Offseason Beat: The Kevin Durant Dilemma

We have some short memories. Do you remember what you had for breakfast yesterday or do you remember the sentence you read just before this one? OK, our memories aren’t that bad, but in the sports world we tend to forget about what happened two seasons ago. Everyone lives in the “what have you done for me lately” world and that’s certainly the case in fantasy hoops, too.

The point is people probably forgot just how good Kevin Durant was in the 2013-14 season. Yeah, we all know his mom was the real MVP and he went bonkers in scoring. For his fantasy owners, not only was he No. 1 in standard leagues, but his value was 20 percent greater than any other player.

Digging a littler deeper, KD in 2013-14 was the only qualifier for minutes in NBA history to put up a true shooting percentage of at least 63 with a usage rate of 33 or more (per Basketball Reference). That kind of usage is nuts and that’s some Stephen Curry-like efficiency. Plus, he wasn’t even No. 1 in usage rate on his team because that honor goes to Russell Westbrook — he’s ranked 1-2 in usage rate in each of the last four seasons and led the NBA in the last two.

Westbrook is now entering his prime at 26 years old, so are we still going to get the same KD? I think so. In fact, KD made 80.0 percent of his field goal attempts at the rim with Westy on the court and he was assisted on 61.0 percent of those (per NBA Wowy). Overall, Durant’s true shooting percentage was 1.7 points higher with Westy, and probably the most noteworthy split is KD taking and making more 3-pointers with Westy. For fantasy, we like open 3-pointers, especially from KD. Probably one of the craziest stats in this whole column is this one: KD made 55.6 percent of his “wide open” 3-point attempts last season. For reference, Stephen Curry made only 47.0 percent. KD is some kind of shooter. Heck, he even made 43.1 percent of his 3-point attempts with “tight” defense (defender 2-4 feet away). Here’s a look at his shot chart from last season:

Those are pretty awesome numbers across the board, but the at-the-rim numbers really jump off the page. He’s almost 17 percent above league average! To take it a step further, here’s a list of the top guys at the rim last season (minimum of 100 attempts):

Yep, numero uno by a fairly significant margin. KD’s shooting percentage at the rim has gone up in each of his last three seasons. He’s also taking less two-point shots from beyond three feet while 34.0 percent of his shots came from beyond the arc — that shattered his previous career high of 29.1. Basically, his shot selection is close to perfect for fantasy value and he’s still just 26 years old.

Besides the scoring, KD was also ridiculous in the other categories. In 2013-14, he averaged 7.4 boards, 5.5 assists, 1.3 steals, 0.7 blocks and 2.4 treys. The bad news is that all of those numbers dipped last season except for treys and blocks. Still, he was really good and that will continue to be the case going forward as long as he’s healthy.

Which brings us to the bad part of this story. Durant had bone graft surgery on his right foot back on Mar. 31. He was expected to be held out of basketball activities for 4-6 months, but he’s starting to get it going now. It would appear he’ll be a full go for training camp. Let’s go over the bad news timeline again:

Oct. 12: Diagnosed with a Jones fracture to his fifth metatarsal.

Oct. 16: Has surgery on his right foot.

Oct. 23: Has cast removed from foot.

Nov. 6: Out of a walking boot.

Nov. 22: Goes through non-contact practice.

Dec. 1: Puts in first full practice.

Dec. 2: Scores 27 points in 30 minutes in 2014-15 season debut.

Dec. 18: Has minutes restriction lifted to mid-30s.

Dec. 19-30: Misses six games due to a right ankle sprain — this is not related to his foot fracture.

Dec. 31: Returns and drops 44 points in 40 minutes during OT win vs. Suns — Russell Westbrook was ejected in the second quarter for this one.

Jan. 26-31: Misses two games due to a left big toe sprain.

Feb. 1: Returns and scores just 15 points in 43 minutes vs. Grizzlies.

Feb. 2-4: Misses two games with left big toe sprain.

Feb. 6: Returns and drops 27 points in 43 minutes during OT loss to Pelicans — this is the game when Anthony Davis did THIS.

Feb. 19: Looks hurt and scores 12 points vs. Mavs.

Feb. 21: Misses game due to right foot injury.

Feb. 22: Has surgery to reduce pain in right foot.

Feb. 23-Mar.28 : Misses 17 games while doing some practice with hope of returning.

Mar. 31: Had bone graft surgery on his right foot to end his season.

July 5: Starting taking jump shots.

Aug. 11: Says he “can go 100 percent” on the court.

Basically, the team never really fixed the issue from the start and that’s why they went with a bone graft. That brings us up to today. NBA writer Kevin Ding wrote a fantastic article about the procedure. Check out that article here, but here are the highlights:

“They stuffed some bone-graft thing in, and they pasted over the top of the area. That healed up in a couple of weeks,” Durant said. “But then they stuck something else in there just to smooth it out and make sure it was thick. They did a lot.”

