Who is more important to their team's success: Klay or Kyrie?
Wednesday night, Kyrie Irving returned to the court after a long hiatus surrounding his refusal to get vaccinated. In his season debut, Kyrie posted 22 points and 4 rebounds behinds Kevin Durant's dominant performance with 39 points. The return of Kyrie to the Nets has been long-awaited for not only the team but fans around the league.
By now, Dubs fans are aware that Klay Thompson will more than likely be returning this Sunday when the Warriors take on the Cavs at home. Klay's return, much like Kyrie’s, has been long-awaited. With Klay's return imminent, it is worth analyzing which star player will make more of an impact as the NBA season progresses into the playoffs.
April, May, and June basketball are far and away the most important months of the season. However, the foundation for postseason success is developed now, in January, February, and March. Both the Nets and the Warriors have proven thus far that they are poised for deep playoff runs. However, what is important to remember is when Klay comes back, he is back, slowly ramping up minutes to get back into game shape. Whereas, Irving’s return is only in a limited capacity, only allowed to play in away games due to his unvaccinated status.
With Kyrie refusing to get the Vaccination, this opens the door for many of the teams in the east to take advantage of the Nets when they play at the Barclays Center.
Both guys, Klay and Kyrie, are generational talents. Both can change the outcome of any game and have the ability to make everyone around them better. However, I firmly believe Klay's return will be far more impactful.
The biggest supporting statement to that claim is obviously the fact that Kyrie is still just a part-time player. The Nets will be left without his talents for home games while Golden State will have the luxury of having Klay playing in most games for the remainder of the season, aside from back-to-backs in which Steve Kerr has said he would likely hold Klay out of in either the front end or back end of those quick turnaround games.
Aside from that, Kyrie may end up having more of a statistical impact on his ball club in regards to a per-game average basis, but Thompson should have him beat in the totals categories as, again, he’ll be playing in around 50% more games.
Klay’s fellow backcourt mate, Stephen Curry, should also see some benefit from Klay’s return. For the past few years, opposing teams were throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Curry in regards to different gimmicky defensive schemes. We even saw some box-and-one defensive sets deployed against the greatest shooter in the world, and for the most part, there wasn’t that dead-eye shooter waiting on the wing who would make teams pay. With Klay back, and assuming he still has his shot, which I don’t see him losing any time soon, this could really leave the opps in a predicament as they’ll have to either decide to throw multiple defenders at Curry to stop him or to keep a defender on Klay, which in many cases will take defensive pressure off of Curry and allow him to cook.
Kyrie’s return could take some of the scoring load off of Kevin Durant and James Harden, however, those guys don’t see the defenses that Curry sees on a nightly basis. Thus, the return of Kyrie will certainly help, but it won’t positively affect the team as much as having Klay back for the Warriors will.
The Nets are an extremely dysfunctional team, they have a wide assortment of talent on their roster but lack positional depth. Their center position depth is abysmal, and at times, their games look similar to the likes of a pickup game at the local rec center. Basketball is a team sport, and the sole reliance on three guys to carry the team every game is not a championship-winning equation. Conversely, the Warriors have shown that they are more than capable of playing as a team. Night in and night out Golden State has had different guys stepping up. Look no further than Otto Porter Jr's. late-game heroics against Phoenix in Christmas, or Iggy's game icing shot against Utah, prompting Max Kellerman to double-down on his “I want Iguodala” stance.
As we look forward to the playoffs, it is worth noting, that the Warriors are in a much better position than the Nets, even with Curry not playing up to par recently. Additionally, we will ideally get to see both of these teams at full strength on Jan 29th at Chase Center when KD makes his return to the Bay.
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