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. 1 ball handler.
James Harden and Russell Westbrook, Durant's former co-stars with the Oklahoma City Thunder, had grown into that role. Durant would never get to enjoy it with any consistency amid Golden State's free-flowing offense -- with Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Durant splitting the controls.
With the exception of Durant's Slim Reaper scorched-earth campaign when Westbrook was injured in 2013-14, Westbrook controlled the ball more -- even if Durant ruled crunch-time. The time of possession splits grew more pronounced toward the end of Durant's time in Oklahoma City. That was at least in part intentional -- a recognition of the limits in Westbrook's skill set (his jump-shooting) and of Durant's malleability as someone who could dominate on and off the ball.
"That's what we want," Nick Collison, the Thunder veteran, told me in 2016. "Russell's decision-making has gotten really good. We want Kevin catching and attacking closeouts. He's getting easier shots."
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. He pitched Larry Bird.
Golden State's coaches seemed optimistic Durant could play the role of Houston Rockets Harden at least as well as Harden -- and lead his team far.
"You could absolutely build that kind of offense around him," Steve Kerr told me.
"He can be that," said Steve Nash, then a Warriors consultant -- and Durant confidante -- and now, of course, Durant's coach with the Brooklyn Nets. "But he's quite happy not being the alpha dog."
Durant leaned on the scorer's table as he contemplated the question. "Obviously it would be cool to have the ball in my hands the whole game and rack up numbers," he said. "I can do that. But for me to utilize the full body of my talents, I can't do that. I don't have the energy physically to do that and still defend on the perimeter, block shots, rebound."
You rarely hear athletes anywhere near Durant's level say "I can't" about anything. Durant didn't conceive of "I can't" as an admission of weakness. 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. Durant takes pride in the non-glamour parts of his game -- switchy defense, rim protection, closeouts so fast and precise they unnerve shooters, artful off-ball cutting.
Potential fatigue isn't the only reason Durant spends time as a roving off-ball threat. He does it because he can. 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.
We often talk of superstars making teammates better. What we usually mean is they make the jobs of lesser players easier. Durant is the rare apex superstar who makes every other type of superstar better. He is maybe the greatest superstar amplifier of other superstars in NBA history. There are no diminishing returns pairing Durant with other stars. He can play with anyone, in any style. 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.
And yet, perhaps the most important takeaway from Brooklyn's shorter-than-expected playoff run is that Durant had to play the sort of ball-dominant role that has often eluded him -- and did so at a level that should alarm the rest of the league.
An Achilles tear is not a normal injury, and Durant tearing his right Achilles in 2019 was not a normal Achilles tear. 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. There was no guarantee Durant would ever be the same. If he wasn't, it would rock the league forever.
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. Durant almost wiped out the Milwaukee Bucks by himself. When Harden, Durant, and Irving were together, the Nets appeared unstoppable on offense -- title favorites who had a "good enough" playoff gear on defense. Irving is 29, Harden 31, Durant 32 -- still in their primes. All three are extension eligible.
But title windows rarely last as long as the protagonists expect. Brooklyn is two years into the Durant-Irving era, with one playoff series win. 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. Simmons quaked again in the postseason, though he would (will?) look better as the engine of a run-and-gun offense with shooting around him.
Houston hedged against Brooklyn's long-term stability. Irving and Durant have battled injuries. Durant missed 37 games, mostly due to a hamstring strain. Harden has been a tank, but he's entering the back half of an eventful career. Is this hamstring injury a blip? Let's hope so.
But Duran't scintillating all-around play has been perhaps the story of the postseason. He finished the playoffs having averaged 34 points, 4 assists, and 9 rebounds on 51/40/87 shooting. He barely missed leading the playoffs in points per game for the fifth time. His career playoff mark -- 29.5 points -- trails only Allen Iverson (barely) and Michael Jordan. Durant ranks 10th in total playoff points. Depending on how the rest of his career goes, he could pass Jordan for the No. 2 spot behind LeBron James.
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. Over the regular-season and playoffs, the Nets scored 1.125 points per chance on Durant pick-and-rolls -- third among 173 guys who ran at least 200 such plays, per Second Spectrum.
