I highlighted a second essential fallacy that is brought up repeatedly -- the conflation of mere scoring with great (or Great) playerhood. The at least debatable argument that could be made would be that scoring in a different way does not automatically make Kevin a lesser scorer. More on that in a minute. Lesser player is an entirely separate issue that is, frankly laughable. Yes he is. Yes he always will be. He can be better than he today. He will never be LeBron or Kobe in all the thousand things they do for you.
To get back to the lesser scorer angle however, he is also a lesser scorer, or a less important one, until proven otherwise. And no he has not REMOTELY faced the same sorts of insane doubles that Kobe and LeBron face, with guys running over to double them as soon as they cross halfcourt and the entire defense being keyed to stop them and them alone no matter who gets left open. Not remotely. The conversation can't even be had until he does. But in the meantime the style of scoring absolutely does matter. Great playerhood is about more than your ability to put up numbers -- just ask Shareef. Its about your ability to make everbody ELSE on your team better. And it goes for scoring too. In many ways the easier you score, the less important you are for everybody else. You can still be a great scorer. But your team does not benefit beyond your own numbers. To take the extreme example, if you scored 30pts a night, but all 30 came off the fast break, you are worth exactly 30pts to the team, and nobody else is a lick better because of you. In fact if you are leaking out to get them, you are not even worth the full 30 since you cost your team some points to get them.
If you can score right through your defender, if you can take him into the post and just go right over him no matter what he does, you are truly unstoppable. If you are very good at taking advantage of his mistakes, score whenever he makes one, but can't beat him if he is locked in, you are not unstoppable. And if you score your points in the open court, on backdoor cuts, when guys turn their head, against single coverage, your teammates aren't more open because of it. If you score your points into the teeth of double teaming defense, do your damage inside as guys run at you and the defense collapses around you, you are far more valuable to the other guys on your team, because their opponents leave them to come and try to stop you. You make them better, at least if you are a willing and talented enough passer to hit the open guy when that happens. That is how guys like LeBron and Wade average so many assists a game -- they create all those opportunities for their teammates with their offense, and then beat the defense when it comes after them.
I would still say that Kevin has an outside outside shot at leading the league in scoring. But as I mentioned before, it depends whether teams care enough to give him the LeBron/Kobe double you at halfcourt and on all important possessions treatment. If they don't he has a chance. And we could use the publicity. But it won't be all positive -- its not uncommon for guards on bad teams to be megascorers and up amongst the league scoring leaders. And it did not bring respect to Stackhouse when he did it, or TMac when he did it with Orlando. Arenas in Washington. Nor even Kobe when he did it so spectacularly in L.A. It always raises as many questions as it answers -- principally why the guy is not elevating his teammates. It will bring us a little attention, but the path to respect lies in scoring big while winning games.
