DURANT’S CHANCE TO DEFEAT LEBRON

Stephen Curry couldn’t do it. Giannis Antetokounmpo has failed at it twice. Now Kevin Durant gets his second shot.

None has been able to draft a team to beat one picked by Lebron James in the All-star Game. He is 4-0 in the format and might have assembled his most stacked team yet for the game tonight in his home state.

Curry, Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic will start along with James, putting four former NBA MVPS in one starting unit. Demar Derozan, who might be having his finest season yet in his first year in Chicago, rounds out the starting five.

It’s hard to compete with that, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

“Well, we’re all All-stars here,” Team Durant’s Draymond Green said. “So I think we stack up just fine and I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes, but I think we’ll be just fine.”

The NBA did away with the traditional East vs. West format after the 2017 All-star

Game, when the West’s 192182 victory was so devoid of effort that the players and league realized something had to be done to raise the stakes. So the leading votegetter in each conference becomes the captain to choose his side and the teams play to win money for charity.

Team Lebron beat Team Stephen in 2018 and scored victories over Team Giannis in 2019 and 2020. Last year’s victory in Atlanta was over Team Durant, the same matchup as this season.

James also drafted Luka Doncic and Chris Paul. Miami and Team Durant coach Erik Spoelstra hoped he would be able to coach James and Jimmy Butler, his former and current Heat stars. Instead, he’ll be going against both.

Durant is still out with sprained knee ligament, replaced in his starting lineup by Boston’s Jayson Tatum. NBA scoring leader Joel Embiid, Atlanta’s Trae Young and first-time All-stars Ja Morant of Memphis and Andrew Wiggins of Golden State are the other starters.