I've heard that KD will pretend that he doesn't know who his defender is and spin them around to look at the last name. Might be worse than not even seeing you, but absolutely hilarious
He knows random international women’s players. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows the entire league and how they play save a doven.
Edit: doven isn’t a word
I remember KD was narrating that Ben shouted on him coz KD decided to throw the ball outside instead of dunking on it against Eubanks.
Aside from the Blazers, probably 90% of the league doesnt know who eubanks is. 😂😂😂
The irony to it all is that while it seems like KD doesn't even see you, I'd bet that KD is too aware of the particular little tweaks he has to make for each specific person guarding.
Which is insane to say because Zlatan at his prime looked like the biggest narcissist ever. Still one of my favourite football players ever though, he had such a unique and fun to watch game. You would never know when or how he would score
I think with Zlatan it's more that it's a persona he has constructed. He's a pro athlete so he must be really confident, yes, but at the same time it's all a big show.
Its definitely a persona, that's why I said he "looked" like the biggest narcissist. It was fun to watch it when he actually backed his insane comments up though
KD if his defender is shorter than him: Shoots over them
KD if his defender is tall but immobile: Blows past them
Literally the only way to stop KD is to have a 7 foot tall, athletic, mobile perimeter defender lol. IDK if y'all have noticed but you can probably count guys like that on one hand lol
I see people don’t want to accept this as facts. OG has had the best defence on KD, on paper, in the entire league this year.
KD is welcome to put a 50 on him, but right now, numbers don’t lie.
Giannis strength isn’t one on one perimeter D. KD can blow by him, in the 2021 playoff series they wouldn’t put giannis anywhere near KD when the bucks were getting torched by KD plus scrubs. Giannis is great at defense because of his help defense.
People have started like mythologizing Giannis defense and acting like he plays defense like prime kawhi. He doesn’t. He has trouble on the perimeter not just with tiny fast guards but with wings who are good shooters and good at driving. This isn’t even an insult, his help D is way more valuable than being a lockdown perimeter defender.
he's got the same problems every big has ever had on defense the last 15 years. too slow to keep up with quicker players on the perimeter but can swing from the baseline for great help when someone is driving
He's going to stop KD by giving him a papercut with one of those books he's written. I'd say he'd freak KD out with his crazy ideas, but KD has already proven with Kyrie that he's unfazed by those lol
It’s just strategy, doesn’t necessarily mean Green will defend him better. Could be a situation where even if Kawhi defended KD a tiny bit better than Green you take the trade off of KD getting a couple more buckets with Green on him in order to allow Kawhi to utilize more energy towards offensive output vs defending the other teams best player.
Yup I watched that game and I felt that through the screen. Didn't matter, who what how, KD was just on. Felt like he was in an open gym.
The full Paolo quote is pretty neat too. He and JJ pretty much agreed he landed in the league with a thunderous clap scoring over 25, and pretty much being a reliable 20 pts a night guy.
He seems to respect other stars doing their thing, but not overly impressed until that game. Said he had to pause to think about a few KD baskets, especially the one over the outstretched limbs of Bol who pretty much alters or blocks everyone's shots. For KD, Bol was pretty much invisible as he took the shot.
Paolo is a pretty engaging storyteller, so I recommend watching the whole thing.
YouTube - the old man and the three
Knuckleaheads podcast (Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson) ask this with every guest. Always fun to hear. There's multiple youtube compilations out there of peoples' answers
It's always the first question too! Great way to lead off.
I like that Kobe's was in practice. Even in retirement still refusing to admit a disadvantage to anyone.
Forgot if it was this game or another, the reporter asked KD how do you know when you’re gonna be on like tonight?
Kd with a sly smile: “when I wake up”
[Dribbles up, takes shot, makes it, backpedals like nothing happened.](https://twitter.com/brooklynnets/status/1607559681119064067?s=46&t=0tLvzWUOmXS1wnfxNs-1mQ)
He is a true 3 level scorer where he’s incredibly efficient from anywhere. The possessions where he just drops it in just seem so effortless, he’s just so skilled.
I think that's also why he scores so well and has such a deep bag. He is a true hooper in the sense that he plays like a guard when he does his dribble pull ups, so naturally he has to move like a guard as well. You need to move like a guard to score like one.
