| 28 January 2009
Bill Simmons just overstated the importance, placement, and ceiling of Kevin Durant for the umpteenth time. It's a very annoying and pointless obsession that eventually conjures up feelings in the audience of just wanting to get this whole charade over much like Tommy Lee's one-track mind in Best of the Best. The Sports Guy just wrote an article for ESPN the Magazine basically stating that it's stupid to call someone overrated/underrated because that in and of itself is an overrated thing to do. However, Kevin Durant is ACTUALLY underrated because he's probably the second greatest player of all time and will one day challenge Michael Jordan for folklore supremacy.
Okay, maybe I'm taking some liberties with his message and maybe I'm over exaggerating what he stated but it's no more of an unfair over exaggeration than what I just read in his column. He honestly thinks that Kevin Durant has the potential to average 36 points per game one season or 33 points per game with shooting percentages of 55% from the field, 90% from the free throw line, and 50% from the three-point line. And he's shocked that nobody is discussing it or acknowledging it.
Bill thinks that a 6'9" small forward with plastic man arms, 30-foot range and the ability to thrive in big moments is a mold of player that we've never seen before. Well, I've actually seen this type of player three previous times and once the guy turned out to be pretty good, another guy had his career killed by injuries, and the other one was a complete bust/joke. Does this mold of player not describe young prospects like DerMarr Johnson, Jonathan Bender, and Tracy McGrady?
In retrospect, the first two players seem like a completely asinine comparison by myself and to some degree, you may be entirely correct in thinking so. But coming into their respective drafts, it's hard to point out how their physical gifts differed at all. Now, DerMarr turned out to be garbage (a Pete Babcock pick gone wrong? You don't say!) and Jon Bender had to cut his career short because of injuries (and wasn't exactly etching his name into the All-Star ballot anytime soon before that). But the Tracy McGrady comparison is actually dead on.
Kevin Durant had a fantastic freshman season at Texas and this is where his reputation had begun. People forget that he wasn't the big name freshman that was supposed to come in that year and dominate college basketball. Those honors were supposed to go to the much-anticipated Greg Oden and thought to be highly superior Thaddeus Young. The fact that Kevin Durant exploded onto the scene caught everybody by storm and sent immediate hype ingredients/supplies into the hype machine and a legend was born nearly overnight. That's not to say that it wasn't almost completely warranted. The last time we saw a freshman dominate like that was Carmelo Anthony and Durant had a much better frame to develop. But you can't tell me that if you put Tracy McGrady into a Florida Gators uniform in 1997 that he wouldn't have done similar or even better things.
Kevin Durant entering his first year at Texas is nearly the stencil to the frame that McGrady was coming into his first year in Toronto. They had the same attributes. They had the same body type. And if you allowed McGrady to be the focal point of a college basketball team, he would have dropped 25 points, grabbed close to 10 rebounds and put plenty of daggers into SEC basketball hearts. So why is Kevin Durant regarded in such a more highly touted manner? Because Bill happened to watch him play.
Bill has even stated in the past that he paid more attention to college basketball that season than he had at any point in his life. He watched games when he wasn't watching NBA games. And he happened to come across one of the most fantastic freshman forwards we've ever seen. It was almost immediately apparent less than two months into the season that people had a choice to make - Kevin Durant or Greg Oden. In today's society, it feels like we always have to choose between two choices and it's nearly impossible to like one as much as the other. You have to pick a side. LeBron or Carmelo? Anniston or Jolie? Bissinger or Leitch? There's no middle ground to appreciate two sides. And since Mr. Simmons watched far more Texas games that season than he did Ohio State games with Oden (because he was out with a wrist injury), there was a much greater base of evidence to side with the lanky swing forward instead of the lumbering Danny Almonte.
Is there anything wrong with that? Not at all. I have no problem with people picking whatever side they want as long as it isn't Mike Bibby's. What I DO have a problem with is people picking a side and then in a completely biased manner trying to argue against the other side by skewing information in your favor despite all sense of being rational. And that's what Bill Simmons does with Kevin Durant. Besides flooding our eyes with hyperbole about the greatness of this kid, he also makes a point to always take a shot at Oden. Ignoring facts that he's always stated when arguing for someone he's in favor of like "big men take longer to develop so you can't judge them until they're 25." Unless that guy is Greg Oden of course and you want Kevin Durant to beat him out in NBA supremacy. Take it from one of the great debaters of our generation (me), that's not the way you win an argument like this. You can't argue with bias. Only rational thinking and well thought out attacks that have considered both sides can win these mental battles.
And we know most arguments and potshots are going to be completely absurd here because Bill Simmons isn't a very good loser. He complains and finds excuses when things don't go his way. When he went 0-4 in his picks during the second round of the NFL playoffs this year, it seemed like there was absolutely no chance that he could have just been wrong. It was always something that was abnormal, like these kinds of things are so easy to decree. Bill is never going to admit he's wrong, even if Greg Oden becomes Bill Russell. He just doesn't have it in him.
And the weird thing that is so troubling for me is what if Bill Simmons had waited a year to watch college basketball so much closer than what had been the norm? Would he be declaring that Michael Beasley is capable of averaging a triple-double, finding life on Mars and figuring out a reason for Paul Walker to be socially relevant? Would he be taking shots at Derrick Rose's jumper all the time, making note of inconsequential knee tendonitis, and saying that his size will work against him?
For someone that is such a big part of the sports world, follows basketball so intently, and has so many insights to this world that most people aren't intelligent enough to see, why does he make such a big deal about Durant being just 20 years old? The process has been sped up to such a breakneck speed in developing athletes that they are ready to handle the spotlight the moment they hit the big stage. High school players and even middle school kids are thrust into AAU programs at such a young age that by the time they're being recruited by millionaire college coaches, they've already played against the best talent in their class, the class ahead of them and in many cases, players already in the NBA. After LeBron James and Dwight Howard are we really shocked that a guy can come in as a rookie an d score 20 points on the worst team in the league? Hasn't the mold been broken time and time before Kevin Durant?
Now, I don't want to disparage KD and I certainly don't want to disparage BS. I think that Kevin Durant is going to be a multiple All NBA First Teamer and I think that Bill Simmons is still going to be my favorite writer even after the next 25 love letters to the Thunder's biggest building block. But to wildly state that this guy is capable of things like being the all-time leading scorer in every walk of life, being divisible into zero, and curing cancer is something that my rational mind simply can't handle.
So please, Mr. Simmons, just keep the arousal to a minimum and embrace all of the great players in this league for what they actually are and even try to see the good in Greg Oden.
Let's save the irrational statements for myself and how much I loathe Mike Bibby.
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