Don’t blame Kevin Durant for not carrying the Warriors like LeBron carries the Cavs. He doesn’t have to.
Durant doesn’t care much about criticism that he can’t carry a team
Kevin Durant shrugged his shoulders. The Warriors forward hardly sounded offended by the argument. Nor did he sound defensive about the question. But he remains aware of the commentary.
The Warriors will face the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals for the fourth consecutive year, beginning Thursday at Oracle Arena. It’s a rematch, too, between Durant and LeBron James, whose productivity in his 15th NBA season had given rise not only to the greatest-ever argument but also to the notion that Durant could never carry a team the way James has carried Cleveland.
“I can’t control that,” Durant told this publication late Monday night while the Warriors celebrated their Game 7 victory in Houston. “I know what I bring to my team. I know my role on my team. I’m just trying to play in a way that will help us win a championship. That’s the only thing I can do.”
What has James done? Nothing other than lead the NBA in postseason scoring (34.0), rank third in assists (8.8) and 13th in rebounds (9.2). He has 12 double-doubles in 18 games and twice scored more than 40 points in the Eastern Conference finals against Boston.
What has Durant done? He ranks fourth in postseason scoring (29.0), ranks 23rd in assists (4.1) and 27th in rebounds (7.1). He scored 30 or more points in three games of the Western Conference finals, with a high of 38 plus 34 in Game 7.
Through it all, Durant navigated the dynamic between leaning on other sharpshooters Stephen Curry and Klay Thomp-
son while maximizing his own productivity. At the same time, it’s a first-world problem compared to what James has encountered with his diminished cast in Cleveland.
“We’re in two different places in our game,” Durant said of James. “I’m still learning, still growing and figuring things out. I feel like he is who he is at this point. He’s experienced so much more than I have. So he’s looking at it from a different vantage point. But that’s the beauty of basketball. You have guys with different paths and different journeys and they meet up on the court. It’s magical and it’s fun.”
Durant is 29 and in his 11th NBA season. James is 33 and in his 15th. This will be their third meeting in the Finals, the first coming in 2012 when James was with the Miami Heat and Durant was with Oklahoma City.
In the rematch last year, Durant won his first NBA championship and his first Finals MVP award after averaging 35.2 points in the five-game conquest of Cleveland. He also hit a huge shot — a 3-pointer over James with 45 seconds to play — to help get the Warriors the win in Game 3.
In an interview earlier this year with this publication, Durant, pointing to his NBA title, his Finals MVP award and his clutch shot,
offered that he’s “on the same level as James.”
Revisiting the general subject Monday night, Durant said: “I don’t know how it made everybody else feel. But I know it made my friends and family feel proud. I want to do that again for them. I know how hard it was to do that, no matter if we won in five [games]. Every night was hard.”
The Warriors are not expected to have as much difficulty with Cleveland as they had with Houston. James could complicate things, though. And Durant could largely determine how that plays out.
With Andre Iguodala’s status uncertain — he missed the last four games of the Houston series because of a bruised knee — Durant might be defending James more often than he typically would.
That will stoke the Durant-LeBron argument even more.
“No matter what they say or not, you want to prove your doubters wrong. We’ve all been like that,” Durant said. “Every human has been like that. In their whole lives, there has been something. You’ll use it as fuel and use it to push you. But at the same time, I just want to focus on how we can win the game and how to win the series.”
Durant thinks he’s more prepared for that responsibility after playing seven games against the Rockets.
Before that series, Durant’s postseason was going
the same wonderful way as his regular season — even better, actually. After averaging 26.4 points during the regular season, he went for 28.2 in the first round against San Antonio and 27.8 in the second round against New Orleans.
Against Houston his play came in waves. He averaged 30.4 points, but shot 46 percent and suffered a miserable stretch in Games 3-6 when he shot 39 percent, missing 50 of 82 shots.
Durant chalked up those struggles to “wanting it too much.” He conceded he forced shots, drove too fast to the basket and relied too much on his footwork and pump fakes instead of reading the defense.
“I just decided to say, ‘Forget it, just hoop and play ball,’ ” Durant said. “I just tried to come out and play as hard as I can on the defensive side of the ball and let my offense come around, whereas the games before I was thinking about my offense coming into the game.”
Durant vows he won’t be thinking solely about his offense against Cleveland, a wise thing given that he will be guarding James at least some of the time.
He also vowed that he couldn’t care less about how a head-to-head matchup might determine individual bragging rights and comparative legacies.
“I can’t think about myself more than trying to help the team win,” Durant said. “We play a team sport. It’s all about the win.”