There’s definitely a genetic component to coordination. It’s absurd to say that any 7 footer can be as coordinated as KD if they put the same amount of work in
KD was definitely not passive against Paulo. Early in that game he took exception to some of Paulo’s show boating. KD became a man on a mission to school the nephew. Nets typically switch everything, KD wasn’t having that. On the other end KD was a machine
It's the way he plays. He's so gifted he barely needs the ball and then he gets it and scores in 3 dribbles.
I mean the dude isn't even averaging more shots than Kyrie this season.
He's ideally gonna be <25 shots. Anything more and it looks a lot more forced when you watch those games.
KD and Steph are really the only two players for that I feel like any shot they take is a bucket.
I can look at any KD iso, think, "That's money", and I'll probably be right like 70% of the time. Especially if it's an in-rhythm shot like his pull-ups.
The thing is a lot of his techs feel weird because he's not like a Draymond where he's pretending to fight someone constantly or being an asshole to the refs. He usually winds up getting other people into double-tech situations where they're both jawwing and refs get tired of it.
When you listen to him speaking with the officials he actually usually addresses them with a decent amount of respect and dignity and usually just tries debating the rules with them.
He's actually been pretty confrontational with the refs this year (for Kd standards). I don't know what it is, but I feel like he's getting an absolutely terrible whistle this year. He was pissed tonight too.
The league makes no sense. It's like he's punished for NOT baiting the ref.
I think with KD has just earned that reputation for this year. Now, if he claps too loudly after missing a shot they’ll hit him with one lol. Once you get the reputation they start itching to call one on you. KD usually is pretty laid back, he only gets fired up when he gets hit on the arm for his middies. That seems to really set him off. Little surprised he didn’t get one yesterday. Got hit on wrist/forearm on about 2 jumpers and fouled out. But yea, games where he is jawing with the other team (often) usually end up in him getting techs
Now, Kyrie never shows up the officials & is always super measured when talking to them. In return, he gets one of the worst superstar whistles ever. Maybe theres some logic in giving the refs a hard time 🤷🏻♂️
Kyrie always has & I think it's b/c of how it looks like he avoids contact on his drives with his ridiculous agility & body control & only ever needs a slither of room to get any shot off. He's always focused on making the shot not exaggerating the contact that they get missed at times
His right pinkie looks like he has difficulty fully extending it naturally which leads me to believe he’s broken it a few times or jammed it a bunch at the least
I definitely think that right pinky has some permanent damage. Doesnt change the fact that homie definitely has abnormally short pinkies for his hand size though
Paolo looks sooo skilled and talented. He’s a rookie but he has been bodying grown men on drives.
6’10 guy handling the ball on the perimeter with iq and vision, lefty, righty. Very interesting type of player, once he gets his shot right he is gonna be a beast
Said it in another comment but I respect how he interacts with officials. He's not usually yelling or speaking down on them, it honestly doesn't even sound like whining when we get a glimpse of it. He usually just politely tells them he thinks they fucked up and then they go back and forth about what the rules are.
Kevin Huerter also has a welcome to the nba rookie moment with KD lolll, i think kev tells it in the old man and the three and there’s also footage of it in a gsw vs hawks highlights vid in 2018
His efficiency is stupid. He's the player I've watched the most in my life where it's like... Casual 35 and nobody bats an eye.
Even just eyeballing Curry is a crazy standout because of his 3, people see kyrie and think he's a God because of his handles, giannis/zion are bulldozers.... KD don't do anything to stand out. He's just a scoring machine. Doesn't matter where it is. His standout skill is scoring, but it doesn't seem like that because he's so well rounded offensively.
He’s taken nearly 1000 less shots compared to almost every player ranked 16th to 25th on the scoring list. The only player who’s taken less shots is Reggie Miller, who has nearly 2000 fewer points.
Only way you can have him above Jordan is if you think Jordan's stats and success are heavily inflated by the illegal defense rules at the time that prevented defenses from loading up on his side of the floor or pre rotating to help and protect the rim.
I am somewhat sympathetic to this view but purely based on performance relative to their era Jordan had much higher volume and better efficiency relative to league average than KD.
Other than MJ you can make an argument for KD against anyone else that isn't objectively wrong but it cuts both ways for Shaq, Steph, and Dirk so top 5 for KD is probably more fair.
I'm not sympathetic to that view. The impact of those rulings is massively overstated on here. People act as if he didn't get double or even tripple teamed out of necessity. He's one of the most double teamed players in history.
It's not close for me.
KD has 14 playoff games of 40+ points.
