Durant provides far better defense and rebounding, and contributes as a major playmaker in addition to his scoring ability. Durant is a complete player, only a silly person would say he’s a pure scorer. Melo is the kind of analogy to make for Kyrie, not someone like Durant.
Kyrie doesn’t provide anything on the floor besides the ability to score. Now, big part of that is that he doesn’t need to pass if he can score it himself. He believes he can score every trip down and since he typically has to do that when LeBron sits, that might be good strategy on offense.When you have guys in the league like Steph, Westbrook, Chris Paul, John Wall, and Mike Conley (a legit unheralded baller), there’s a stark difference in that each one of them provides comparable or slightly lesser individual offensive value and all of them provide much greater individual and team defensive value. Guards don’t need to contest every shots to play defense, sometimes it’s as much as staying with their man to prevent giving up space.
