minus statistics.

To make it short, according to these statistics, KD's impact on his team (Oklahoma City Thunder) is significantly negative. In fact, his team according to these +/- stats performs better when he's on the bench. WTF!? indeed. The article address many of the counterpoints you'd think of, such as Durant's +/- being horrible since he's on a bad team, the number of minutes he plays, the fact that he has to carry the load, etc. What's interesting though is how his teammates' +/- along with 2, 3, 4, and 5-man rotations having decent +/- 's that don't include him.

Like I said earlier, there could possibly be some bias here, as Abbott is a Blazers fan and is definitely trying to justify the Greg Oden draft selection. Whether you agree or disagree with his premise of KD's extremely negative contribution to his team, it sparks a good debate about statistical analysis in basketball, specifically these +/- stats and how we should really interpret them. Why do these stats reflect so poorly on him when it appears he's a top 10 player in the NBA? A conundrum indeed.

Here's the original article:

The Kevin Durant Conundrum

KD got a hold of this article and is obviously disturbed by it, and he "tweets" the following (I also saw this on his facebook fan page).

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 writes another fantastic article in response to these tweets, where he not only explains the statistics, but does it in more of a basketball language. As us Longhorn basketball fans already knew, despite his incredible raw talents, he still has a lot to work on. Specifically, he needs to improve on his defense and pick-and-roll execution. The fact that many of his teammates perform better when he's off the floor suggests he's not doing a good job at making his teammates better. So we can see he's not there yet, but there's no reason to believe he won't get there. In Abbott's response article, he mentions other stars that went through similar struggles, so KD is in good territory.

Here's Abbott's response to Durant's "tweets" (sigh).

Memo to a Young Baller