Kevin Durant has proved to be the best player in the world without winning the NBA championship.
What Kevin Durant has done this summer has more meaning than his rings. At least to me. Not to discredit KD winning with the Warriors, but that was a case of a team doing what was expected.
In contrast, with the Nets his superstar teammates were either limited or unavailable and he still had them within an inch of beating the champs...playing nearly every second in the series, in a season where he returned from an achilles injury in one of the best performances any of us will ever see.
Now he’s overseas and has Team USA on the cusp of a gold medal as the unquestioned leader of the squad. This coming in an era where the rest of the world has gotten better while the US didn’t send the very best, excluding Durant of course.
Not to mention the fact that he became USA men’s basketball’s all-time leading scorer in the process. I know KD doesn’t like the legacy talk, he just loves to hoop, as evidenced by his decision to play in the Olympics, so I hope this doesn’t get me in trouble on his Twitter.
But while anyone with a functioning brain always knew he was great, the dude is a near seven-foot easy money sniper after all, it was harder for him to solidify his status at the very top of the game in Golden State.
As a result, maybe we took him for granted. Because right now Kevin Durant is proving that he is the best basketball player on the planet.