30 NBA Players in 30 Days: Kevin Durant
Day 17 of our 2022–2023 NBA season countdown brings us to Brooklyn, NY to talk about the player who had the biggest story of the offseason (until Ime Udoka), Kevin Durant. The Texas forward shocked the NBA landscape when he requested for a trade from the Nets this past summer. After weeks and months of demands like making Nets’ owner Joe Tsai pick between him or Steve Nash and Sean Marks, or listing Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Miami as his top 3 destinations, Durant is set to start this season as a Brooklyn Net. The same could be said about his teammate and trusted friend, Kyrie Irving. The pair have certainly been a topic of conversation for the NBA community during the last couple of seasons. It is still mostly agreed that they are still one of the most talented duos in the league, but the continued drama and overall dysfunction that the Nets have had to deal with have all stemmed from them. Even as one of the best 15 players ever, a 2x champion and FMVP winner, and the best scoring wing the league has ever seen, it is still fair to question what type of season we will get from Kevin Durant.
The Nets were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the eventual Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics. It was strange watching that series live because after the buzzer beating layup by Tatum in Game 1, the Celtics went on to sweep the Nets pretty handedly. The roster after the James Harden trade for Ben Simmons (who did not play a minute last season) was mostly filled with undersized guards and perimeter players, with old big men. Durant and Irving were not good enough to carry the load for even 1 game. This year, the Nets added more wing depth, and Simmons will actually be playing games, so the roster improvement should speak for itself. It does not take a lot of stat studying or analyzing to predict how Durant can help the Nets get to where they were supposed to be the last couple of seasons. He needs to play at an MVP level for the team to have any hopes of going deep in the playoffs. We all know that he is capable of playing at that level, but the real question is how much of the outside noise and the grind of an NBA season will shake up that variable? For all-time great players, only catastrophic things can deter them from going deep into the playoffs. Unless they have unexpected injuries, team drama, or a staring contest between their co-star and the state government, they should be able to carry their team by themselves. The biggest question for Durant is if he’s still built to do that. This season will be year 15 and he injured his MCL last season to miss almost 2 months of the season. The Nets cratered during that time going from a top seed to having to fight for their lives to stay in the Play-In Tournament.
The most interesting and confusing part about Durant’s career is that the talent and the things he accomplishes on the court are undeniable. NBA fans talk about every player his size that can shoot and dribble the next “unicorn”, but Durant is the only one that has had an immense amount of success. He is one of one, and there’s a reason why guys like Brandon Ingram or Marvin Bagley were compared to him coming out of the draft. The fact is that no matter how many times we want to compare the next skinny 7-footer with a sweet shooting stroke to Durant, there will never be another player like him. If he and the Nets can somehow get away from all of the drama that has been causing a detriment to the franchise (and that is a huge if), then I will not be surprised to see the Nets competing for a spot in the NBA Finals.
