Tale of 2 Halves: Durant vs. Tiny Archibald

In the ultimate tale of two halves, Kevin Durant put up an incredible 21 first half points to give the 2007 Texas Longhorns a 40-31 lead. The only teammate to score was Matt Hill, who hit a free throw. One of the problems for the 1970 UTEP Miners was that the two players defending Durant - Scott English and Len Stewart - both had the highest foul range (33-36 on defensive dice all fouls) and kept fouling Durant.

However, in the second half it was one of the greatest point guards in the history of basketball, Tiny Archibald, who scored 23 or his 31 points after half time to lead an incredible turnaround with a 51-22 domination to win going away 82-62.   

	1st H	2nd H	Final
Texas 2007	40	22	62
UTEP 1970	31	51	82

Archibald's backcourt teammate Bob Doyle also had a huge night with 21 points and UTEPs front court dominated the boards to give them a 32-21 edge on the boards. UTEP now faces Durant's long-time OKC teammate Russell Westbrook and his UCLA team.

 

Pos	Texas 2007	Pts	3pt	2pt	FT	Att	Reb	Stl	Blk	Fl
1-PG	D.J. Augustin	10	0	4	2	2	1	2	0	4
2-SG	A.J. Abrams	10	2	1	2	2	3	1	0	1
3-SF	Justin Mason	2	0	1	0	0	1	1	0	1
4-PF	Kevin Durant	25	1	7	8	11	4	0	3	1
5-C	Damion James	2	0	1	0	0	7	0	3	1
1-PG	J.D. Lewis	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1
2-SG	Craig Winder	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1
3-SF	Connor Atchley	4	0	2	0	0	2	0	1	1
4-PF	Dexter Pittman	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	1
5-C	Matt Hill	3	0	1	1	2	0	0	2	2
	11 Turnovers	62	3	20	13	17	21	4	9	14
Pos	UTEP 1970	Pts	3pt	2pt	FT	Att	Reb	Stl	Blk	Fl
1-PG	Tiny Archibald	31	3	8	6	6	2	4	1	2
2-SG	Bob Doyle	21	1	8	2	2	4	1	0	1
3-SF	Mike Switzer	8	0	4	0	0	6	1	1	1
4-PF	Dick Gibbs	4	0	2	0	0	5	0	2	3
5-C	Ples Vann	6	0	3	0	0	8	0	1	1
1-PG	Sam Samuels	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	0	2
2-SG	John Ruud	2	0	1	0	0	2	0	0	2
3-SF	Tom Issac	4	0	2	0	0	1	0	0	1
4-PF	Len Stewart	2	0	1	0	0	2	0	0	4
5-C	Scott English	2	0	1	0	0	1	0	1	2
	13 Turnovers	82	4	31	8	8	32	6	6	19

All-Time Great Player Tournament Returns: Westbrook vs. Durant or Tiny Archibald

After weeks of being swamped at work, we finally plan to resume our tournament of the remaining Value Add Basketball Game teams who featured one of the greatest 75 players of all time.

Russell Westbrook's UCLA team (2008) has the bye and waits to see if he will face his long-time Oklahoma City Thunder Teammate Kevin Durant and his 2007 Texas Longhorns. If Westbrook's hand heals in time they could face each other in the NBA Western playoffs this year.  Durant is still at his career average of more than 27 points a game after all these years, while Westbrook is on the downside of his career at 11 points a game almost a decade after being the NBA's MVP as Durant's teammate.

And let's not forget, Westbrook also has Kevin Love as a teammate on that great UCLA team.

However, for that Thunder teammate match, Durant's Longhorns will need to first upset Tiny Archibald and UTEP's squad. How good was Tiny? Three years after this college season he finished third in MVP voting despite leading the NBA with both 34 points a game and 11 assists a game to actually finish with more MVP votes than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but finished behind him and Dave Cowens in MVP voting.

Note - UTEP originally had a math error with Defense at 0.90 and Rating at +3, but it is corrected to 0.96 and-3

New Cards for 22 of Greatest 75 Players for New Teams

Click here for the google sheet or on the images below for the 22 all-time great players for the new Value Add Basketball Game teams we are now creating.

The four other new teams we are adding are from the www.kenpom.com era, so I can make them based on those stats and do the whole team at a time. The coincidentally are based on four incredible players in four consecutive seasons who made the Athletic list of the greatest 75 players of all time;

Texas 2007 Kevin Durant #13 player of all time.

UCLA 2008 Russell Westbrook #46 player of all time.

Arizona St. 2009 James Harden #33 player of all time.

Weber St. 2010 Damian Lillard #68 player of all time.

The process for the 20^th century teams takes much longer, and one step we always do is compare the NBA stats of the great players, particularly for stats not kept on college when they played (minutes played, three point shots, steals, blocked shots etc).

We basically took each players best NBA season (obviously against much tougher competition than they faced in college, and assumed they’d draw more fouls and hit 10% more of their 3-point shots (much closer arc) and 2-point shots (much easier defenders).

Below are the cards we created for each player. Note the dunk range and adjusted defense range are all the same, 51-56 and -6. These are usually for the whole team to adjust for level of competition, however since these players cards are based on playing against NBA players we don’t need to adjust the cards down for the ones who played lighter competition.

Durant, Westbrook, Harden and Lillard will be created with the rest of their teams from www.kenpom.com, but we will later add the 22 teams that go with these players.

Do note on the cards below that some great players from the days when front line players played inside, often with their backs to the basket, and would never have taken a 3-pointer, have no 3-pointers but do score and get fouled on a "1" on the 20-sided die roll instead.

Blue numbers on these stats were estimated using various methods because those stats were not kept then.

Here are the College Basketball links to the players above.

Jason Kidd Robert Parish Ray Allen Dave Cowens Allen Iverson Alonzo Mourning John Stockton Karl Malone Wes Unseld Bob Pettit Hal Greer Julius Erving Chris Webber Bob McAdoo Billy Cunningham Dolph Schayes Gary Payton Lenny Wilkens Steve Nash Walt Frazier Reggie Miller Tiny Archibald