Zach Lowe: Durant should finish as one of the Top 10 ever.

[ralph_i_el]

Honestly, the idea of a top-10 list is just designed to create controversy.
We should demark the beginning and ending of eras and only judge players by their era.

And I hesitate to judge any players I didn't see live (wilt/Russell/KAJ/magic/bird)

[scm5]

He better start winning then

[DatAsh]

Who is he better than out of (in no order):

Jordan
Russell
Wilt
Duncan
KAJ
Hakeem
LeBron
Shaq
Bird
Magic

No one. All of those guys are pretty clearly better.

He's also 25 years old. He just put 32/7/6 on 64% and led a team to a 59-23 record with his second option missing 36 games. He very well could go down as the greatest scorer ever, and he's already a better rebounder than Jordan or Kobe.

Like fpliii said, the top 10 is crowded, but it's not impossible.

[RoundMoundOfReb]

He's also 25 years old. He just put 32/7/6 on 64% and led a team to a 59-23 record with his second option missing 36 games. He very well could go down as the greatest scorer ever, and he's already a better rebounder than Jordan or Kobe.

Like fpliii said, the top 10 is crowded, but it's not impossible.

Assuming he's in his prime right now: Who is he better than of those I listed prime for prime?

[KG215]

He's also 25 years old. He just put 32/7/6 on 64% and led a team to a 59-23 record with his second option missing 36 games. He very well could go down as the greatest scorer ever, and he's already a better rebounder than Jordan or Kobe.

Like fpliii said, the top 10 is crowded, but it's not impossible.

See, I'm not sure people quite grasp how ridiculously good Durant was this past season. I get that some of that is because of his underwhelming postseason, but some of that can be attributed to fatigue; not all of it, and he deserves his share of criticism, but it still shouldn't completely overshadow his insane regular season. He led a team with severe offensive limitations (sans-Westbrook) to 59 wins in an absurdly loaded Western Conference by playing a ton of minutes and doing basically everything on offense.

[Mr Feeny]

If Kobe joined the Spurs in 2004-05, would he be borderline top 5 by going 2-4 in the finals, just because he won 2 MVP's by default and averaged 27, 8, 8 in the regular season?

Lebron stacked the deck at the optimum time in his career (and in the history of the eastern conference) and still ended up looking utterly mortal.

It's just amazing how his calculated and spineless plan worked out to perfection for him.

Aha....
Go on....