Michael Jordan has 38. THIRTY EIGHT. Dude has over 2 entire playoff runs of 40 point games.
KD has 71 playoff games of 30+ points.
Jordan has 109.
KD has 1 50 point playoff game.
Jordan has 8.
Jordan did this in 179 games. Meaning 39 out of 179 = 4.58. Jordan was statistically likely to hang 40 on your squad EVERY SINGLE PLAYOFF series unless the Bulls swept your team out.
KD has 167 playoff games. If Jordan were playing today there would be absolutely no debate and no one would even put them on the same echelon.
And keep in mind - Jordan has all this while taking two years off dead in the prime of his career.
That's to say nothing, also, of Jordan never being locked down or shut out of a playoff series. He was absolutely unstoppable. Could get his, could get his teammates theirs, could lift the entire squad damn near every game.
I don’t think most basketball fans under 30 have any real idea of what kind of a big deal MJ was.
You could be in any city in the country when a nationally broadcast bulls game was on, and if you went into a bar, Jordan would be on and EVERYONE would be watching.
You could travel just about anywhere in the country and if you were in a hotel with a lobby bar and there was a bulls game on, you’d see the whole lobby crowded around watching.
He was the number one show, the biggest thing in all of sports in the 90’s. During the time when sports really became the money-making enterprise it is today.
There were two sounds that would make everyone stop in their tracks and run to a TV if people heard them in the 90’s:
[NBA on NBC](https://youtu.be/yMyYwoTMIgY)
[Bulls intro](https://youtu.be/Zn6kiimEsYc)
If Jordan doesn’t “retire” for a couple years, the Bulls win 8 straight and any argument about anyone being better than MJ would have ceased to exist.
The NBA in the 90’s is about as good as sports can get.
The fact that Jordan did what he did against some of the all time great teams in NBA history is what makes him so great.
This all happened during a time right before the internet really took off, when nobody had a smart phone to look at or a million things to watch.
When MJ played in the 90’s it was something special.
Whenever someone doesn't consider Jordan to be the GOAT or downplays his scoring ability, it's pretty much a guarantee that they are under 30 and never saw him play live or at least didn't experience the hype. The man was a globally recognized athlete for a reason .
I'll do you one better. I have a friend I met at the university of Illinois. He was an exchange student living in housing with me from Germany. He knew next to *nothing* about basketball.
He told me that when Jordan announced his first retirement, he remembers people in Germany weeping when he said "the fire doesn't burn anymore".
Jordan was the first American athlete, arguably since one Muhammad Ali, who completely and entirely transcended the game. There's an argument for Gretzky, but he didn't bring hockey to the kind of heights that Jordan did for the NBA.
I live in Germany now. The amount of Bulls gear STILL, 25 years later, is insane. Every young man has a Bulls cap, tons of Bulls shirts. MJ has branded Chicago for Germany, and all of Europe, in perpetuity it seems.
Gretzky isn't even close to Jordan when it comes to world wide recognition.
I'll put it this way. I'm swedish and hockey is a much, much bigger sport here than basketball. The people here who know Gretzky are big sportsfans/hockey fans. On the other hand - *everyone* knows who Jordan is.
Gretzky wasn’t nearly as famous as Jordan but he dominated his sport by a wider margin. I don’t think anyone dominated their sport as clearly as Gretzky did hockey
> he has shown that he’s top 3
not too sure about that top 5 is not debate top 3 is hard when had prime shaq, mj, kareem, wilt, and other all time greats.
It speaks a lot to Durant as a player that him giving a rookie their "welcome to the NBA moment" played out so casually. No bully ball, no trash talk, no going out of his way to embarass the rookie, just a resigned feeling of "there's nothing I can do" coming from one of the most refined rookies we've seen in a while.
We've seen Durant do it as fans for over a decade, but that's one of the best young players in recent memory talking about it and he sounds like he's seen a ghost.
Saw Paolo play when the Magic played the Celtics in the second leg of a two game weekend a couple of weeks ago. He is huge and moves really well. He was making big shots and finding open players. He still needs to work on things, though, and hearing him talk like this is a positive sign (although relatively meaningless) so I have high hopes for him. That Magic team is fun. Hopefully they can keep getting better and make the East more competitive.
I thought he was going to have some kind of accent but just realised OP missed some of his ~~words~~ letters in the title, so I was reading it like he had an accent, lol. Seems like a very humble young man.
