Kevin Durant Is The NBA’s MVP

Despite joining the best team in the NBA during the offseason, Kevin Durant still has a strong case to be named the NBA’s MVP this year.

Right now the Golden State Warriors are on an absolute tear. They’ve won nine of their last 10 and boast the best record in the NBA at 41-7.

Certainly it seems like they’re peaking at the right time. Then again, when you’ve four All-Stars in your starting lineup, most days feel like good ones for this team.

Kevin Durant has been integral to their success so far this season. Only it’s easy to overlook because this Warriors team has been to the Finals for the last two seasons.

With Stephen Curry lighting it up in January as well (he had 23 points in the third quarter alone as they obliterated the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night), many are taking Durant’s skills for granted.

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That needs to stop and when you consider he’s actually successfully doing something that we’ve never seen before, he needs more props for how he’s handling his first season in the Bay Area.

That’s why it may be time to concede that he should in fact be this year’s NBA MVP.

There’s plenty of reasons to debate this though, and it begins with the play of Russell Westbrook and James Harden.

Both guys are having amazing seasons, with Westbrook on course to average a triple-double this year (for what it’s worth, he’s my favorite player to watch in the league).

Harden leads the league in assists (11.5 per game), while also posting the third-highest scoring average with 28.8 (Westbrook leads all players with 30.8).

Westbrook also leads the league in Player Efficiency Rating (PER) with 29.1, with Harden currently fifth in this category (27.7).

It’s going to be fascinating to see which one of these two players win the award and really it’s likely to come down to the former teammates.

The fact neither has ever won the award and both are former teammates of Durant (sorry, Oklahoma City Thunder fans) likely feeds into this narrative.

But Durant deserves to be in the conversation, and potentially win the award, for a whole host of other reasons.

On the surface it’s easy to dismiss the fact Durant was joining a team in Golden State that was already elite.

But he’s made them better on both ends, while also fitting in seamlessly with the superstars already in place. This fact cannot be overstated enough.

It’s hard to compare this situation to any that went before it, but in this decade there have only been two players who joined “superteams” when they were already superstars themselves.

You could possibly put the Big Three of the Boston Celtics in there, but Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce were all older than 30 years old and true veterans when they came together.

Now, the Warriors were doing just fine before Durant came along, but it’s important to try and find some sort of comparison.

Those two players who made the move to form much better teams were Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic to Los Angeles Lakers) and LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers to Miami Heat).

That lone season in L.A. did not go well for Howard (despite averaging 17 points and 12 rebounds), but that was not all on him.

Steve Nash‘s body broke down and Howard discovered why Shaquille O’Neal had skipped town years prior. Kobe Bryant was not easy to play with.

Which leaves the move of James to South Beach as the closest comparison we have to Durant joining the Warriors.

We may only be dealing in small percentages when looking at their numbers, but both are Hall of Fame players, so often that’s all we’ve got to go by.

In his first season with the Heat, James saw his points per game, PER, offensive and defensive plus-minus, assists and effective field goal percentage drop.

He was still out-of-this-world good on the court, it just took him some time to figure out how best to co-exist with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

Durant has had no such troubles and perhaps the most amazing aspect of this to watch on a nightly basis is how he takes over offensively in a stealthy manner.

Durant has already expressed how he’s aware Curry took a bit of a back seat to start the year, which also speaks volumes of the defending two-time MVP.

But with both now going off nightly (not to mention Klay Thompson and Draymond Green getting in on the act), it’s the efficiency of Durant that is setting him apart.

He’s taking just more than two fewer shots per game, yet his effective field goal percentage has shot up from 57.3 percent last season to 60.3 percent this time out.

His three-point percentage has remained the same (38.7 percent), despite taking nearly two fewer long-range efforts a night as well.

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It goes beyond scoring though (his 26.3 points per game leads his team), with Durant posting a career-high in rebounding (8.4) and career-low in turnovers (2.3).

He’s used to playing with a ball-dominant guard in Westbrook, so you could argue he knows what it’s like to play second fiddle on some nights.

But that’s just the point, Durant can be the first through fourth option and his output and approach never changes. It’s a way of leading a team we haven’t quite seen before.

That in itself deserves praise, yet Durant continues to build his MVP case in other ways.

His defensive plus-minus of 2.7 is by far a career high and his PER of 28 trails only Westbrook as the second-best mark in the league.

It’s difficult to stand out on the greatest regular-season team of all time, yet Durant leads the Warriors in scoring, rebounding and blocks.

This despite posting the lowest usage rate (27.9 percent) of his career. He’s also only one of six players this season to have five or more 30-point and 10-rebound performances.

So while Russell Westbrook and James Harden may be posting the crazier individual numbers, Kevin Durant is right there with them in a lot of categories.

He’s also helped his team to the best record in the league and winning has got to count for something.

The Golden State Warriors also currently hold the best offensive (113.7) and defensive (101) rankings in the league.

Last season they were tops offensively, but finished fourth defensively, showing that Durant has helped on that end, despite the loss of some key defensive contributors.

If becoming a more efficient basketball player while also fitting into an established system and leading the team in many statistical categories doesn’t get you in the MVP race, I don’t know what does.

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Kevin Durant should be this season’s NBA MVP.