Kyrie Irving is a phenomenal player for the Cleveland Cavaliers. He is best known as that guy who broke Stephen Curry, and then hit a step-back game winner on him. With this clutch plays come hype. Some deserved but does he deserve as much as he gets?
The big debate around Kyrie is a top 5 point guard? To get it out of the way I will say Curry, Westbrook, and Wall. (If you count Harden as a PG he is better as well). So to make top 5 Kyrie has to beat out guys like Lillard, and Chris Paul.
Instead of comparing basic stats I will be using advanced stats to compare this players. A stat I really like is TPA it shows how many points someone adds for his team offensively, and defensively compared to a average player at his position. Comparing him to Chris Paul first. Kyrie Irving had a TPA of 0 added on offense, and -10 points on defense. Chris Paul added 47 points on offense and 13 points on defense.
Wait, wait, wait you are telling me that Irving the guy who is supposedly a top 5 NBA point guard and is costing his team 10 points per game? Is Irving is insanely overrated. No, not at all. TPA keys on shooting percentage and true shooting which Irving is not the best at. Irving ranks 17th out of the 21 guards who play as many minutes as him. Kyrie is a great point guard don’t get me wrong but, he isn’t efficient enough to rank high in TPA.
For those of you who hate advanced stats I will give you some traditional ones. Irving attempts the sixth most shots a game during the playoffs (21.3). He makes 8.7 shots which is the eleventh most. He is also a very ineffective three point shooter as he only makes his three’s at a 28.3% clip.
Many including myself before research think Kyrie is one of the clutchest players in the game but, surprisingly he gets worse in the fourth where his three point percentage is 16.7%, and his field goal percentage down 5% to 35%.
One thing that also drops Irving on the list is defense, remember their are two sides of the ball. Now their are top point guards who cost their team defensively, all of them add points offensively. The guard I will compare him to this time is Isaiah Thomas. Both are very similar except TS% and EFG%. In these numbers Thomas beats out Irving by almost 8% better TS% (59%-51.4%), and 6% in EFG% (51.5%-45.7%).
Even though Kyrie Irving is not a very efficient player that doesn’t mean he is not a great player. He put up 25.2 points, 5.8 assists, and 3.2 rebounds in 35.1 minutes this season. So after my research I have concluded that the only reason Irving can possibly be debated to be a top 5 point guard is that he is one of the best players on one of the best teams. Not only that he is a superstar based off how he plays with his crazy dribble moves, and circus shots he makes. That draws attention to him and might make him over-hyped. My final determination would be depending on what stats you look at Kyrie should be anywhere between the 6 and 9 spots.
*All stats I used in this article were based off playoff stats on 5/4.
*Let me know your thoughts as well on twitter @PSG_YT
