Kevin Durant is the man the Golden State Warriors depend on if everything else falls apart and his form could be the key to a third successive NBA title, SKy Sports NBA analyst writes Mark Deeks.
Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry has an ability to break games open in very short spurts. By virtue of the quality of his three-point shot, the points value of each of them, the speed with which he releases them and the unwavering green light he has to take them, Curry can put together little bursts of unguardable spirit-crushing scoring in a way no other player can.
A Curry pull-up three from 30 feet away is predictable yet unstoppable, and is as completely demoralising as a James Harden step-back. His shots make people sigh.
In contrast, Kevin Durant stands alongside him as the basketball template. For more than a decade now, Durant has been willing and able to score eight points a quarter, every quarter, every game. He is not merely a robot; to boil down the unique talents of one so gifted to so tepid of a label would be pejorative. No robot ever devised has had this level of sentience.
Durant is nonetheless consistent, unblockable, unstoppable, machine-like in his execution, yet so wise and versatile in his style. And apparently, this postseason, those automatic eight points a quarter have become 10.
In the Warriors' eight playoff games thus far, Durant has averaged 34.3 points per game on an electric .657 true shooting percentage. Included in there is a 50-point performance in the first-round close-out victory over the LA Clippers, and in the two games so far of the Western Conference semi-finals series against the Houston Rockets, he has matched the NBA's leading scorer James Harden in both points (64) and shots (47). In as much as such classifications matter, he has probably been the best player in the playoffs across the league this year, and is definitely the highest scorer.
This, then, is the Warriors' plan made manifest. Automatic as he is, Durant is here to kick things on when necessary, to be Curry's bedrock most of the time, and to take over games at peak times. And the postseason is the peakest of times.
Durant's decision to join the Warriors back in the summer of 2016 capped off the team's four-year ascension to the very top of the NBA, while also starting the process of its demise. The team Durant joined had set the NBA record for regular-season wins the previous year, going 73-9 and breaking the Chicago Bulls' 20-year-old record. But even with that, they did not win the title; an incredibly ill-timed suspension for Draymond Green combined with individual heroics from LeBron James and Kyrie Irving saw the Cleveland Cavaliers make history, overturn the first 3-1 deficit in league history, and pull the upset win in seven games.
This was the tipping point in the Durant pursuit. Curry was the offensive system, Draymond the defensive one, and Klay Thompson an excellent balance of both, but the 'Beautiful Game' Golden State played when at their best needed someone who could exist outside of it for when the 'Beautiful Game' broke down or got found out. Someone who existed on his own island and who could get tide-stemming baskets whenever necessary.
Enter, then, the machine-like efficacy of Durant. After a regular season in which his Warriors were looking vulnerable, and with an increasingly uncertain future after this season due mostly to his own free agency (a situation of his own choosing), Durant has stepped up to put the Warriors back on top. They lead the Rockets 2-0 going into tonight's game after defending their home court, and the Rockets now have to win four out of five games over the two-time defending champions. As defences of a three-peat go, this one is looking strong.
It was not looking good all that long ago, though. While still very good and the team to beat out west, the Warriors of 2018/19 have not been the juggernaut that the 2015/16 Warriors were, even if this year's edition ultimately go one step further and win the title.
The Warriors set that all-time best 73-9 record by playing with an energy and hunger, particularly on the defensive end, that they no longer have. This is particularly evident in the case of Green, one of the best defensive players of all time when engaged but a player who has stepped back over the last couple of regular seasons. The idea that Green eases off in the regular season seems tough to refute given how good he has been in these playoffs; in better shape, sharper and much more decisive offensively, Green is hitting shots and playing the perfect multi-faceted defence that only he can play.
Durant's arrival precipitated this, up to a point. The tension between Green and he is obvious even on this side of the Atlantic, even after three years of PR efforts to smooth it out publicly, and the fire and camaraderie that geed up a Warriors team less talented than this one to become the best team in NBA history is not to be seen for anything more than short stretches anymore. Draymond's feistiness is mostly a virtue, but can be particularly abrasive when paired with a personality as sensitive as Durant's. Add to that the small matter of Curry, a player who literally changed the game, and the Warriors have a potent mix of people and pieces.
Miami Heat president Pat Riley is credited with coining the term 'The Disease of More' when describing the difficulty the 1980/81 LA Lakers (for whom he was an assistant coach at the time) had in getting motivated to defend the title the previous season.
Ultimately, they did not defend it, losing in the first round to the Rockets. In his book, Show Time, Riley breaks it down further. "The most difficult thing for players to do when they become part of a team is to sacrifice," he writes. "It is much easier, and much more natural, to be selfish."
Being selfish is an innate human quality, yet it jars fundamentally with the concept of a team sport. When Dr James Naismith invented basketball, he did so with the explicit intent of creating the perfect team sport. More than a century later, it is irrevocably proven that teamwork is indeed the key to winning.
The annual and cyclical nature of the world of sports, though, is aspirationally self-limiting. The goal is to win the championship. Yet if you do so, there is no change in goal. The goal is simply the same again next year. Individual players of Hall of Fame pedigree may have the allure of the number of titles they win as a motivating factor - Kobe Bryant certainly did - yet the pursuit of that individual accolade is not always to the benefit of the team-focused one.
A team can come together in pursuit of a common goal. Indeed, they are meant to. Yet the Warriors achieved all their goals. They won an NBA championship (the franchise's first in 40 years). They set the all-time wins record. They became the team everyone but the bookies feared, the fixture that every team found the energy to get up for, the ones with the target on their backs. They, like their leader Curry, changed the way the sport of basketball is taught hereafter. They really did do it all. After achieving your every goal, how do you keep it interesting?
Maybe you don't. Maybe the Disease of More is inevitable in the modern era, where player power is a choice not a dream, one that will not now be reversed. The Tim Duncan/Manu Ginobili/Tony Parker-esque dynastic cores that stay together for an NBA generation should be venerated as beautiful exceptions rather than looked at as realistic expectations. The characters in the Warriors' story are too vivid to fit into this role. And unlike the Spurs' trio - one in which Duncan was clearly the best player - the roles, responsibilities and credit are not as easily divvied up on this complex Golden State roster.
Then again, maybe you don't need to keep it interesting. Durant's addition may have been a catalyst to the potential/likely end of the team's core as it is currently constructed this summer, not because of anything intrinsically wrong with him or what he has done, but because power and performance balances are so hard to navigate among such big personalities and star talents. Yet even if it did, the Warriors have won two extra titles out of it. And if Durant continues to play like he has done this postseason, it may soon be a third.
Amid the vulnerabilities the Warriors now have - the injuries, the discontent, the relative apathy, the demise of the cloak of invincibility - Durant remains the lodestone who can get whatever he wants whenever he wants. Somewhat in the back seat through this season as the MVP race between Harden and Giannis Antetokounmpo took the spotlight, as well as the noticeable-by-his-absence LeBron James, Durant reminds us that he is as good as anyone, and that his team when committed are better than anyone. Only one more month of holding it together to go.
Durant and co back in action in Game 3 of Golden State's Western Conference semi-finals playoff series against the Houston Rockets in the early hours of Sunday morning (1.30am).