The Finals ended last week with the Golden State Warriors once again at the mountaintop. It was yet another championship for the Warriors, who are now in the middle of what can be considered a dynasty. The NBA Finals wasn't only about that, though.
It left Kevin Durant holding not only the championship trophy, but also the Maurice Podoloff trophy for the second straight year. Though a controversial choice for the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player award, Durant kept the Cleveland Cavaliers at bay in Game 3 of the series with a monstrous 43-point performance.
The 7-foot (listed at 6-foot-9) Durant is one of the top two best players in the league today.
The other one? Cavs forward LeBron James.
In an exclusive interview by Michael Lee of Yahoo Sports, Durant appeared to take a shot at James and his status as the league’s best player.
“I feel like it’s easy to be the best player when you don’t have good players around you,” Durant told Lee. “I feel like it’s harder to stand out when you have great players around you,” Kevin Durant told Lee. “I pride myself on standing out wherever I am. I pride myself on working hard wherever I go. And I feel like these guys embraced me and I feel like I’m a Warrior.”
That statement easily comes off as a contemptuous look at LeBron James and his Cavaliers teammates while elevating himself to the level of the four-time MVP. The fact that he said “I pride myself” immediately after indicates that he may be quite full of himself here after winning the Finals MVP twice.
So what if we replaced James with Durant on the Cavs roster? Would he be able to do what James did and carry this team to the Finals?
Let’s try to put that theory to the test, shall we?
The Premise
In an interview ahead of Game 1 of the Finals, many were skeptical that Durant could bring a team similar to the overmatched Cavs to the championship round the same way that James did.
“I can’t control that,” Kevin Durant told The Mercury News. “I know what I bring to my team. I know my role on my team. I’m just trying to play in a way that will help us win a championship. That’s the only thing I can do.”
Though he was politically correct in his response when presented with the criticism, especially after he won his two championships only after joining a 73-9 Warriors team in 2016, it appears that he felt slighted by the insinuation. It was something that he would not forget so soon that he ultimately let his true feelings out in the interview with Yahoo Sports.
The Finals
In the four-game Finals sweep, James averaged 34.0 points, 10.0 assists, 8.5 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 1.0 blocks per game. But as Bleacher Report’s Adam Well noted, the “rest of Cleveland's starting lineup combined to average 42.8 points and 22.0 rebounds in the series.”
On the other hand, Durant averaged 28.8 points, 10.8 rebounds, 7.5 assists, 0.8 steals and 2.3 blocks per contest.
If Durant were to be asked to take on a greater load in the Finals if he were to play with the Cavs, he’d have to score more and shoot more while maintaining an above 50 percent shooting from the field. He and James had identical shooting percentages at 52.6 and 52.7, respectively. To be the only player who can repeatedly score against the Warriors on this Cavs team, Durant would need to be a threat both to score and to pass to a wide open teammate.
Though Durant averaged one less assist than James in the Finals, this doesn’t mean immediately that he is at par with the Cavs forward as an assist man. The fact is, Durant’s passes often end up on the hands of two of the best shooters in league history which helps a lot when you’re giving up the rock.
On this Cavs team, despite having Kyle Korver and Kevin Love around, his passes would also fall into the hands of inconsistent shooters such as Jordan Clarkson, George Hill, J.R. Smith, Rodney Hood… you get the picture.
It would be harder for Durant to stand out as an assist man with less accurate shooters on his team.
The 2017-18 Regular Season
Even if we compare their regular season stats, James has the edge by a huge margin as a playmaker, 9.1 to 5.4 for Durant.
James’ assist numbers have never gone below 5.9 and that was in his rookie season with a team that had less talent than the ones he played with in this year’s Finals. Comparing his assists per game the past seven seasons when he had more help versus his numbers this past season with less help, James averaged a career-high 9.1 assists a game while playing all 82 games and averaging 37.2 minutes this year.
Durability
Speaking of playing 82 games, LeBron James played every game this season as he needed to play more to keep his team in the playoff hunt and to keep the Cavs from falling beyond the number four seed in the playoffs. Durant hasn’t played more than 72 games the past four years.
For the Warriors, despite not being the only All-Star on the team, Durant has also missed several games in the regular season. He played in 62 games two seasons ago and 68 games this past year.
If Durant were on the Cavs, and he had to carry the nightly load as James did, he wouldn’t have been able to appear in every game since he would likely miss more games due to the demands placed on his shoulders physically. The Cavs would have lost more games and gone down to a lower seed in the playoffs because of so many games that he will have missed.
The Cavs needed James’ presence in every game just to be competitive just as they will have needed Durant to play in every contest this past season to have a chance to win if he were on that team.
Playing for OKC
Let’s take Durant’s time with the Oklahoma City Thunder and see how he fared with players who aren’t as gifted in shooting as his more accomplished teammates in Golden State.
