1 Burst results for "Stepper Durant"

The Bill Simmons Podcast

05:01 min | 1 year ago

"stepper durant" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast

"Basketball reference is one of the great truth tellers of all time. First notice this when I was doing my book and I was trying to rank people and really going through the stats because in some cases you just had the stats and you had YouTube clips and that was it. But in general, when the points per game and the free throws start going down and you can look at somebody's career for ten, 12, however many years it is. And you just see that points per game art going down. Like it has with harden, it's usually a terrible red flag. Now you could say, oh, it's different situation, whatever. But he has kind of the perfect arc that like if you go look at Allen Iverson's basketball reference where it's like he's in the 30s and he's in the high 20s and then also it's done. That's the dramatic, clearly there's more going on there. This is a more old school somebody who's just not at the peak of his powers anymore. And you think of all the stuff they gave for him. I think they were expecting somebody who could at least be one of the best 7 players in the league for the next couple years. Now, if he goes to Philly and it's Simmons and a bunch of picks last year and he's with them bead. Is it a better version of hardeners at the same? How do you think it plays out alternate universe season Philly last year? I don't know, you got hurt, you know? He got hurt. So now he's automatically healthy in Philadelphia. That's a big assumption. Durant. But he didn't tear his ACL. He pulled his hammy. And what about like 8 months ago? No, so you're saying Hardin right now with Philadelphia? Yeah, I'm saying, I wonder if part of it is the situation. Where Durant's so easy to play with. I think Durant bails these guys out of bad possessions all the time. You know, clearly I mean, do you feel like hardens impeding anything Durant doing? I think I'm just trying to play it out. So do we think this just happens wherever he goes? Harden. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I don't know why there'd be a much better version of him with Philadelphia when he's playing with the best offensive player other than it depends on what you want with stepper Durant, but I still think if you need a bucket at the end of a playoff game, you still feel better with a 7 footer with a handle than you do somebody step size. So I don't know. Have you seen? Like give me your version of it then I'm saying you're wrong but get me your philosophy on what it would be with embiid and why it might be different or a higher ceiling a harden because that's where I'm confused. I think Philly's all around team is better. And I think it's a better spot for harden, where there's no, oh, who should take it this time? And obviously he's going to defer to Duran a lot of these times because the ran's the best scoring forward we've ever had in our lives. On the Philip team, it's him and embiid, but the combo makes more sense to me in my head. And I might be wrong. Maybe it makes more sense. You might be right there. You know, then you have a big garden next to maxi. You have a big garden next to Kurt. Yeah, just like the game for him better. I don't think you would add to play point guard as much. Like he's basically playing point guard for the nets, which I think at this point of his career. I don't know if that's awesome either. Basically been a point guard now for a second. Get it. And to be fair too, maybe max your career involved in one of the trades and the other way going out. Maybe it's an easier slot to kind of feel right in, but wait a minute, whether it's clackson not playing Blake's not playing Joe Harris isn't playing. You know, they got cam Thomas out there, The Rookie from LSU. And they kind of needed him the great shots. I was shocked by that, the bulls game. I don't know what they're outside, but I'm guessing that Joe Harris contractor the Kyrie would be if they're trying to get better. But this is also a team that could have signed in with you last year, right? They could have just kept him. They could have put the numbers to give it a shot. Yeah, but at some point, what do you care about the numbers if your numbers are already insane? And it doesn't seem like they cared about the money to begin with, but he was an asset they gave away. They gave away Jared Allen as an asset, which kind of turned into a low 20s pick. And they really were committed to Deandre Jordan for some reason, even though he's been done for three years. Speaking of that Lakers, I just don't think it's salvageable and people are like, you should take the Lakers. Like, well, both are true, maybe. Well, exactly. Second one's definitely true. And sports hate the Lakers. Right, and what we've been doing here is I've been kind of prepping for my position on however I'm on a counter you on this one, and that is why don't you just go ahead and do all your Laker stuff and then I'll follow it up. All right, I don't really have any Lakers stuff. I think there are slightly above 500 team. The.