Sparkling to the end
Durant paces blowout of Serbia that fulfills basketball mission
RIO DE JANEIRO — Playing the role of Captain America on the final day of the Rio Olympics: Kevin Durant.
He picked up his team and led it to a dominant performance. Durant scored 30 points, totaling 155 in the tournament, cementing himself as one of the great American basketball Olympians. He helped the United States destroy Serbia 96-66 in the gold-medal game that was the final competition of the Rio Olympics.
“I’m on cloud nine right now, for sure,” Durant said.
Durant started these Olympics under fire. When the team’s training camp opened in mid-July in Las Vegas, he was peppered with questions about being a “villain,” for leaving Oklaho--
ma City and signing with Golden State as a free agent.
Here in Rio, Durant has smiled his way through the Olympics, posed with fans and other athletes, made himself endlessly accessible to the media and been exactly the kind of Olympian that America likes. Villain? Not Captain America. “I just center around the game of basketball,” Durant said when asked how he’s handled the criticism this summer. “I love the game so much. (Assistant coach) Monty Williams told me I can’t let anyone steal my joy. I get joy when I’m out there playing. And it went to another level playing with these guys. If I focus on that, all the noise will go away.”
It does seem ludicrous that Durant, one of the good guys in the game, could be a villain anywhere outside of perhaps Oklahoma City.
Shades of 2010
He was the best player on the U.S. team — with the “ultimate green light” as coach Mike Krzyzewski called it. But he had a few tough games in Rio.
“I wasn’t being myself,” Durant said. “Coach sat me down and showed me some film of 2010 and said ‘I want to see that guy again.’ ”
In 2010, at just 21 years old and only three years removed from the University of Texas, Durant was the MVP of the World Championships in Istanbul. He started to find that level again. On Sunday, he made 5 of 11 3-pointers including a couple from ridiculous Stephen Curry-like territory.
“I just woke up I guess,” Durant said. “I had fun with the game. When I’m smiling and screaming and beating my chest, when I’m lost in the game, that’s me.”
“I was trying too hard to sacrifice. I had to be me. I went out there and I did that.”
This was a gold-medal run that should help all who were on the Olympic stage. Krzyzewski praised his team’s demeanor after his final international game left him as the only coach with three Olympic championships.
“They’ve set an example to the younger generation,” he said. “It’s not just how they played, but how they acted. How unselfish they were.”
In that regard, Carmelo Anthony — a four-time Olympian who got choked up after the game by announcing the end of his Olympic career — took a moment to make a statement about unity.
“Despite everything that is going on right now in our country, we’ve got to be united,” said Anthony, continuing his thoughts on social justice that he has spoken about all summer.
“America will be great again, I believe that. We got a lot of work to do, but it’s one step at a time.”
This was a unified team. After the game, the 12 American players linked arms and stepped onto the highest podium together. For the third straight Olympics and for the 15th time in history, the U.S. players had gold medals placed around their necks. Then they all turned toward their flag, placed their hands over the hearts (no social media bashing for them!) and heard their anthem played.
“It’s one of those things you go in with such high expectations and you hope it reaches those,” Draymond Green said. “It completely blows (the expectations) out of the water.”
Answering the critics
The players never doubted they would be standing on the top of the podium, even after some close calls in Rio and criticisms they lacked the usual big names and bigger wins.
“I know there was kind of a lot of buzz around us not playing well a couple of games, two, three games in the early round,” Anthony said. “But the way that we locked in and the way that we focused in to be able to have this gold medal around our necks was special.”