During his last year in OKC, the Durantula averaged 5.0 assists per game. The argument can be made that Russell Westbrook handled the ball much of the time and is the primary assist man on the team. Even so, Kevin Durant has not shown that he’s capable of playing on the same level as James when it comes to making his teammates better and carrying his team to the Finals without great teammates aside from Westbrook.
When James Harden left OKC for the Houston Rockets, it was harder for him and Westbrook to get beyond the Western Conference Finals. At times, they would be booted out of the playoffs after the second round. The last time Durant was able to lead his team to the Finals was in 2011 where they lost 4-1 versus James and the Miami Heat.
As many have noted, Durant left OKC because he could not bring that team to the Finals. Instead, he took the easy route by going to the team that made it to the championship round the two previous seasons.
If Kevin Durant wasn’t considered the best player in the game when he was with the Thunder, a team that wasn’t as talented as the Warriors, it’s doubtful that anyone would think of him as James’ equal if he played for this Cavs team.
LeBron’s MVP Awards with Heat and Cavs, 8 Straight Finals
Most of the media, players, former players and fans bestowed the title of best player in the game to James because no matter which team he had with him, no matter how weak or strong, he always brought them to the Finals or at least brought them close to it.
His MVP awards in 2009 and 2010 with the Cavs showed that he could carry a team with little talent to the best record in the league — though he lost in the Conference Finals and the Conference Semifinals, respectively. And when he had All-Star teammates in Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh when he played for the Heat, he won another set of back-to-back MVP’s in 2012 and 2013 as well.
For the past eight seasons, despite not winning the MVP award every year, he is widely believed by many as the best in the game by far. Though Harden will most likely win his first MVP award this June, no one believes he is better than LeBron James. He may have had a career year, but it is undeniable that when compared to the 14-time All-Star, Harden is not even close to James’ level of dominance.
In Durant’s case, he was the runner-up to the MVP award in three of James’ four seasons when he won the award (2009-10, 2011-12, 2012-13). Durant finally won his lone MVP award in 2013-14.
It is difficult to bestow the best player title to Durant when there is little evidence that he can carry James’ Cavs team to the Finals if we were to swap these two great players.
Former Player Gives His Take
Former All-Star and NBA champion Antoine Walker, who was an excellent passing forward during his time, recognized the difference between Durant’s playmaking abilities and James’ in an appearance in an episode of First Things First.
At the same time, he also couldn’t see the Warriors forward capable of carrying a team like the Cavs all the way to the Finals and be considered the best player in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ydXGjZqZV0
“When Kevin Durant’s career is over with he will say he was the best 6”11’/7-foot efficient scorer we’ve ever seen in the game,” Walker told co-hosts Cris Carter and Nick Wright. “He will be one of the guys to have a championship. I look at Carmelo Anthony. He’s a great scorer, unbelievable. That’s who he’s going to be remembered as. Dirk Nowitzki got a title, at 7-foot, great scorer. That’s what he’s gonna be remembered as. Those guys will be Hall of Famers, I’m not saying they won’t be Hall of Famers, but Kevin Durant will never ever be considered in the conversation as the G.O.A.T., as the best player in this league, top five best player, no matter how many titles he wins.
He will never be considered in that conversation. You don’t hear guys comparing [James with Durant]. Everyone wants to compare. There’s no comparison. Kevin Durant cannot take that Cleveland team this year to the Finals. He doesn’t have that type of skill set. He can score the basketball. You look at his numbers he has had a couple of years where he averaged five assists a game. But it’s easy to average five assists on Golden State when I got two of the best shooters in the world with me. That’s not hard to do.
And obviously, you’re not getting double-teamed as much so it’s a lot of things that works in his favor playing with Golden State but I just didn’t like the move, I’m not for the move. I understand the move. When you’re a free agent, you can go where you want to go. But as a competitor a guy that wants to compete against the best, it’s not a good move.”
Conclusion
James currently owns the unofficial title of the best player in the game not because he was merely the best player on a bad team. Rather, he’s widely regarded to be the best because he was able to bring them to the Finals in spite of his team’s inadequacy.
Durant envies James and his status as the league’s premier player. He has a ways to go before he overthrows the King from his throne. Not only does he need to show up for games in the playoffs, he has to consistently carry the Warriors in the regular season as well.
As it is, many still consider his teammate Stephen Curry as the team’s most indispensable player. If he doesn’t own that distinction from within his own team, it’s unlikely that he can supplant James from being the league’s best player.
In other words, if we were to replace James with Durant on the Cavs roster, they would not have made the Finals.
Here’s my bold prediction, Durant could carry this team to the playoffs but, the Cavs will be out of the first-round and it will not reach seven games. He’s likely win to one or two games for the Cavs in a first-round matchup with the Toronto Raptors, as I believe that they will be in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.
At best, Kevin Durant would continue to be one of the two best players in the league, but that’s as far as he can go.
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