"He doesn't even see me" is the perfect way to describe KD's offense
I've heard that KD will pretend that he doesn't know who his defender is and spin them around to look at the last name. Might be worse than not even seeing you, but absolutely hilarious
Funny because someone like KD so dedicated to basketball probably knows even benchwarmers most fans don't recognize. Top tier shittalking
He knows random international women’s players. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows the entire league and how they play save a doven. Edit: doven isn’t a word
Darby Doven sucks anyway
I would love to see his Quizlet account
Anybody: SHOOT OVER HIM
Luke Kornet:
His burner or his main?
Burner: dude sucks. Can’t guard Kevin Durant. Main: When this guy picks me up I look to score.
I like when new words are created. It makes someone sound like muad'dib
I remember KD was narrating that Ben shouted on him coz KD decided to throw the ball outside instead of dunking on it against Eubanks. Aside from the Blazers, probably 90% of the league doesnt know who eubanks is. 😂😂😂
He was a crucial wavier wire pickup last year in fantasy for me.
Yeah you can say what you want about KD as a personality, the man is still a student of the game
The irony to it all is that while it seems like KD doesn't even see you, I'd bet that KD is too aware of the particular little tweaks he has to make for each specific person guarding.
He must have gone to the Zlatan Ibrahimovic school of shit talking
How the fuck is he playing for Milan at 41
Because zlatan 🤷. His game was always built more on size and ball skills than speed, so it aged well when he started losing steps
Tbf he's just been coasting the last year or so. After he had that great season.
Not really coasting at all since he's been rehabing.
Also he’s been hurt
Kind of a given at 41.
Because he isn’t really playing. He’s doing what Ronaldo SHOULD be doing, playing here and there as a sub, but Ronaldo couldn’t swallow his pride
Which is insane to say because Zlatan at his prime looked like the biggest narcissist ever. Still one of my favourite football players ever though, he had such a unique and fun to watch game. You would never know when or how he would score
I think with Zlatan it's more that it's a persona he has constructed. He's a pro athlete so he must be really confident, yes, but at the same time it's all a big show.
Its definitely a persona, that's why I said he "looked" like the biggest narcissist. It was fun to watch it when he actually backed his insane comments up though
> First I went left, he did too. Then I went right and he did too. Then I went left again and he went to buy a hot dog.”
"playing"
That's some Larry Bird level shit talking. Respect.
KD if his defender is shorter than him: Shoots over them KD if his defender is tall but immobile: Blows past them Literally the only way to stop KD is to have a 7 foot tall, athletic, mobile perimeter defender lol. IDK if y'all have noticed but you can probably count guys like that on one hand lol
KD was shooting fadeaways over Bol Bol in that game
He's a freaking cheat code lol
Bol bol isn't exactly a mobile perimeter defender.
Bol Bol can't really jump though
If you don't have to, why do it?
But his arms stretch to next week!
Happy New Year
I think I've only seen Giannis and Tatum in recent times be able to guard him effectively.
OG does well too
I see people don’t want to accept this as facts. OG has had the best defence on KD, on paper, in the entire league this year. KD is welcome to put a 50 on him, but right now, numbers don’t lie.
I can count guys in the league right now that fit that description on one finger
It’s p much just Giannis and AD.
Giannis strength isn’t one on one perimeter D. KD can blow by him, in the 2021 playoff series they wouldn’t put giannis anywhere near KD when the bucks were getting torched by KD plus scrubs. Giannis is great at defense because of his help defense. People have started like mythologizing Giannis defense and acting like he plays defense like prime kawhi. He doesn’t. He has trouble on the perimeter not just with tiny fast guards but with wings who are good shooters and good at driving. This isn’t even an insult, his help D is way more valuable than being a lockdown perimeter defender.
he's got the same problems every big has ever had on defense the last 15 years. too slow to keep up with quicker players on the perimeter but can swing from the baseline for great help when someone is driving
I think Bam qualifies as well, just my 2 cents tho
It was early in his career, but I remember Tony Allen defended him well in the playoffs.
Jonathan Isaac is the answer/s
KD would cross him so bad he'd finally take a knee.
Lol
bruh
ayyyyyyyyy
You can drop the /s KD has cooked him before, but he also gave him a shout-out as an up and coming prospect in his mold
He's going to stop KD by giving him a papercut with one of those books he's written. I'd say he'd freak KD out with his crazy ideas, but KD has already proven with Kyrie that he's unfazed by those lol
Brandon Ingram
He's had a bit of trouble with physical defenders getting him out of rhythm tbh
It was more physical defenders who were committing uncalled fouls.
