Kevin Durant Is Good! This Is News?

Back in October, former Mavericks stat guru Wayne Winston set off a minor firestorm in the NBA blogosphere with his...ahem, controversial claim that Thunder forward Kevin Durant just wasn't that good. What was the basis for such a crazy contentious assertion? Adjusted plus-minus, a stat Durant didn't do well in. As you can imagine, people didn't take too well to this apostasy.

Now Winston is back with another set of semi-coherent/half-loony assertions (Luol Deng as an MVP candidate? Really? No seriously, really?). Among his latest talking points, Winston does offer this mea culpa (of sorts), saying that Durant has made:

Most amazing improvement I have ever seen. Currently his adjusted plus/minus is plus-16.5.. He should make 1st or 2nd team all NBA.

Here's another possibility: Winston has simply been wrong all along, and he's demonstrated the foolishness of only using a single stat to judge a player without providing any context. But other than that, his analysis is spot on!