Empty the Bench

By: Zachariah Blott

ESPN’s Henry Abbott wrote a story a few days ago about Kevin Durant that did something unusual. Unlike most gush pieces about the youngster, Abbott’s article was unique in that it looked at some of the advanced statistics that are out there, and pointed out that Durant calculates out as a pretty bad player by just about all of them. The author then spoke with Wayne Winston, one of the leading APBRmetrics researchers, and Winston said he would not advise an NBA GM to take Durant for free, considering how poor his calculated numbers are.

What!? The Durantula? The dude who rang up 46 points in the Rookie-Sophomore game last year is bad? How can this happen?

The number they were chiefly looking at was adjusted +/- (APM). You probably noticed that many boxscores nowadays let you know the +/- value of a player for the time he is on the court. For example, if a player plays the entire first quarter and his team is down 24-18, he is currently at -6 (exactly like hockey’s +/- if you’re familiar with that).

Kevin Durant Photo Credit: Icon SMI

This number has some value in that it lets you know how well a team is doing overall when a certain player is in the game: it is neither weighted toward offensive or defensive contributions, rather just the overarching goal of outscoring the opponent in order to win. Now this number also has a lot of obvious flaws: you may be playing alongside good or bad teammates, you may be facing all-stars or scrubs, maybe it’s late and you’re up by 25 so your team or the opponent is playing uninspired.

A lot of mathematically minded people have factored all of this stuff together and have developed adjusted numbers, APM’s, which eliminate these variables (a brief explanation of how this is done appears here). Although many people have come up with slightly different formulas to calculate APM, most of their results are reasonably close to each other’s. And in Durant’s case, they all come out bad. For example, here’s one site that calculates Durant as 8.62 points worse than an average player over the length of a game. Obviously this article has upset some people who are in love with his lights-out scoring ability, so I decided to dig a little deeper into what could be creating these numbers.

Dean Oliver, the statistician who got APBRmetrics going with his 2004 book “Basketball on Paper,” identified four key factors that have the highest correlation with winning or losing: 1) field goal percentage, 2) offensive rebounding, 3) turnover rate, and 4) the ability to get to the free throw line and convert free throws. This should look about right to most intelligent fans. If we take a look at how Durant might impact these four parts of a game on both ends of the floor—this last modifier is very important—we may gain some insight into his supposed negative impact on the Thunder.

Breaking down Kevin Durant’s contributions, after the jump …

Michael Beasley and Kevin Durant Photo Credit: Icon SMI

Field goal percentage

Durant shot 48% from the field and 42% from long-distance last year, both of which are pretty good. His defense, however, is pretty bad—both man-to-man and help D—so any advantage he gave his team on the offensive end is more than wiped away because of how easy he makes it for opponents to score on the other end.

Verdict: slightly below average.

Offensive rebounding

Durant is a poor rebounder for his size, averaging 6.5 per game last season. For reference, rookie Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook averaged 4.9. On the offensive end, Durant snares only 1 board a game (Westbrook 2.2), which ranks much worse than his total rebounding numbers. He’s not helping his team lengthen their possessions after misses, and his overall ability to the clean the glass is poor.

Verdict: poor.

Turnovers

His turnover numbers aren’t so hot, giving it away 3.0 times a game, 8th worst in the NBA. Most of the players ranked worse than him are point guards who constantly have the ball and understandably will have more turnovers. Again, he’s a poor defender, so I doubt he’s increasing opponents’ chances of turning it over. He did post good individual steal numbers, though (1.3).

Verdict: below average.

Free throws

Durant doesn’t foul opponents very often (only 1.8 times per contest). On the other hand, he gets to the line 7.1 a night, which ranked 10th most in the league. When he’s there, he connects on a healthy 86% of them.

Verdict: very good.

Considering he only grades out above average in one of these categories, and that category is the least important of the four, I can see how Durant has a negative impact on his team’s odds of winning, which is what APM is trying to capture. Yes he’s a dynamic scorer who’s fun to watch, but you have to consider how many points an average team would be scoring otherwise if he wasn’t providing them, which is probably about the same; he can score at an above average rate when he’s shooting, but his passing and turnovers are poor. On the defensive end, he gives up a lot. In fact, 82games.com shows the Thunder surrender significantly fewer points when he’s getting a rest and they’re a bad team with bad back-ups.

Lucky for Durant’s marketing future, helping a team win seems to have little to do with superstardom since most fans adore any player who puts up 20+ every night. I’m not saying I don’t like dynamic scorers, but I tend to respect the ones who have numerous other skills and abilities that clearly help a team earn victories (e.g. LeBron, Wade, CP3, Roy). Remember that most game scores end up around 105-100, so 25 points for an individual on the stat sheet are only of importance if they produce them at an above-average rate. A player scoring 25 points on 11-for-28 shooting (39%) isn’t doing his team any favors; someone else should have had the ball.

I don’t know what Durant’s future holds, but for now, he has a lot to improve upon if Oklahoma City wants to ride his coattails to the playoffs.

Zachariah Blott is a teacher in Portland, not an Amish Charles Dickens character.