By Ian Levy

Nylon Calculus, brought to you by The Step Back

It’s truly amazing how far Kevin Durant has come. His potential as a uniquely unstoppable scorer was apparent right from the beginning of his career. But much of the conversation about him during his first two seasons in the NBA was focused on whether his defense could ever catch up to his offense.

It’s been a long time since Durant was a net negative on defense but he seemed to emerge as a real defensive force in the Oklahoma City Thunder’s near-upset of the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 Western Conference Finals. Durant’s switchiness and defensive versatility were incredibly disruptive in that series and he’s taken things to another level since joining the Warriors.

We can use the NBA’s new matchup box scores to illustrate Durant’s versatility this season. Take for example, Golden State’s Jan. 20 matchup with the Houston Rockets. You can see below just how many different players and positions Durant spent time guarding during that game (defensive matchups are assigned based on which offensive player the defender was assigned to for the majority of the possession).

The Rockets scored fairly effectively when Durant was on the floor but it wasn’t usually a direct result of Durant’s defensive assignment. All together, he defended 75 possessions and the players he was assigned to produced just 12 points and one assist while Durant was guarding them. The graph below breaks that information down by the position of Durant’s defensive assignment.

Remember that these are possessions where Durant spent the majority of the time defending that player, not just a momentary defensive switch at the end of a possession. It’s not quite an even split between the three positions but it’s fairly close. We haven’t played with these numbers enough to set a reasonable baseline average for points per possession allowed, but these would appear to be astronomically low numbers.

We can see his defensive impact across multiple areas with other metrics as well. He’s a very capable perimeter defender -- ranking in the 80th percentile as an isolation defender and averaging 1.1 steals per 100 possessions. With the Warriors, Durant is often playing up a position in small ball lineups (particularly defensively) and his development as a big defender has been crucial.

So far this season, Durant ranks in the 71st percentile as a post-up defender and he’s one of just 24 players in the league to be averaging at least 2.5 blocks and one steal per 100 possessions. It is this development as a rim protector and interior defender that seems to have made the biggest difference in Durant’s defensive impact and reputation.

Sixty-seven players have defended an average of at least four shots per game within six feet of the basket this season. Durant has allowed opponents to shoot 55.7 percent on those shots -- 28th-best among that group of 67, and about the same as Marc Gasol or Anthony Davis. Durant has played 474 minutes this season with Damian Jones, JaVale McGee, David West, Jordan Bell and Zaza Pachulia on the bench, essentially functioning as the team’s center. His ability to provide effective rim protection in those minutes augments the effectiveness of small ball lineups by removing one of their primary weaknesses.

The Warriors defense hasn’t been quite as effective this season -- allowing 103.7 points per 100 possessions, down from 101.1 last season. Still Durant’s defensive development has helped them survive eight missed games for Draymond Green, and nine missed games for Andre Iguodala. Winning Defensive Player of the Year may still be a stretch but it’s definitely not a stretch to ca ll Durant one of the best two-way players in the league.