As we prepare to tip off the NBA preseason, it's time for the latest edition of my NBA mailbag, starting with what to expect from Kevin Durant during the 2021-22 season. After the most effective comeback from an Achilles rupture we've seen from a star player in recent history, how might Durant play in the second year after the injury with the Brooklyn Nets? How will a full season with James Harden affect Durant's production?
Throughout the NBA season, I answer your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpelton, tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to peltonmailbag@gmail.com.
The best questions focus on a general topic instead of a specific player or team, and anything that allows me to do original research to understand how the game is played is welcomed.
In addition to the lead question, this week's mailbag also tackles your questions about:
Whether the NBA's approach to the preseason might someday mirror the NFL's
Potential solutions to situations like that of John Wall with the Houston Rockets
"I'd like to know what your expectations are for Kevin Durant. Last season he was plagued by injuries, but the time he was on the court he played great. Do you think he'll get better numbers next season?"
-- Rom, Dominican Republic
Better numbers on a per-game basis might be difficult! What's going to be interesting this season is that Durant will surely play more with James Harden than he did last season, when both players missed extended stretches due to injury after Brooklyn added Harden. Oddly, Durant was less prolific as a scorer and less efficient in the 2020-21 regular season the more star teammates he had next to him.
So this doesn't get lost: When Durant was the lone member of the Nets' big three on the court last regular season, he averaged nearly a point per minute while shooting 66% on 2-point attempts and 51% on 3s. That's preposterous. Those scenarios made up about a quarter of all Durant's minutes last season. Depending what happens with Kyrie Irving's availability to play in home games, it's unlikely we'll see those groups as much this season.
With Harden and Irving alongside him, Durant was more likely to defer, using just 29% of Brooklyn's plays as compared to a 34% usage rate as the lone star. As a result, I think Durant's per-minute scoring might drop a bit from his 29.3 per 36 minutes in 2020-21 -- second highest in his career behind his 2013-14 season, when he won MVP. I also wouldn't expect Durant to quite maintain his career-best 45% 3-point shooting.
Still, what Durant does in the regular season isn't as important for the Nets as how he performs in the playoffs. It was his scoring inferno of a postseason that led Durant to the top spot in ESPN's NBArank for the first time in his incredible career. The past two times he has been healthy during the playoffs, Durant has looked like the league's best player. Barring further injury, there's no reason to expect anything much different.
"Might NBA coaches follow the lead of their NFL peers by taking their best players out of the preseason almost entirely?"
-- Tristan
As avid NFL followers know, the way pro football teams treat the preseason has changed dramatically in recent years, even before this season's reduction from four games to three. In 2019, Michael Lopez of the NFL showed a long-term downturn in playing time for Week 1 starters in the preseason that has accelerated recently, led by head coach Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams taking most key starters out of preseason play entirely.
We've also seen a reduction in preseason games in the NBA, where teams used to typically play eight games. This year, no team will play more than six preseason games and the average is closer to four than five.
To look at playing-time trends in the preseason, I put together a similar chart covering the entire schedule looking at the top five players in minutes played on opening night for each team (since in the NBA, the difference between starters and reserves is more fluid) dating back to the 2008-09 preseason:
Until last season, with an abbreviated training camp and three-game preseason schedule, there was a downward trend in playing time for key players during the NBA preseason -- though nowhere near as dramatic as the one in the NFL. Even in 2019-20, the low-water mark in this sample, a team's top five players saw about the same share of preseason playing time (35%) as NFL starters did in Week 3 of the preseason a decade ago.
It's possible this trend will eventually lead NBA coaches to the same place as NFL coaches, but I'd be surprised. The NBA doesn't have a risk factor quite like live tackling in the NFL, which can be controlled more easily in practice than in games. I doubt it will ever make sense to completely forgo game experience in the preseason in favor of additional practice time.
Can I ask a mailbag question here?
— Beloved Thought Leader (@xiane1) September 15, 2021
Would the NBA benefit from a (very) limited NFL style salary/years restructure? A sort of restructure of a buyout that keeps the player, but pushes out some salary?
As a Rockets fan I don't think the John Wall situation is good for anyone.
As an outside observer, I don't think it's good for anyone either. The situation where a player has too long left on his contract for a buyout to be reasonable, so he ends up away from the court until that changes, seems to be increasingly common. We saw it with several players last season (LaMarcus Aldridge, Andre Drummond, Blake Griffin), albeit none for the extended period we might see in Wall's case.
The fundamental issue seems to be that teams are reluctant to take such a big hit on their salary cap until they're certain there's no chance of trading the player for a less valuable one with a slightly smaller contract. That can change when the amount of salary given up in a buyout is big enough, but we don't typically see that outside of the start of free agency (e.g. Kemba Walker) because players won't make up the difference in their new contract.
Griffin ultimately did give up enough to work out a buyout, but simply forfeited salary when he subsequently signed for the Brooklyn Nets at the veteran's minimum (and again re-signed for a similar salary this season).
I don't know that a restructure would help matters, since that's essentially what the stretch provision allows teams to do now. Houston doesn't want Wall's salary on the cap beyond 2022-23, because that's when the team will have flexibility and hopes to be building around a young core of talent.
Instead, I think there are a couple of reasonable possibilities worth exploring. One was suggested by Dan Feldman of NBC Sports, who proposed a bidding process for waivers similar to how amnesty waivers worked under the 2011 collective bargaining agreement. Instead of claiming a player's entire contract, the modified version would send the player to the highest bidder (using either cap space or available exceptions), who would be responsible for that amount of salary while the remainder of the contract goes as a cap hit to the former team.
That might not change things much compared to the current buyout process, however, in scenarios like this. A more aggressive change would be to allow teams to split the salary of traded players from a cap standpoint. Every other big-four pro sports league allows this practice because there aren't the same rules on salary matching.
Imagine, for example, that the Rockets could trade Wall for a player making $6 million this season on an expiring contract. He'd count $6 million against the cap this season and next for his new team, with the remainder of his salary going on Houston's cap as if Wall had been bought out. At that price point, Wall might have some modest trade value, so the Rockets potentially get a $6 million savings (in 2022-23) and a second-round draft pick, his new team gets Wall at a reasonable cost and Wall gets to play basketball. I think that could be a better model for everybody involved.