“I got like an extra layer of bone on the side of my foot that they put in there,” he said. “That’s why it took longer to heal. Keep it firm. I could’ve gone another route with surgery. That was the longest, and that was the safest.”

On the most basic point, Durant is cleared to play fully now on a “healed” bone. But when doctors say it is “healed,” it is healed enough that based on basic evidence it should not break again; the bone will continue to heal on some small level for more than a year.

Durant broke the bone once and then turned to dramatic measures via this synthetic INFUSE bone-graft protein—the type of push-the-envelope medical choice that athletes increasingly are making to maximize their bodies’ possibilities. Robert Klapper, a Los Angeles orthopedic surgeon who was not involved in Durant’s case, equated the steps taken in Durant’s third surgery to “putting a belt on his pants—and suspenders.”

Klapper said that after a year of healing, the fifth metatarsal in Durant’s right foot should have greater integrity than ever before.

“There is no reason why Kevin Durant should not be like the Lopez twins (Brook and Robin), Pau Gasol, Michael Jordan and many other folks who’ve had metatarsal fractures and gone back and played and never had a problem again,” Klapper said. “The data supports that he should come back stronger and should never have a problem with this again.

“That’s the answer that you have to give. But nobody knows for sure.”

Again, this is required reading, so check that out here. Dr. Klapper also added some tweets Friday afternoon: “Our understanding of fractures and how they heal involves understanding the TWO cells in our bones. One Builds and one removes it!”

As mentioned in the article, there is some controversy with KD’s procedure. The Infuse protein had some wild reports about it: [The analysis] found a systematic failure to report serious complications with Infuse, bone morphogenetic protein-2 or BMP-2, which is used in spinal fusion surgery. The researchers found complication rates that were 10 to 50 times greater than the estimated complication rates revealed in the medical literature.

OK, so before you freak out, let’s get a few things straight. This is from 2011, things have been quiet since, and this is for spinal infusion surgery. It’s still legal and is literally a $2 billion business per year. Many of the side effects come early and there has been no word KD having anything yet.

It’s usually helpful to use previous instances to help project what’s going to happen. The problem is we really don’t have much to go on here. Most notably, Yao Ming and Grant Hill had bone graft surgeries. Obviously, that didn’t go very well for them, but both guys were already injury prone even before those issues. After all, KD was the No. 1 player for five straight seasons before this foot issue, so you can’t get that done without some serious durability. Plus, Hill’s surgery was back in 2001 and one would think there have been plenty of advances in modern medicine. What did your phone look like in 2001? I had that lame Nokia one like everyone else with a cool basketball cover, of course. The Infuse bone-graft is the big variable here, but a few items have said foot bone grafts tend to be “generally well-tolerated” compared to other joints. Most doctors endorse the surgery, so we should take their word for it.

OK, so with all of this stuff in mind, where do you take KD in a fantasy draft? As great as he can be, it’s still not enough to take him over Anthony Davis. By the way, Brow’s per-game value in a standard league was better than KD’s 2013-14 season, which is mind-blowing. After that, it’s fair game. You definitely can make a case for Stephen Curry and I probably would grab him No. 2 in leagues that aren’t highly competitive. Is anyone worried about James Harden joining Adidas? I am more worried about that than Ty Lawson affecting him negatively. While Harden was second in points per game, he ranked just 27th in the NBA in time of possession with the basketball last season, so he doesn’t need the ball in his hands the whole time. Those are really the only three I’d even consider taking over KD. He’s in his prime and could give AD a run for his crown as best per-game guy. In other words, he’ll be ranked 2-4 for me depending on my league. Scared money don’t make money, you guys.

If we want to assume KD comes back strong, we just have to touch on Westy a bit. When KD was off the court last season, Westbrook had an absurd 42.2 usage rate in those 1,583 minutes. Plus, he had a respectable 54.4 true shooting percentage despite making just 30.4 percent from deep in that time.

We get Bestbrook when he’s gutting defenses at the rim. Without KD last season, he attempted 36.0 percent of his shots at the rim while making 57.9 percent of those and was assisted on just 21.1 percent of those. On the other hand, with KD Westy made 53.3 percent of his shots at the rim with those shots accouting for 36.3 percent. He was also a shade worse from deep with KD, so getting KD back does hurt him slightly. Of course, we all know he won’t be quite as good as last season from a pure stats standpoint.

Whatever the case, if a guy has been first or second in usage rate for four consecutive seasons and is in his prime, it’s really hard to be dissuaded from drafting Westy in the top six in almost any format.

Lastly, we have some news. The Rotowolrd guys are finally in the podcast game! We’ll be doing a lot more this season with multiple guys. We still haven’t figured out a plan yet, but I already got a jump on it and recorded my first episode on Thursday.

The first episode was all about the NBA schedule and second-half studs. There are a lot of suggested fantasy targets in there, so check it out!

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