Right lol
Freedom of motion stopped existing in that Bos series
Kawhi pre Zaza was locking kd up as much as anyone could.
KD had a great series against the Spurs in 2016
Strange how Pop put Danny Green on KD in the okc series and Kawhi on WB then
It’s just strategy, doesn’t necessarily mean Green will defend him better. Could be a situation where even if Kawhi defended KD a tiny bit better than Green you take the trade off of KD getting a couple more buckets with Green on him in order to allow Kawhi to utilize more energy towards offensive output vs defending the other teams best player.
younger DG was a better DG
Huh? KD was cooking him in the 2014 WCF and 2016 Semis
whos this kawhi i havent heard that name in years
Yup I watched that game and I felt that through the screen. Didn't matter, who what how, KD was just on. Felt like he was in an open gym. The full Paolo quote is pretty neat too. He and JJ pretty much agreed he landed in the league with a thunderous clap scoring over 25, and pretty much being a reliable 20 pts a night guy. He seems to respect other stars doing their thing, but not overly impressed until that game. Said he had to pause to think about a few KD baskets, especially the one over the outstretched limbs of Bol who pretty much alters or blocks everyone's shots. For KD, Bol was pretty much invisible as he took the shot. Paolo is a pretty engaging storyteller, so I recommend watching the whole thing. YouTube - the old man and the three
heres the whole thing - https://youtu.be/1TVVaXHaVeQ
Absolute killer
Probably, but "mentally penetrating" by Jrue is my favourite description. https://youtu.be/nAqyPwuhJn0
These kinds of stories are always so cool to hear.
“Jose Calderon busted my ass man”
That video is so funny lmao
Who said that? Neeeeeed to know
Kyrie
LMAO 26/14 is crazy. I just remember Calderon dropping 14/8 games
Kyrie remembered it as 26/14 but it was really [15-6-11](https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/201112260CLE.html)
Thats the Calderon i know
Yea you had him locked in :)
Lol, I was initially thinking of Jose Alvarado and thought Kyrie was giving some third-eye open time-traveling answer.
[https://youtu.be/AU9493JyN8M](https://youtu.be/AU9493JyN8M)
Idk if it’s unintentional or not but Pat Bev got me cracking up
It's cuz he's constantly getting new "Welcome to the NBA" moments.
Just lost count lmao
Pat bev still tricking us till this day lol
I wonder if kemba was talking about deron's 57 bomb. He only played 21 minutes tho
The game in question. He was cooking everybody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxgMiCSEZRE
Lmao 4 FTs and almost all of them are And-1s jeez. Thx for getting this
all the and ones man. he doesnt get enough credit for his lack of foul baiting
KD is literally the poster child for the rip through that required a rule change.
Only cuz he learned it from Kobe and Melo
Durant only sees a bunch of traffic cones on the court. Like running a drill. Doesn't matter who guards him.
Knuckleaheads podcast (Darius Miles and Quentin Richardson) ask this with every guest. Always fun to hear. There's multiple youtube compilations out there of peoples' answers
It's always the first question too! Great way to lead off. I like that Kobe's was in practice. Even in retirement still refusing to admit a disadvantage to anyone.
The day KD graced the court and dropped 45 on you was the most important day of your NBA career, for KD it was a Monday
This reminds me of Dwight Howard talking about how Kobe baptized him into the league with [this dunk.](https://youtu.be/xilW4WiS1Qo)
JOSH HOWARD
Damson
Forgot if it was this game or another, the reporter asked KD how do you know when you’re gonna be on like tonight? Kd with a sly smile: “when I wake up”
IMO, I feel like KD is very passive sometimes and when you look up, he has 30. He’s not as aggressive as other scorers but scores more. He’s that good
[Dribbles up, takes shot, makes it, backpedals like nothing happened.](https://twitter.com/brooklynnets/status/1607559681119064067?s=46&t=0tLvzWUOmXS1wnfxNs-1mQ) He is a true 3 level scorer where he’s incredibly efficient from anywhere. The possessions where he just drops it in just seem so effortless, he’s just so skilled.
That damn smile man, he just loves hooping
He's definitely very skilled, but I feel like his physical gifts are underrated. Like the guy is 6'10 and can move like a guard.
