(The original text was published on December 26. The author is NBA writer Kirk Goldsberry. The content of the article does not represent the translator’s point of view.)
Brooklyn basketable nets is the hottest team in NBA, and Durant is the biggest reason behind this.
After the dramatic events of this summer, the fact that Durant is still in basketable nets is surprising in itself. At that time, he even filed a transaction application before his four-year top salary renewal contract came into effect, but he changed his mind less than two months later.
At first, the summer chaos seemed to have really affected the basketable nets of this season. They started with 1 win and 5 losses, and coach Nash was over. However, from November 1st, basketable Nets played the best NBA record of 19 wins and 7 losses, and became the champion team in the east. Last Friday night, they defeated the Milwaukee Bucks with the best record in the league and won the 12th victory in the past 13 games.
This remarkable transformation took place under Durant’s leadership. He is playing the best offensive and defensive performance of his career at the age of 34-he is also a strong competitor of MVP in regular season. Next, we will talk about how he did this.
1. Durant’s outstanding scoring ability as always
As a scorer, Durant is still the most versatile basketball player. He averaged 29.9 points this season, perhaps his new high since the 2013-14 season. That year, he was also a 25-year-old extraordinary player who scored 32.0 points in Oklahoma City Thunder field and won the regular season MVP.
This season, Durant’s data in three point line was ridiculously good, with a two-point hit rate of 63%, and the hit rate in the restricted area and the hit rate of the center were also the highest in his career.
His peak period coincided with the jump shot revolution that changed NBA, but when almost all of his contemporaries were adding three points and cutting the middle shots, but he took the opposite path.
Durant has hit 164 two-point jump shots this season, which is the most in NBA. The corresponding hit rate is an incredible, ranking first among the 30 players who have shot at least 100 such jump shots.
The surprising extent of these data cannot be overstated. Since NBA began to track the shooting position in 1996, only two players have reached such a level in the output and efficiency of China Investment Center at the same time. They are Jordan and Nowitzki respectively, but Durant’s data is better than theirs.
Durant’s 59.6 percent hit rate is nearly 10 percent age points higher than Jordan and Nowitzki-and 5 percent age points higher than himself last season. Durant last season had set the highest standard for high-yield players in the past 25 years.
Durant may not be just the best middle distance scorer in his own time; He may be the best middle distance scorer in history.
Players with the highest percentage of two-point jump shots in a single season since the 1996-97 season (at least 10 shots per game)
In an era of endless three points, he not only ruled the criticized mid-distance area, but also made the whole basketball world realize with his own strength that the score of China investment can be an effective weapon, it also brings people visual enjoyment.
The way he did this was to hit the defensive hinterland fengshui ball, create his own shooting opportunities in any position he wanted to shoot, and then defeat his opponent with a historical hit rate, and it is often in front of the best defenders in NBA.
According to Second Spectrum, Durant’s post-fengshui ball jump shot hit rate was 55.2% this season when facing the full resistance of defenders, the players who have led all single seasons since 2013-14 have tried at least 100 such shots (more than 1200 people).
Basketable nets also benefited from this. They had the best attack in the league, with a two-point hit rate of 53.6 percent outside the penalty area, ranking first in NBA and leading the Boston Celtics with 47.1 percent ranking second.
The defense of modern basketball will give priority to the basket and downtown, but Durant and Owen both create efficient attacks in the vast area between them. The vast space they used was abandoned by most attacking players and teams.
The NBA’s consensus today is that you can’t find an efficient way to attack in the barren land between the forbidden zone and three point line, but Brooklyn is playing hard on this calculation.
The average price of a two-point jump shot is only 0.86 points this season, but basketable nets can get 1.11 points through a two-point jump shot on average; In this data, none of the other teams in the league can exceed 0.96 points.
2. The new Durant with both attack and defense
This is Durant’s 15th NBA season (not counting the 2019-20 season when he was completely absent due to Achilles tendon injury). He has been selected as an All-Star for 12 times and the best team in NBA for 10 times. But although he has accumulated so many honors, he has never been regarded as an elite defender. He has never entered the NBA’s best defensive squad, and only one year in the selection of the best defensive player of the year is not zero-that was the 2016-17 season, that is, the season when he just came to the warriors.
All kinds of topics around Durant almost always focus on his score, but this season, he has become one of the pillars of the defensive end.
In general, when Durant tried his best to block the opponent’s shooting, he could limit their hit rate to 39.5. According to Second Spetrum, he ranked third among 71 players who had blocked at least 300 shots, but his best defense was actually contributed under the basket.
So far this season, a total of 30 NBA players have blocked at least 200 shots in the penalty area. Among them, Durant is the one who limits his opponent’s hit rate to the lowest-when facing Durant, the field goal percentage in the penalty area of attacking players is only.
On October this year, Nash’s basketable nets defensive efficiency at the helm was only the 29th in the league, but since November, the defensive efficiency of basketable Nets rose to the 8th in the league-which bodes well for Brooklyn’s ambition to win the championship, because in the past ten NBA championship teams, only one has ten regular season defensive efficiency outside the league (the warrior with Durant in 2017-18 is the 11th in the league in defensive efficiency). In basketable nets, the current head coach Jacques Warne did find a new rotation that could prevent the opponent from attacking, but Durant and Nicholas Clarkston were still the core forces of the team’s revitalization and defense.
Among the defensive players in the penalty area mentioned above, not only Durant ranked first, but also Claxton ranked third. Although their front-court combination may not be the strongest or the best in the basket, these data show that they have effectively protected rim, it also provided basketable nets with something that was once the most lacking in Nash era: some defensive consciousness visible to the naked eye.
3. Popular candidates for MVP
We look forward to seeing great things from Durant, but as one of the best teams in the league’s top scorer and top defender, his recent performance is rapidly changing people’s views on basketable Nets this season. Brooklyn played like a championship team, and Durant also hit it for the second time nine years after winning the MVP trophy for the first time.
The only time Durant was elected to MVP was the 2013-14 season. At that time, he was only 25 years old and played small forward most of the time. Now, he has played the roles of front and center for most of his appearance.
Durant has received only one vote in the MVP selection in the past three seasons, and has not entered the top five MVP list since 2016. As a long-term MVP candidate in our hearts and one of the best players of this era, he really didn’t become a strong competitor of MVP again after the 2013-14 season.
Durant is by no means the only superstar who is expected to win the Michael Jordan Cup (the new name of the MVP trophy in the regular season) so early. In ESPN’s first informal MVP vote this season, he ranked seventh, and neither the first nor the second vote was won. However, it is hard for us to imagine that this basketable nets can be in the top of the east without him-this is the prospect they are facing most of the off-season.
Under normal circumstances, any super scorer with an efficiency of Chikao glass in any winning team will become an MVP candidate, but against the backdrop of the chaotic soap opera in basketable nets-durant also admitted that he was an important cause of the chaos-durant’s performance this season is especially worthy of our attention.
Original: Kirk Goldsberry
Compilation: asteroid falling
Discussion & Analysis