Statistically Lebron and Durant are comparable, but Lebron is far and away the superior player. Durant can't facilitate an offense or act as a primary ball-handler on a championship caliber team, and it's likely he never will, whereas Lebron will go down as one of the GOAT floor generals. Lebron does everything. Of course Durant has all-time great shooting ability while having a centre's wingspan and the agility of a perimeter wing player so he's going to be an all-time great as well.
Actually, statistically Durant and Lebron are not comparable. The difference in PER between Lebron and Durant are the same as the difference between Durant and Lopez. Durant is a strong number 2, but Lebron is just on a world of his own.
Earlier in the season Durant had greater win shares and their PERs were almost identical. Of course Lebron has elevated his game to greatest of all-time levels but I'm just saying, even sans the freak surge in play, Lebron is still the superior player.
I'm sure they are mostly legit, but it's also true that lots of players don't get the same calls. I mean, LeBron drives to the hoop a lot more than Durant, gets hit plenty of times, but since he's able to absorb contact better he doesn't get the same calls. The bottom line is that because basketball has such ambiguous rules about what isn't and isn't a foul, it's ultimately up to the refs discretion to decide what level of contact is tolerated. And for Durant, the level is a lot less than for other players, and for that reason, he gets trips to the line on what would normally be considered missed shots. I like KD and I think it's amazing that he can score so well from anywhere on the court. But I don't think he would be a 50% shooter (the crux of the OP) if he were officiated like most other players.
I'm probably the biggest KD homer on the forum. LeBron is indeed far and away better. The good thing is KD is learning from and imitating LeBron this year. Here's to the future.
Calderon is hitting 50-50-90 for the Pistons while also posting a superb asst/to ratio since getting traded there. No matter how bad he is defensively, that's fantastic.
Harden does get a lot of calls but he drives the ball a heck of a lot more than Durant so it's at least partially justified.
http://www.thenbageek.com/players lebron is clearly superior, but durant isn't far behind in wins produced.
Kudos to kd for his prolific shooting this season. On a side note, what the hell does Lebron have to do with 50/40/90. Last I checked this isn't an MVP race thread but Lebron nut huggers still manage to derail this thread. Smh