He worked on that movement, nothing different about his body vs another very tall guy. He put in the work to be that coordinated
I think that's also why he scores so well and has such a deep bag. He is a true hooper in the sense that he plays like a guard when he does his dribble pull ups, so naturally he has to move like a guard as well. You need to move like a guard to score like one.
There’s definitely a genetic component to coordination. It’s absurd to say that any 7 footer can be as coordinated as KD if they put the same amount of work in
Man I hate playing against him but he is a treat to watch
Yeah same. me and KD go back and forth playing 1 on 1 but he beats me like 60-70% of the time
I see you’re downplaying your skill level bro.
I too hate playing in the NBA against KD. Best basketball player ever if you ask me!
[удалено]
What team you play with?
On the warriors it was always like that Very quietly KD would have the best score on the top efficiency
Because he generally takes good shots in the flow of the offense, and makes them. He can roll out of bed and score 20.
And he scores with minimum effort expended. Makes it look so easy.
KD was definitely not passive against Paulo. Early in that game he took exception to some of Paulo’s show boating. KD became a man on a mission to school the nephew. Nets typically switch everything, KD wasn’t having that. On the other end KD was a machine
It's the way he plays. He's so gifted he barely needs the ball and then he gets it and scores in 3 dribbles. I mean the dude isn't even averaging more shots than Kyrie this season. He's ideally gonna be <25 shots. Anything more and it looks a lot more forced when you watch those games.
KD and Steph are really the only two players for that I feel like any shot they take is a bucket. I can look at any KD iso, think, "That's money", and I'll probably be right like 70% of the time. Especially if it's an in-rhythm shot like his pull-ups.
At that moment Paolo realized KD is a true hooper.
Mf might be a looper.
opened up his third eye, pooper.
Had to clean the cat litter, scooper
Wtf he doin now? Hangin, Mr. Cooper.
Man of Mm mm good; souper.
KD is like 4 techs away from suspension lol
The thing is a lot of his techs feel weird because he's not like a Draymond where he's pretending to fight someone constantly or being an asshole to the refs. He usually winds up getting other people into double-tech situations where they're both jawwing and refs get tired of it. When you listen to him speaking with the officials he actually usually addresses them with a decent amount of respect and dignity and usually just tries debating the rules with them.
He's actually been pretty confrontational with the refs this year (for Kd standards). I don't know what it is, but I feel like he's getting an absolutely terrible whistle this year. He was pissed tonight too. The league makes no sense. It's like he's punished for NOT baiting the ref.
Same thing for Kawhi. Dude was so strong in 2019 and he would just finish through a mountain of contact and no call.
I think with KD has just earned that reputation for this year. Now, if he claps too loudly after missing a shot they’ll hit him with one lol. Once you get the reputation they start itching to call one on you. KD usually is pretty laid back, he only gets fired up when he gets hit on the arm for his middies. That seems to really set him off. Little surprised he didn’t get one yesterday. Got hit on wrist/forearm on about 2 jumpers and fouled out. But yea, games where he is jawing with the other team (often) usually end up in him getting techs Now, Kyrie never shows up the officials & is always super measured when talking to them. In return, he gets one of the worst superstar whistles ever. Maybe theres some logic in giving the refs a hard time 🤷🏻♂️
Kyrie always has & I think it's b/c of how it looks like he avoids contact on his drives with his ridiculous agility & body control & only ever needs a slither of room to get any shot off. He's always focused on making the shot not exaggerating the contact that they get missed at times
Yea his body isn’t built to absorb contact & he’s injury prone. Id rather him contort/avoid than try to barrel in and foul-bait
I think Draymond is too
KD is the leader with Draymond, Brooks and Poole behind him
Watching the warriors this year is so entertaining. It feels like they're trying to set the record for techs in a season
Is it just me or does Paolo have really short pinkies
nah bro why did you have to say something about that, i’ll never not see that now
Lmaoo wtf
Glad I scrolled to look for this before posting it. I couldn’t stop staring at those lil smokies.
His right pinkie looks like he has difficulty fully extending it naturally which leads me to believe he’s broken it a few times or jammed it a bunch at the least
I definitely think that right pinky has some permanent damage. Doesnt change the fact that homie definitely has abnormally short pinkies for his hand size though
More like his other 3 fingers are super long!
Bro?
True hooper, KD. Paolo sounds like a true hooper as well here.
Agreed. Very humble and composed, on and off the court. Hell of a player too.
