Before the season began we had some threads on where Kevin ranked amongst OGs (think it was related to whetehr the new contract was reasonable or not), and he graded out at about the 9-12 area. The early scoring surge may move him up 1 or 2 spots, but its still largely the same thing for him. Kobe is better, Wade, TMac, Iverson, Pierce is probably a SF now, but Ray Allen has done it far longer and still gets the nod, Vinsanity ditto, and both those guys do more for you. As does Joe Johnson. So that's 7 right there. Then you have Redd, who may be the most like Kevin (one dimesional), but again, has done it longer, carries a bigger burden for the franchise. And then there's Rip, which is a borderline case (I have alway csonsidered Rip, like all the Pistons, quite overrated, but he plays better defense and last year really added the ability to create for others which Kevin only sporadically flashes). So you are talking 8-9 there. I already thought Kevin was above a tweener like Gordon, so Gordon's slow start doesn't change anything, and Richardson's slow start clarifies Kevin as above him for at least until he gets healthy. Manu is a tough call as always -- he is probably a better impact player than Kevin right now. At times he's a better player than just about anybody. But he does it in short minutes and is erratic. Meanwhile Maggette is back, but really a SF, Igoudala is a far better rounded, but again now a SF. The interesting thing will be seeing if any of the young guys behind Kevin, Roy, Durant, Gay etc. eventually pass him up even as he passes some of the aging guys ahead of him.
Anyway, you are talking about the same range for Kevin: high end maybe 8th, but likely 9-12. The thing about him right now is that he is just a scorer. And scoring is pretty and gets you on Sportcenter and eveything, but to borrow some logic terms, I would calling scoring a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite of a great plyer. In other words, all great players score big (well almost all), but not all big scorers are truly great players. What distinguishes the great players who score big from the guys who just score big is their ability to do other things. Create for teammates, rebound, defend, take over in the clutch, lead, run the team etc. On the high end you get a guy like Garnett who can do just about all of those things. On the low end you get guys like Kevin who really only do the one. And thats the difference -- the one dimensionality. And that still makes Kevin a good player and a very good scorer, but he's not a big impact guy at this point. And that's common for OGs, and one of the reasons that anything but a superstar OG is a fairly unimportant piece. By its very nature, the OG position is jsut about the most one dimesnional on a team unless you have the superfreak. An inside guy, you expect to at least have two dimesnions -- scoring + rebounding. A PG, scoring + passing. But an OG, by their very nature they are normally just the one thing until you cross over into that rarified Kobe/TMac/Wade air where they start creating, rebounding, etc.etc.
P.S. And this is just an aside, because a) I always consider these stats to be a little shaky, and its easy to make too much of them, and b) its really almost a topic for another thread; but in terms of +/- right now, Ron (+13.3), Brad (+13.0) and Beno(+9.4) have been by far and away our difference makers this year. Kevin sits at a very pedestrian +1.2, lumped in there with Salmons (-1.3) and Mikki (-1.4).
