As the 2018 NBA Finals wound toward a Golden State Warriors sweep and Kevin Durant’s second straight Finals Most Valuable Player award, I asked Durant about his unique status as a historic scoring great who was rarely his team’s No.
James Harden and Russell Westbrook, Durant’s former co-stars with the Oklahoma City Thunder, had grown into that role.
That was at least in part intentional — a recognition of the limits in Westbrook’s skill set and of Durant’s malleability as someone who could dominate on and off the ball.
During those 2018 Finals, Shaun Livingston racked his brain for a historic analog — an all-time great scorer who was his team’s undisputed best player, an MVP candidate, and yet often played as something of a floating second option in terms of ball control.
“Obviously it would be cool to have the ball in my hands the whole game and rack up numbers,” he said.
In an era in which defenders navigate thickets of pick-and-rolls and cover the entire floor, it is hard for one player to dominate both sides for full games, weeks, series.
The ability to shift from on-ball to off-ball without losing an ounce of his impact — remaining a danger that draws multiple pairs of eyes — is a talent in itself, even if it is not the sort of talent that insists you notice it every second.
In 2016-17, Durant’s first season with Golden State, the Warriors added more new plays for David West than for Durant, Kerr told me.
Durant is a giant, on pace before his injury to go down as one of the very greatest players ever, and maybe with good health and luck, to challenge Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time scoring record.
He appears to be, and that should give Brooklyn confidence that the superteam it assembled from the ashes of its failed superteam has some time and even margin for bad luck.
The past week can be read as a vindication of the Rockets decision to take Brooklyn’s draft bounty over Ben Simmons as the centerpiece of its Harden trade return — a controversial decision I was largely fine with then.
He finished the playoffs having averaged 34 points, 4 assists, and 9 rebounds on 51/40/87 shooting.
We need to appreciate Durant’s ability to do everything at an all-world level after almost two years away, and with his co-stars out or hampered.
Durant ran 38 pick-and-rolls in Game 7 against Milwaukee, his most in any game since Second Spectrum began tracking in 2013.
When Lopez stepped up — or dropped back too far — Durant left him in the dust.
The Nets scored 1.195 points per possession when Durant shot out of a post-up, or passed to a teammate who fired — sixth among 90 players with at least 50 post touches, per Second Spectrum.
Durant was the only player in the top-10 in points per possession on all of those play types.
Even though Durant has often discussed his love of the little things and devotion to the craft, we don’t talk about him as a craftsman the way we do, say, Kobe Bryant.
Justin Zormelo, who worked with Durant for years, told me Durant once got so frustrated trying to master a crossover, he punted the ball into the stands and vowed never to use the move in games.
The level of polish, skill and anticipation on that last play is bonkers: the feel to cut up toward Nicolas Claxton’s handoff, then explode backdoor — and then the athleticism and touch to stop on a dime for a silky leaner.
Durant averaged 1.5 steals and 1.6 blocks in the playoffs, and he didn’t rotate out of scheme to get them.
If you prefer traditional stats, Durant is already one of just 17 players with at least 23,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, and 3,500 assists.
If he averages 25 points over the next five seasons while logging 70 games per season, he will be neck and neck with Jordan for No.
Before his Achilles tear, Durant was on pace to finish as one of the 10 greatest players ever, and that might have been conservative.
They were unbeatable in 2017, going 15-1 in the postseason, and reducing the entire playoffs mostly to a thought exercise in how to build a team even remotely competitive with them.
Those games will change the way one subset of fans thinks of Durant, and that is fair, too.
Durant set ball screens this season at a career-low rate, per Second Spectrum; the Irving-Durant and Harden-Durant two-man games, with Durant screening, feel like a natural next thing for Nash to lean into.
The Nets have a ton of outgoing free agents, with Spencer Dinwiddie preparing to decline his $12 million player option, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.