SINCE MAKING HIS professional basketball debut on Halloween night in 2007, Kevin Durant has spent more than 14 years blazing an amazing trail through the NBA and international basketball.
Now, at age 33, not only is Durant on pace to win his fifth NBA scoring title but he also has emerged as a legitimate MVP candidate by leading the Brooklyn Nets to the best record in the Eastern Conference, despite the season-long absence of star point guard Kyrie Irving.
Durant already has an MVP trophy, two Finals MVPs and three gold medals in his trophy case. But the four-time scoring champ has evolved over his 14 years in the NBA, and the version of Durant currently dominating the basketball world is different from the one we saw in Oklahoma City or at Golden State.
Two years ago, the question around the league was whether Durant would ever be the same after suffering a devastating Achilles injury during the 2019 NBA Finals. He has answered that question emphatically, averaging a league-leading 28.6 points per game with an updated approach to scoring that remains unguardable and boldly defies the conventional wisdom of his era.
Simply put, while most of the NBA is rapidly turning away from the midrange jump shot, Durant is leaning into it. His ability to score effectively on 2-point jumpers has been the biggest reason he's been able to regain his crown as the best scorer on the planet.
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AS A SCORER, Durant's signature has always been his otherworldly versatility. No player in the modern era is as scary from everywhere as Durant is. The sun never sets on his empire of buckets.
Durant will go down as one of the top four scorers of the 2010s along with Stephen Curry, LeBron James and James Harden. But while James dominated the paint, Curry famously rained fire from beyond the arc and Harden owned, well, the charity stripe, Durant's scoring portfolio has always been the most diversified.
At 6-foot-10 with a 7-5 wingspan, Durant was blessed with incredible height and length, but he was able to combine those physical gifts with elite playmaking and fluid shooting skills in ways no other large player has done. It didn't take long for Durant, a mix of Dirk Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant, to assert himself as an unprecedented scoring machine. He won three consecutive scoring titles before he turned 24 years old in part because he could get buckets everywhere.
As he reached his prime in Oklahoma City, Durant became the NBA's apex predator on the offensive end of the floor. After an appearance in the 2012 NBA Finals, in which he averaged 30.6 PPG against James and the Heat, Durant used the 2012 Olympic Games in London to announce to the international basketball world that he was going to be a problem. On a loaded Team USA squad that included Bryant, James, Harden, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul, Durant stood out, leading the team in minutes and points. He was 23 years old.
Two years later, in the 2013-14 season, he won his fourth scoring title. His shot chart from that season remains an unmatched masterpiece of bucketology. Durant's remarkable volume covers the hardwood canvas in hexagons; his fantastic efficiency colors nearly all of them on the red side.
That season he blended volume, efficiency and diversity in unprecedented ways. Durant attempted more than 400 more shots than any other player in the league on his way to averaging a career-high 32 points per game. He ranked in the top 10 in the league in paint, midrange and 3-point scoring; he's the only player who can say that since the league started logging shot locations 25 years ago. Oh, and he also placed in the top five in effective field goal percentage that season among the 44 players who attempted at least 1,000 field goals.
THAT WAS THEN, and this is now. Durant hasn't won a scoring crown in eight seasons, but he's a full point ahead of Giannis Antetokounmpo so far this season. If Durant finishes the year on top, he'll become the third player in NBA history to reach five scoring titles, joining Wilt Chamberlain (7) and Michael Jordan (10).
And like Jordan, who went from a high flyer to a turnaround master in his 30s, Durant has changed his approach drastically as he has aged. The Achilles injury cost him the entire 2019-20 season, and a hamstring injury kept him out for nearly half of his first season in a Nets uniform. Now he's healthy, but he is attacking the rim less than ever and relying on his jumper more than ever. The good news is that jumper is one of the most reliable pro basketball has ever seen and has been the real MVP of his comeback.
It's not unusual for aging superstars to shy away from rim attacks and rely more on jumpers.
As a rookie, Bryant took 37% of his shots within 3 feet of the rim. In his final season, that number dipped to 9%. Carmelo Anthony attempted 45% of his rookie shots within 3 feet, and last season that figure was 6%.
