Thursday's matchup between the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder provides the perfect backdrop for any number of parlor games. Will Kevin Durant stay in OKC or bolt to the Bay Area this summer? Is Draymond Green a better triple-double threat than Russell Westbrook? Who's better: Stephen Curry, Durant or Westbrook? (OK, maybe that one's settled.)
But the most interesting one of all might be this -- who is the better duo?
Is it Curry and Green of the defending champion Warriors, or is it OKC's Durant and Westbrook? And is the winner the best duo in the NBA?
Let me clarify the parameters. Putting contracts aside, let's look through the prism of a five-on-five game. Which two guys would you rather start with if you needed to win?
Let's dig into what the numbers have to say.
Box score production
The Thunder have not one, but two players who in any given year could be both MVP candidates and scoring champions. Despite sharing the ball, Durant and Westbrook both rank in the top seven in PPG this season. It seems downright unfair that after Durant won four scoring titles in five seasons, it was Westbrook who took home the top scoring crown last year while KD nursed a foot injury. They get buckets.
They might be the best scoring duo in NBA history (considering pace and efficiency), but their overall box score production is impressive as well. If we pull up their player efficiency ratings (PER), we can see Westbrook (28.9) and Durant (28.2) rank second and third, respectively, in the NBA. (Curry reigns supreme at 32.9.)
No other team features two top-10 players in PER. Combined, Durant and Westbrook have a 57.1 PER, while Curry and Green put up just a 52.1 combined figure.
So, OKC has the best duo in the NBA, right? Not so fast.
PER does a lot of things well, but it doesn't capture the defensive side of the ball with much rigor at all. And that's important when picking the best duos to win a game.
Beyond the scoring column
This is where Draymond Green shines. He's a Swiss Army knife whose versatility stands out on the defensive end. He's quick enough to guard all five positions, if necessary. Despite standing 6-foot-7, Green can anchor the center spot better than just about anybody.
There are 43 players who have defended at least 75 post-ups this season, according to Synergy Sports tracking, and Green has allowed the fewest points per play (0.61) thanks to opponents shooting at a measly 28.9 percent clip. Those who have challenged him in the paint have largely lost.
Consider this: with Green and his 7-foot-1 wingspan at the 5 in the so-called Death Lineup, the Warriors have outscored opponents 477 to 325 in 147 minutes, which equates to a ridiculous 46.4-point advantage every 100 possessions, per NBA.com. Mercy.
What's wild is that Green also essentially can play point guard on the offensive end. He leads the Warriors in assists while having tallied 49 more dimes than LeBron James, despite playing 54 fewer minutes.
Green and Curry are nearly perfect complements to each other. Without Green's ability to punish teams in 4-on-3 scenarios, Curry wouldn't have nearly as much success when teams double him after crossing halfcourt. And Green probably wouldn't be shooting about 40 percent from downtown without Curry's gravitational pull drawing defenders away.
While Curry and Green are the game's manifestation of yin-and-yang, Durant and Westbrook's represent the law of diminishing returns. There's only one basketball to go around, which makes it tougher for Westbrook to have the same kind of impact if he doesn't have the ball in his hands. Defensively, neither Westbrook nor Durant ranks in the top 100 in defensive real plus-minus (RPM); Green ranks fifth and Curry 81st.
When we step away from the box score statistics and look at the scoreboard, there really isn't much of a case for OKC's duo. With Curry and Green on the floor, the Warriors blitz opponents by 22.3 points per 100 possessions. With Durant and Westbrook, the Thunder outscore the opponent by 12.1, an impressive figure that looks tiny by comparison.
And the Curry-Green success isn't limited to the Death Lineup. To illustrate their consistency, all 11 of the most-used Warriors lineups with Curry and Green have outscored their opponent this season. Compare that to OKC's duo, where four of their top eight lineups on the floor together have a negative number in the plus/minus column. Not good.
One retired NBA player, who picked the Warriors' duo as the league's best, put it succinctly: "One gives you a chance to compete every night, and one gives you a chance to win every night."
Stacking them up
So how do the numbers stack up with some of the other dominant duos? There are only five duos in the NBA where both players have an RPM of at least 5.0 -- the two we've mentioned, as well as Chris Paul-DeAndre Jordan, LeBron James-Kevin Love and Kawhi Leonard-Tim Duncan.
For a snapshot, here's how they stack up next to each other with their combined PER, RPM and net rating (point differential every 100 possessions while on the court). We can use these rate stats because these four players have played a similar number of minutes per game and a similar number of possessions.
The Lob City pairing in Los Angeles has the same total PER as the James-Love duo in Cleveland, but gets the edge slightly in RPM. While Kyrie Irving's PER is superior to Love's, the fact that Irving checks out as below-average in RPM this season disqualifies him from the list (ranking 76 out of 85 point guards in defensive RPM will do that).
It's tough to identify Leonard's co-pilot in San Antonio, if there is one. Duncan has the better real plus-minus compared to LaMarcus Aldridge, who doesn't finish in the top 30 power forwards. One Eastern Conference head coach I talked to -- who sided with Golden State's tandem -- joked, "Can I pick Kawhi and Pop?"
Ultimately, the duos in OKC and Golden State are both horrifying to face in their own ways. But given their complementary nature and the evidence on the scoreboard, the Warriors duo reigns supreme. This isn't baseball, where chemistry and interaction effects don't apply.
Curry has the best PER and the top RPM in the league, but Green's play has been outstanding on his own merits. Together, they make each other better. And now, they're the best two-man game in the league.