On the Wednesday episode of The Ringer founder Bill Simmons' podcast, Golden State Warriors superstar forward Kevin Durant and his manager Rich Kleiman joined to discuss an array of topics ranging from social media's influence on the NBA and advanced metrics.
Durant admits that he is not a fan whatsoever of all these new statistical categories that have surfaced in the NBA, such as true shooting percentage.
“I don't like analytics at all. I like field goal percentage defense, I like field goal percentage, I like turnovers, I like rebounds — the real stats. The true shooting percentage and effective field goal percentage and all that stuff. Come on man. It's flawed. PER. It's flawed,” Durant said.
The star forward also added a public service announcement directed at bloggers who are seemingly taking the human aspect out of the game of basketball by simply looking at statistics and not actually watching the games.
“Can I make a PSA real quick? All your blog boys and your fanboys that's gonna use everything I say and create an article — watch a basketball game. How about you write that,” Durant said. “I just want to say that, because all these guys are gonna write articles and get real mad about what I said tonight … they're gonna put their emotions into it. It's not about you. Watch a basketball game. Enjoy the game. Stop worrying about me so much. I just wanted to say that.”
He does make a good point there, though. People cannot get a true feeling for a basketball game by only looking at the statistics to write a quality story.
Part one of the episode with Simmons, Durant, and Kleiman can be listened to in its entirety here. Give it a listen, there's a lot of good points made and funny stuff.
Durant, who has missed the Warriors' last six games with a rib injury, is expected to return for Thursday night's game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
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