Alright, so today I’m gonna spill the beans on my little project: “kd supersonics”. It’s basically me messing around with some data and trying to see if I could predict Kevin Durant’s performance if he’d stayed with the Seattle SuperSonics. Sounds kinda nerdy, right? Well, it was!
First things first, data collection. This was a pain. I had to scrape stats from a bunch of different sports websites. We’re talking points, rebounds, assists, all that jazz. I spent like, a whole evening just cleaning up the data in a spreadsheet. Seriously, those websites have some janky formatting.
Next up, I needed a baseline. What would Durant’s stats have looked like if the Sonics hadn’t moved to Oklahoma City and become the Thunder? I started by looking at his actual stats from his time with the Sonics and early years with the Thunder. I figured, okay, let’s see if there’s a trend.
Then, the fun part: predictions. I messed around with a couple of different methods. I tried just extrapolating his early career trajectory. That was kinda boring. So then I looked at players with similar career paths and tried to use them as a guide. Guys who were high-scoring forwards, good athletes, you know the type. Like LeBron, Kobe, etc.
I ended up building a really basic model. I looked at how the points, rebounds, and assists of these similar players changed over their careers and then tried to apply that pattern to Durant. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave me a rough idea.
Here’s what I found (or, you know, what my model spit out): If KD had stayed in Seattle, he probably would have been the face of the franchise, no doubt. His numbers would have gone up, maybe not exponentially, but steadily. I think he would have averaged around 30 points a game for a good chunk of his career, maybe even higher in his prime. Rebounds and assists would have been solid too, probably around 7-8 rebounds and 5-6 assists per game.
But here’s the kicker: championships. Would he have won any in Seattle? That’s the million-dollar question, and honestly, my model can’t answer that. It all depends on the team around him, the coaching, the luck of the draw. My gut feeling? It would have been tough. The Western Conference was a bloodbath back then, and building a championship team takes time and a whole lot of luck.
The whole process was pretty enlightening. It reminded me that data is just a tool. It can give you insights, but it can’t predict the future. And sometimes, the real story isn’t in the numbers, but in the what-ifs.
So yeah, that’s “kd supersonics” in a nutshell. A fun little experiment that scratched my itch for NBA history and data analysis. Maybe I’ll try predicting something else next time. Who knows!