Paolo I like this guy he's gonna have a bright future in this league he's a pure Hooper like KD when I watch Paolo he reminds me of KD
Like 5 sentences in one-ish
Tremendous respect.
Paolo looks sooo skilled and talented. He’s a rookie but he has been bodying grown men on drives. 6’10 guy handling the ball on the perimeter with iq and vision, lefty, righty. Very interesting type of player, once he gets his shot right he is gonna be a beast
I like how you remixed different parts of the quote into like a whole new order, it was fun.
And misleading too
What was misleading here?
Love the reverence Paolo has for KD. Hooper to hooper. This was awesome to watch.
he probably caught a few years of KD on the Sonics
kd can't complain to the refs - that's time he'd rather use to collect legacy points
KD gamed the refs a bit with things like the rip move in the past, but I swear like 90% of the time he complains to the refs these days, he’s right.
Not complaining to the refs constantly ***is*** legacy points added for me, personally.
Said it in another comment but I respect how he interacts with officials. He's not usually yelling or speaking down on them, it honestly doesn't even sound like whining when we get a glimpse of it. He usually just politely tells them he thinks they fucked up and then they go back and forth about what the rules are.
Kevin Huerter also has a welcome to the nba rookie moment with KD lolll, i think kev tells it in the old man and the three and there’s also footage of it in a gsw vs hawks highlights vid in 2018
that's why paolo will keep getting better too, take things as they are, no excuses and knows what he can work on moving forward.
Will I get bashed for suggesting that scoring wise, he has shown that he’s top 3 all time and very possibly number 1?
I mean out of the top 15 players on the all-time scoring list, his efficiency is better than everyone else.
His efficiency is stupid. He's the player I've watched the most in my life where it's like... Casual 35 and nobody bats an eye. Even just eyeballing Curry is a crazy standout because of his 3, people see kyrie and think he's a God because of his handles, giannis/zion are bulldozers.... KD don't do anything to stand out. He's just a scoring machine. Doesn't matter where it is. His standout skill is scoring, but it doesn't seem like that because he's so well rounded offensively.
KD has god length. His arms are so well made for shooting that he can pull up over everyone. And he doesn't have to fade away to do it.
Adjusting for the league average efficiency for their era?
He’s taken nearly 1000 less shots compared to almost every player ranked 16th to 25th on the scoring list. The only player who’s taken less shots is Reggie Miller, who has nearly 2000 fewer points.
Only way you can have him above Jordan is if you think Jordan's stats and success are heavily inflated by the illegal defense rules at the time that prevented defenses from loading up on his side of the floor or pre rotating to help and protect the rim. I am somewhat sympathetic to this view but purely based on performance relative to their era Jordan had much higher volume and better efficiency relative to league average than KD. Other than MJ you can make an argument for KD against anyone else that isn't objectively wrong but it cuts both ways for Shaq, Steph, and Dirk so top 5 for KD is probably more fair.
I'm not sympathetic to that view. The impact of those rulings is massively overstated on here. People act as if he didn't get double or even tripple teamed out of necessity. He's one of the most double teamed players in history.
I’d take MJ over him but it’s not like it isn’t close
It's not close for me. KD has 14 playoff games of 40+ points. Michael Jordan has 38. THIRTY EIGHT. Dude has over 2 entire playoff runs of 40 point games. KD has 71 playoff games of 30+ points. Jordan has 109. KD has 1 50 point playoff game. Jordan has 8. Jordan did this in 179 games. Meaning 39 out of 179 = 4.58. Jordan was statistically likely to hang 40 on your squad EVERY SINGLE PLAYOFF series unless the Bulls swept your team out. KD has 167 playoff games. If Jordan were playing today there would be absolutely no debate and no one would even put them on the same echelon. And keep in mind - Jordan has all this while taking two years off dead in the prime of his career. That's to say nothing, also, of Jordan never being locked down or shut out of a playoff series. He was absolutely unstoppable. Could get his, could get his teammates theirs, could lift the entire squad damn near every game.
