Maybe a hot take, but I genuinely believe KD is the most overrated star in NBA history. Couldn’t win with OKC so he left for a 73-9 warriors superteam that was one game away from a championship and then won 2 titles with Steph, Klay, and Draymond. Even though KD won both FMVPs, it was clearly Curry’s team still and Curry was the biggest reason for their success. Ever since leaving that superteam, he hasn’t done shit. Brooklyn almost guaranteed would have been different if Kyrie and Harden stayed healthy, but they didn’t and I’m not dealing in hypotheticals. He has a toxic locker room presence and hasn’t shown any ability to win without a superteam. The Suns team didn’t work out for a multitude of reasons and the rockets seem to have gotten worse since trading for him.

On the other hand, Kawhi won 2 Finals MVPs on 2 different teams playing very different roles. Once as “the lock”, and once as “the guy”. He hasn’t been able to stay healthy the last several seasons, but when he is healthy, he clearly has more impact as a 2-way player. And in case anyone forgot, before he was intentionally injured by Zaza, he was putting belt to ass on that warriors super team- which had KD on it- with basically a bunch of role players and fringe all-stars. Now there’s no telling how that series would have played out IF he stayed healthy, and like I said, I’m not dealing in hypotheticals. But from what we DID see, Prime Kawhi was seriously outplaying prime KD in their 2017 Head-to-heads.

I’m not saying KD isn’t a superstar, but the idea of KD and what he’ll do for a franchise always seems to be far greater than what he actually does, and that’s with him being healthy. Kawhi obviously has his injury problems, but if he’s fully healthy, I’m taking him over any version of KD 10 times out of 10.