These big declines in dunks and layups often cause slips in effectiveness. Fewer bunnies means lower overall efficiency, even for the world's best scorers. After all, shots near the rim are still the most efficient options on the court. And one reason aging scorers exhibit drop-offs in overall efficiency metrics is simply because they get to the rim less.
But that's what makes Durant's current numbers unique: He's maintaining his production and his elite scoring efficiency despite a marked decline in easy shots at the rim. Durant is shooting 53.3% from the field this year, which would be the third-highest mark of his career, thanks in large part to his ridiculously effective jump shot, which remains an outlier in a league obsessed with layups and 3s.
DURANT ENTERED THE league in 2007-08, when just 22.1% of shots leaguewide came from beyond the 3-point line. That percentage has nearly doubled over the past 14 years, with 3-pointers representing 40.2% of shots this season. Much of that growth has come at the expense of 2-point jumpers, which are the endangered species of the analytics era. In Durant's rookie campaign, NBA shooters attempted 32.9% of their shots in the midrange. This season that figure is just 13.1%.
But those reforms have not changed Durant's own approach. This season a whopping 42.6% of his shots come in the midrange, which ranks fifth in the league among the 240 players with at least 100 field goal attempts. Along with a few other old heads such as Paul, DeMar DeRozan and teammate LaMarcus Aldridge, Durant is like Jack Hanna, regularly reminding us on national television how majestic and important the endangered ... midrange shot can be.
His campaign for his fifth scoring title can also be seen as a midrange manifesto extolling the virtues of the 2-point jump shot. So far this season, he has attempted more of them than three NBA teams, including his old friends in Golden State.
Durant is the only player in the league averaging at least 10 made field goals per game this season. Of his 10.4 buckets per game, 4.4 of them come on non-paint 2-pointers, compared with 4.2 at the rim and just 1.8 from beyond the arc.
But here's the reality: Not everyone can shoot 2-point jumpers like Durant. If they could, there would not have been a 3-point revolution.
The biggest reason for the NBA's rising love affair with 3s is that their average value dwarfs the average value of midrange jumpers. That basic math has changed basketball forever. But that math does not apply to Durant.
Consider this: An average Durant midranger this season is worth more than an average 3-point try by shooters including Buddy Hield, Jayson Tatum, Paul George and Duncan Robinson.
Nearly half of Durant's shots this season have come from the midrange, and his ability to convert them more than half the time makes him nearly impossible to guard, especially when you consider his size and length and the fact that his shots are essentially unblockable. His handles and size enable him to get to jumpers whenever he wants, and his shooting skill enables him to knock them down at elite rates, making him one of the scariest jump shooters on the planet.
And defenses know it.
According to Second Spectrum data, Durant is shooting 49.5% on jumpers, which ranks third in the NBA among 125 players to attempt 100 of them this season. That's unbelievable on its own, but it's more ridiculous when you consider that 98.2% of his jump shots have been contested, the highest rate in the league. Even the best defenders in the world can't throw him off his game.
IN THE MODERN NBA, when most players and coaches look at the area between the paint and the 3-point line, they see a wasteland. Durant sees buckets. His ability to mine offensive efficiency from these abandoned lands between the paint and the arc is a huge reason he's still the most prolific scorer on the planet right now.
Durant's ability to convert midrange chances into points at high rates opens up the entire scoring area for him, and that's a huge thing for three reasons.
First, in an era when defenses are increasingly trained to allow/encourage opponents to shoot 2-point jump shots, that midrange money has never come easier for Brooklyn's sniper.
Second, as he recovers from a severe injury and ages into his mid-30's it's helping extend his reign as one of the world's best scorers.
Third, it makes his team harder to defend, and ultimately that's the biggest point here. After all, Durant didn't move from the Bay to Brooklyn to win scoring titles; he did so to win championships. His time in a Nets uniform could be considered a failure if he doesn't win one, and this season might be one of his last best chances to do so, particularly with the Brooklyn futures of Irving and Harden remaining uncertain.
Just like he showed the world in Tokyo, he and that jumper can still carry a team to the top of the mountain.