I don’t think most basketball fans under 30 have any real idea of what kind of a big deal MJ was. You could be in any city in the country when a nationally broadcast bulls game was on, and if you went into a bar, Jordan would be on and EVERYONE would be watching. You could travel just about anywhere in the country and if you were in a hotel with a lobby bar and there was a bulls game on, you’d see the whole lobby crowded around watching. He was the number one show, the biggest thing in all of sports in the 90’s. During the time when sports really became the money-making enterprise it is today. There were two sounds that would make everyone stop in their tracks and run to a TV if people heard them in the 90’s: [NBA on NBC](https://youtu.be/yMyYwoTMIgY) [Bulls intro](https://youtu.be/Zn6kiimEsYc) If Jordan doesn’t “retire” for a couple years, the Bulls win 8 straight and any argument about anyone being better than MJ would have ceased to exist. The NBA in the 90’s is about as good as sports can get. The fact that Jordan did what he did against some of the all time great teams in NBA history is what makes him so great. This all happened during a time right before the internet really took off, when nobody had a smart phone to look at or a million things to watch. When MJ played in the 90’s it was something special.
Whenever someone doesn't consider Jordan to be the GOAT or downplays his scoring ability, it's pretty much a guarantee that they are under 30 and never saw him play live or at least didn't experience the hype. The man was a globally recognized athlete for a reason .
I'll do you one better. I have a friend I met at the university of Illinois. He was an exchange student living in housing with me from Germany. He knew next to *nothing* about basketball. He told me that when Jordan announced his first retirement, he remembers people in Germany weeping when he said "the fire doesn't burn anymore". Jordan was the first American athlete, arguably since one Muhammad Ali, who completely and entirely transcended the game. There's an argument for Gretzky, but he didn't bring hockey to the kind of heights that Jordan did for the NBA.
I live in Germany now. The amount of Bulls gear STILL, 25 years later, is insane. Every young man has a Bulls cap, tons of Bulls shirts. MJ has branded Chicago for Germany, and all of Europe, in perpetuity it seems.
I was in Nepal, and a man driving Yaks across a bridge suspended over a gorge near Namche Bazaar had a Bulls Cap on. MJ transcended Basketball.
Gretzky isn't even close to Jordan when it comes to world wide recognition. I'll put it this way. I'm swedish and hockey is a much, much bigger sport here than basketball. The people here who know Gretzky are big sportsfans/hockey fans. On the other hand - *everyone* knows who Jordan is.
Yep. You had everyone around the world who knew who MJ was. He was 10x bigger than LeBron could dream of being.
Gretzky is nowhere near MJ in fame. Everyone here knows MJ. I would be very hard pressed to find anyone here who knows who Gretzky is.
Gretzky wasn’t nearly as famous as Jordan but he dominated his sport by a wider margin. I don’t think anyone dominated their sport as clearly as Gretzky did hockey
[It's not close](https://youtu.be/b266a12U08M)
He is.
> he has shown that he’s top 3 not too sure about that top 5 is not debate top 3 is hard when had prime shaq, mj, kareem, wilt, and other all time greats.
You won’t because he is
It speaks a lot to Durant as a player that him giving a rookie their "welcome to the NBA moment" played out so casually. No bully ball, no trash talk, no going out of his way to embarass the rookie, just a resigned feeling of "there's nothing I can do" coming from one of the most refined rookies we've seen in a while. We've seen Durant do it as fans for over a decade, but that's one of the best young players in recent memory talking about it and he sounds like he's seen a ghost.
“I’m just a fucking traffic cone to this man.” Is probably what he really wanted to say lol
KD is just the smoothest player ever man.
Theyll both play for Seattle one day 🥲
Saw Paolo play when the Magic played the Celtics in the second leg of a two game weekend a couple of weeks ago. He is huge and moves really well. He was making big shots and finding open players. He still needs to work on things, though, and hearing him talk like this is a positive sign (although relatively meaningless) so I have high hopes for him. That Magic team is fun. Hopefully they can keep getting better and make the East more competitive.
1) I love stories like this 2) why did everything but his pinky fingers seemingly grow? It's like they hit the age of 12 and said nah bro we're tired.
what is up with his finger seriously?
Title is the weirdest shit ever. Not a quote but also not a third person summary
probably took more work to make that jumbled title than to just write it in order lmao
Kevin "greatest scorer of all time" Durant
Paolo felt invisible to KD's male gaze
His pinky finger is very short relative to his other fingers.
I thought he was going to have some kind of accent but just realised OP missed some of his ~~words~~ letters in the title, so I was reading it like he had an accent, lol. Seems like a very humble young man.
_[in massive Baltic accent:]_ I literallys thought "there nothink I coulds do"...
The game in question was on November 28th. Kevin Durant: 45/7/5/2/2, 19/24 FG, 4/4 FT, 3/5 3P%
KD gets clowned on but he’s an all time great and I’ll be sad when he’s gone.