NBA Small Forwards: Who’s the best?
By Eric Saar
The starting NBA small forwards are very important to a team. They are usually the best and most versatile players on the team. They are usually big enough (around 6’8” to 6’10”) to guard power forwards, but quick and long enough to keep the quicker and smaller guards in front of them.
Generally, they are the most talented offensive players and are able to score effectively and consistently in different facets of the game. Bernard King, James Worthy, Elgin Baylor and Dominique Wilkins are just a few great small forwards when the emphasis in the league was at different positions.
But who are the best small forwards going into the 2014-15 season?
Note: I am leaving Paul George off the list due to the high possibility of him not playing at all this season due to the gruesome injury he suffered.
The list of six top statistically good small forwards are broken up into two groups. The first is the certain or probable Hall-of-Famers in LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Carmelo Anthony with the other group, up-and-coming small forwards with great stats, yet drastically less name recognition in Rudy Gay, Kawhi Leonard and Nicholas Batum.
Like usual, we start off with points per game as the small forwards nowadays shoulder much of the offensive load.
Points per game
- Kevin Durant: 32.0
- Carmelo Anthony: 27.4
- LeBron James: 27.1
- Rudy Gay: 20.0
- Nicholas Batum: 13.2
- Kawhi Leonard: 12.8
Of course Durant is the scoring champ for practically his entire career (minus the year Anthony got it by a technicality due to the metric being PPG and Anthony missing games with an injury). He dominates the offensive side of the ball and makes it look easy.
James and Anthony are also both prolific scorers, but not quite on the level of Durant. Gay, Batum and Leonard are good, but aren’t the best players on their respective teams and therefore not the focal points on offense.
Next up is rebounding.
Rebounds per game
- Carmelo Anthony: 8.1
- Nicholas Batum: 7.5
- Kevin Durant: 7.4
- LeBron James: 6.9
- Kawhi Leonard: 6.2
- Rudy Gay: 6.0
As small forwards, rebounding isn’t as high a priority as for other positions, but everyone needs to crash the glass and these guys are better than most at their position at it. Anthony and James are so big they are able to box out their man and grab those tough rebounds. Durant and Batum are so tall, especially for their position and have such long wingspans they can snatch the ball out of the air. Rounding out the list are Leonard and Gay who are average rebounders for their position.
Assists per game is the next statistic to look at. As these potent scorers get double-teamed, how do they distribute the ball to teammates? That is one way to make their teammates better, which is a sign of a great player.
Assists per game
- LeBron James: 6.4
- Kevin Durant: 5.5
- Nicholas Batum: 5.1
- Carmelo Anthony: 3.1
- Rudy Gay: 2.9
- Kawhi Leonard: 2.0
LeBron James is so good at this category. 6.4 is crazy good for a small forward. This is one reason a more accurate comparison for LeBron is Magic Johnson as opposed to Michael Jordan. James and Johnson were both big players who played what is called the point forward position. Magic was labeled a point guard due to his role while James is called a small forward due to his size, but they are both certainly point forwards.
Batum is surprisingly high on this list at 5.1, seeing as he is probably the third best player on his team behind LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard. Anthony and Gay are just more of high-volume shooters who need to be shooting rather than passing (generally) so their assists will never be very high.
Next to last is the Player Efficiency Rating (PER). This metric helps determine a player’s overall contributions to each game. Average is 15.
Player Efficiency Rating
- Kevin Durant: 29.90
- LeBron James: 29.40
- Carmelo Anthony: 24.50
- Kawhi Leonard: 19.43
- Rudy Gay: 18.40
- Nicholas Batum: 15.86
By this overarching statistic, the game’s two best players James and Durant are nearly twice as good as the average player in the league. Anthony is just one tier behind, Leonard and Gay in another one with Batum at the level of that replacement player.
The final metric is value added, demonstrating how many points the player added to his team across the season.
Value Added
- Kevin Durant: 903.8
- LeBron James: 818.5
- Carmelo Anthony: 623.0
- Rudy Gay: 298.3
- Kawhi Leonard: 256.3
- Nicholas Batum: 236.7
Durant decisively wins this metric as he adds nearly 85 points more to his team than James did over the course of the season. There are clear delineations between Durant and James, James and Anthony and Anthony from the rest of the group. Then Gay, Leonard and Batum are all within 61.6 points of each other.
Overall, Durant led the points per game, player efficiency rating and value added metrics, while Anthony led in rebounds per game and James led in assists per game. Seeing as Durant was only 0.9 assists per game behind LeBron and 0.7 rebounds per game behind Anthony it is clear Durant is currently the best player at the small forward position. Obviously, most everyone else agrees as KD won the MVP award for last year.
I see him winning it again unless one particular scenario happens (barring injuries to either LeBron or Durant). Either Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving or both are lost due to injury for an extended period of time and James still carries them to a top-two record in the entire league. If that doesn’t happen, Durant wins another MVP and is again the best of the NBA small forwards.
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