As we prepare to tip the NBA President, it's time for the latest edition of my NBA mailbag, starting with what to expect from Kevin Durant during the 2021-22 season. How can Durant play in his second year after injury with the Brooklyn Nets, after the most effective comeback from a star player we've seen in recent history from a ruptured Achilles? How will a full season with James Harden affect Durant's production?
Throughout the NBA season, I answer your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpelton, tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them at peltonmailbag@gmail.com.
The best questions focus on a general topic rather than a specific player or team, and anything that allows me to do basic research to understand how the game is played is welcome.
In addition to the main question, this week's mailbag also addresses your questions about the following:
Could The NBA's Approach To The Precision Someday Be A Mirror Of The NFL
Possible solutions to situations like John Wall with the Houston Rockets
Better numbers can be tough on a per-game basis! What's going to be interesting this season is that Durant will certainly play more with James Harden than last season, when both players missed extended stretches due to injury after Brooklyn added Harden. Oddly, Durant was less prolific as a scorer and the more star teammates he had in the 2020-21 regular season, the less efficient he was.
So it doesn't get lost: When Durant was the lone member of the Nets' big three on the court last regular season, he averaged nearly a minute per second, shooting 66% on 2-point attempts and 51% on 3. this is absurd. Those scenarios made up about a quarter of all of Durant's minutes last season. What happens with Kyrie Irving's availability to play in home games, it's unlikely we'll see those groups as much this season.
With Harden and Irving alongside him, Durant was more likely to be postponed, using only 29% of Brooklyn's plays, compared to a 34% utilization rate as the lone star. As a result, I think Durant's scoring per minute could be slightly lower than his 29.3 per 36 minutes in 2020-21 - the second highest in his career after the 2013-14 season, when he won the MVP. I also wouldn't expect Durant to maintain his career best 45% 3-point shooting.
Still, what Durant does in the regular season isn't as important to the Nets as how he performs in the playoffs. His post-season scoring was hell that propelled Durant to the top of ESPN's NBARank for the first time in his incredible career. He has been healthy during the last two playoffs, with Durant looking like the best player in the league. There's no reason to expect anything different, except for further injury.
As ardent NFL followers know, the way pro football teams deal with preseason has changed dramatically in recent years, from four games this season to three before being played. In 2019, Michael Lopez of the NFL showed a long-term slowdown in play time for the start of Week 1 in the preseason, which has recently intensified, led by Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay, who is most Eliminating major starters from preseason play entirely.
We've also seen a decrease in pre-season games in the NBA, where teams typically played eight games. This year, no team will play more than six preseason games and the average is closer to five to four.
To see trends in play time in pre-season, I put together a similar chart covering the entire schedule, looking at the top five players in minutes played on opening night for each team (since the NBA In, the difference between starters and reserves is more fluid) dating back to the 2008–09 preseason:
Until last season, with a shortened training camp and three-game preseason schedule, there was a trend of declining play time for key players during the NBA preseason—though nowhere near as dramatic as the one in the NFL. Even in 2019-20, the low water mark in this sample, the top five players on a team saw about the same share of preseason play time (35%) as the NFL debut did in Week 3 of preseason a decade earlier. did.
It's possible that this trend will eventually move NBA coaches in the same place as NFL coaches, but I'd be surprised. The NBA has no such risk factors as live tackle in the NFL, which can be handled more easily in practice than in games. I doubt it would make any sense to completely abandon the experience of the game in preseason in favor of extra practice time.
Can I ask a mailbag question here?
— Beloved Thought Leader (@xiane1) September 15, 2021
Would the NBA benefit from a (very) limited NFL style salary/years restructure? A sort of restructure of a buyout that keeps the player, but pushes out some salary?
As a Rockets fan I don't think the John Wall situation is good for anyone.
As an outside observer, I don't think it's good for anyone. The situation where a player has left on his contract too long to be reasonable for a buyout, so he is off the court until that change has taken place, seems to be increasingly common. . We saw this with a number of players last season (LaMarcus Aldridge, Andre Drummond, Blake Griffin), although none for the extended periods we can see in Wall's case.
The core issue appears to be that teams are reluctant to take such a huge hit on their salary caps unless they are certain that there is no chance of trading a player with a slightly smaller contract for a less valuable one. This can change when the amount of pay paid in a buyout is large enough, but we don't usually see it outside the introduction of free agency (such as Kemba Walker) because players will not make the difference in their new contract.
Griffin eventually left enough to make a buyout, but only forfeited pay when he later signed for the Brooklyn Nets at the veteran's minimum (and re-signed for equal pay this season).
I don't know if a reorganization would help matters, as essentially stretch provisioning allows teams to do this now. Houston does not want Wall's salary to exceed 2022-23, as only then will the team have the flexibility and hope of building a young core of talent.
Instead, I think there are some reasonable possibilities worth exploring. One was suggested by Dan Feldman of NBC Sports, who proposed a bidding process for discounts similar to the way Amnesty Waivers worked under a 2011 collective bargaining agreement. Instead of claiming a player's entire contract, the revised version would send the player to the highest bidder (either using cap space or available exceptions), who would be responsible for the amount of that salary while the remainder of the contract was capped. As the hit goes to the former team.
However, in such scenarios, things may not change much as compared to the current procurement process. A more aggressive change would be to allow teams to split the salaries of traded players from the point of view of caps. Every other big-four pro sports league allows this practice because there are no uniform rules on pay matching.
For example, imagine that the Rockets could trade Wall for a player making $6 million when a contract expires this season. He will count $6 million against the cap this season and the next for his new team, the rest of his salary will go to Houston's cap just as Wall was bought out. At that price point, Wall may have had some modest trading value, so the Rockets potentially get $6 million in savings (in 2022–23) and a second-round draft pick, their new team would have gotten Wall at a reasonable cost. And Wall gets to play basketball. I think this could be a better model for everyone involve