He maintained that efficiency under perhaps the heaviest ballhandling burden of his career. Durant ran 38 pick-and-rolls in Game 7 against Milwaukee, his most in any game since Second Spectrum began tracking in 2013. The 34 Durant ran in Game 4 is No. 2. Games 3, 5, and 6 are in his top-15.
You saw what he did. When Brook Lopez dropped back, Durant rained fire. When Lopez stepped up -- or dropped back too far -- Durant left him in the dust. Trap Durant, and he makes the right play. Switch, and he can cook smaller defenders in the post or roast bigger ones on the perimeter.
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. They scored 1.18 points per chance on Durant isolations -- fifth among 178 guys who recorded at least 50 isos.
Durant was the only player in the top-10 in points per possession on all of those play types. Oh, the Nets also scored 1.141 points when Durant shot after popping around an off-ball screen or passed to a teammate who fired -- fifth among 291 players who used at least 100 such picks.
The versatility is jaw-dropping. Durant is an expert at everything -- every fake, counter, and trick of footwork. 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. Maybe Durant's combination of skill and height make him seem impossible -- almost supernatural, built by the gods.
But Durant has always lived in the work. Old Thunder coaches tell stories of teaching young Durant pick-and-roll reads in 3-on-3 settings because traditional 5-on-5 cluttered the court with too many bodies. 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. Now his handle is basically unfathomable for a person his size.
He revels in flexing every basketball muscle. Over and over in these playoffs, he weaponized the threat of his shooting as a backdoor cutter -- sometimes to get shots for himself, sometimes to suck in defenders and unlock open looks for teammates:
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. So much basketball art squeezed into four seconds.
He was everywhere on defense. Durant averaged 1.5 steals and 1.6 blocks in the playoffs, and he didn't rotate out of scheme to get them. He can be a little unreliable boxing out, but he dials that up when it matters. How many humans can make Brook Lopez, a mountain of a man, ingest his own jump hooks?
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. He is No. 1 in true-shooting percentage among those players.
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. 5 all-time in scoring. Toss in averages of six rebounds and four dimes, and Durant after those five seasons would be over 32,000 points, 8,000 rebounds, and 5,000 assists. The only players to crack even 30,000/7,500/4,500: Abdul-Jabbar, James, Wilt Chamberlain, and Karl Malone. Durant leads all of them in career true shooting.
Before his Achilles tear, Durant was on pace to finish as one of the 10 greatest players ever, and that might have been conservative. With good health and fortune -- those benchmarks for the next five seasons are lofty -- he could still get there easily.
Durant did not need the performance he put forth against Milwaukee to prove his valiance or burnish his legacy. He won an MVP before joining the Warriors. If you were watching, you knew who Kevin Durant was.
But there is no denying Durant joining the 73-win Warriors removed suspense from the league, and some pressure from the shoulders of Durant, Curry, Green, and Klay Thompson. They formed an unprecedented four-star supernova. When they were whole, they were borderline unbeatable. 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.
Houston pushed them the distance the next season, but that was the only tough series they played before Durant's calf injury in 2019 and Thompson's ACL tear in Game 6 of those Finals.
We watch sports to see the best players perform in fraught circumstances. You can accept Durant's move to Golden State as a personal choice he earned the right to make -- and made for reasons beyond basketball -- and still recognize that his signing there robbed fans of those kinds of fraught circumstances for two-plus seasons.
The last half of the Bucks series was about as fraught as circumstances get. Durant was more than up to it. He was legendary. Those games will change the way one subset of fans thinks of Durant, and that is fair, too.
Brooklyn's three stars played only 332 minutes together. The Nets were plus-98 in those minutes, and scored about 127 points per 100 possessions -- a preposterous number. They still have layers to peel back. 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.
Filling the roster will be an annual challenge in collecting diamonds in the rough, as will enticing veterans to sign on the minimum salary (and maybe stay, though Brooklyn won't have Bird rights for them). Blake Griffin's success will probably help such recruiting efforts.
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. They have to prove they can sustain a good enough defense to win it all, though their work in these playoffs was encouraging.
But this season, and especially these playoffs, put to rest what was maybe the biggest question entering play in December: Will Kevin Durant be the same? He is, and the Nets should be right back in the thick of it next season.