The case for anyone being the greatest anything doesn’t interest me nearly as much as the perceived distance between first and second. You wanna say the greatest current baller’s SGA? Jokić? Wemby? Luka? Can’t argue, but I’d argue the difference between them isn’t all that significant: pair any with a couple of All-Stars and they can win titles. Put any on the 2019 Knicks and they’re not getting past the first round.
Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast in the world and there is no second. Ditto Shohei
Ohtani in baseball. That doesn’t really happen in the NBA. In the 1988 season, Michael Jordan led the league in scoring with 35 points a game, won Defensive Player of the Year and MVP. Can’t really top that. But with Larry Bird averaging 30/9/6 on 53/41/92 shooting and Magic Johnson’s 20/6/12 leading the Lakers to the ‘chip, MJ’s best wasn’t outta sight.
Last night the Houston Rockets beat the Knicks 111-94, behind the greatest scorer I have ever seen. The “designed in a lab to do X” trope doesn’t touch watching Kevin Durant putting the ball in the basket, and God doesn’t get any credit either. Intelligent design may make this world go round, but the flame of genius is often only sparked by chance.
How to explain KD? LeBron James has aged like a fine diamond. LeBron James also famously spends over a million dollars a year on that gem. Doesn’t make his longevity any less remarkable, but the link between wealth and privilege goes back at least as far as Iron Age 1%ers being buried with silks and silver that 99% of the population would never get a glimpse of.
Whatever time LeBron spends in hypobaric chambers, Durant’s spending on social media. I don’t hold that against him — not one bit. It not only builds on his work re-humanizing athletes in the public sphere, it makes his game’s greatness even absurder.
LeBron looks like a superhero. If you saw Jordan play, he popped off the screen in a way no one else did, like you’d been watching 8-bit TV your whole life and then this 16-bit character shows up. Magic had at least six inches on most point guards. Kareem. Wilt. For the most part, NBA GOAT discussions come with a sign that says: “You must be at least this freakish to ride.” Durant is and isn’t.
He doesn’t explode with his body or off the floor like James and Jordan, his physique more pre-teen than creatine. He looks like a 14-year-old boy, albeit a 6-foot-13 boy. Imagine someone on a Kobe/MJ level, scoring-wise, who’s a better shooter and a half-foot taller than either. I love KAT, but the “greatest shooting 7-footer ever” label doesn’t fly unless we’ve collectively fever dreamed Dirk and KD into existence.
Last night Durant scored 27 on 56% shooting. Five years ago in his first Knick/Net game, he scored 26 on 56% shooting. Five years before that, the last time he faced the Knicks as a member of the Thunder, it was 44 points on 46%. Nine years prior, the first time KD faced New York as a Seattle Supersonic, 30 points on 55% shooting. How many NBA players put up those numbers in a game at MSG? Ever? He did it six months after this photo. He’s still doing it 19 years later.
I’ve never before seen a player as great as him so seemingly driven by the perfection of his craft. Jordan’s neurosis was hierarchy. Kobe’s was Jordan. LeBron’s is money or power, I can’t tell. Durant really does seem like he’ll still be in the gym the day he dies, shimmying that shoulder before making a free throw.
Borges wrote a short story, “Averroes’ Search,” about a philosopher trying to answer an impossible question. Spoiler: at the end he comes up with the answer, but because it’s impossible the instant he realizes it, he and the rest of the world cease to exist. I imagine Durant in his old age, shooting alone somewhere, until he reaches the point where he perfects it, until he can no longer miss. There are worse apocalpyses.
Quoth The Antisola: “Hal Steinbrenner is a penny pincher.” Doesn’t have anything to do with the Knicks, but always worth reminding people. Don’t sweat this Knick L for too long; next game is tonight, when the difficulty level drops a few against Memphis. Still, the magic number to clinch the 3-seed is five and the Cavaliers are just a game back, so any win is a good win.
