San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A whole new ballgame
Acquisition of Durant has turned great team into nearly unbeatable
This extraordinary four-year Warriors run can be divided cleanly and evenly into distinct sections: two seasons pre-Kevin Durant and two seasons with him.
In the spring of 2016, remember, Durant represented one of Golden State’s most imposing obstacles to supremacy. Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green mostly were on their own, and they needed a spirited rally to conquer Durant and Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals.
That seems like a distant memory now — with Durant clutching another NBA Finals Most Valuable Player award, trading jokes with Jimmy Kimmel on late-night television and repeatedly declaring he will return to the Warriors next season. (It doesn’t hurt when general manager Bob Myers offers to give Durant “whatever he wants” in contract negotiations.)
So how did Durant change the Warriors, turning them from a burgeoning power into a full-fledged dynasty?
This stretches beyond his biggest asset, as a reliable one-on-one option when the offense bogs down. Durant also fills his teammates with boundless faith.
“I think there’s a deeper level of confidence, that’s the main thing,” head coach Steve Kerr said. “The first couple years without Kevin, we were a more vulnerable team. You all remember Game 7 against Cleveland in 2016, when we couldn’t score the last four minutes. That’s no longer a problem.
“We can go through a tough game for everybody else, like in Game 3 (of the Finals) this year, where Steph and Klay are missing. That kind of night three years ago would have killed us. With this team, Kevin just says, ‘All right, I got this,’ and he goes and gets 43 points.
“So it’s an incredible array of talent, and it’s an incredible luxury to be able to count on so many guys. In the playoffs, you don’t know what’s going to come, and there are going to be difficult nights. But Kevin has given us a level of confidence and depth of superstar talent that we didn’t have before.”
This is most evident, as Kerr suggested, in the playoffs. The Warriors went 140-24 in the two regular seasons before Durant arrived, including their record-setting, 73-win stampede through the 2015-16 season. They were 125-39 the past two years, with Durant.
But they became nearly unstoppable in the playoffs: 31-14 without Durant, then 32-6 with him (including 19-1 at home). They have played eight best-of-seven series since he hopped aboard, and only one of those series lasted more than five games (this year’s West finals against the Rockets).
In the other seven series, the Warriors won in a sweep four times and won in five games three times.
Much of this traces to Durant’s offensive production, naturally. He’s averaged 28.8 points, 7.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists in the past two postseasons, shooting 51.4 percent from the field. And he gave the Warriors an indispensable centerpiece when Curry missed the first six games of this year’s playoffs while recovering from a sprained knee.
The numbers also suggest Durant benefits from his unselfish teammates and Kerr’s emphasis on ball movement. Durant has posted the two best shooting seasons of his career since joining the Warriors — a career-high 53.7 percent from the field in 201617, then 51.6 percent this past season.
And he raised his game when it mattered most, scoring 43 points in Game 3 against Cleveland (with 13 rebounds) and collecting a triple-double of 20 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists in Golden State’s title-clinching Game 4 victory.
“It’s a very thin line between winning and losing, even though it may not look like it,” Myers said. “I think what Kevin does, simply, is he increases your margin for error. You can sometimes play imperfectly with a guy like him
and win. And this league is so competitive, that’s a luxury.
“This is a league where if you don’t play well, or don’t play your best, you lose 90 percent of the time. Kevin gives you the ability to maybe have a ‘B’ game and come away with a win, and that’s hard to find.”
Durant might be the ideal illustration of what Myers once called “positional height.” As a 7-foot small forward with ball-handling skills, Durant always has a height advantage on his defender. Even when tightly guarded, he can rise above the opponent and take an unencumbered shot.
Hand in his face? It’s really at his chin. (Thompson and Shaun Livingston often enjoy similar advantages against smaller guards.)
At least statistically, Durant really hasn’t changed the way the Warriors play. They ranked No. 2 and No. 1 in the NBA in offensive rating without him, and they’ve ranked No. 1 and No. 3 with him. They’ve finished in the top five in “pace” all four seasons.
They were No. 1 and No. 5 in defensive rating before Durant arrived, then jumped to No. 2 in his first season. They fell to No. 11 this past season, in part because of injuries and teamwide complacency.
In some ways, the Warriors are still getting used to Durant co-existing alongside Curry — witness awkward jokes from Myers and broadcaster Bob Fitzgerald at Tuesday’s parade — but the transition clearly has worked. Bottom line: The Warriors have won two championships in two years with Durant.
“He fit in and never needed to be anything more than just a teammate,” Myers said. “And the beauty of that is he ends up with a couple of Finals MVPs. I don’t think he chased those awards, I don’t think he pounded his chest.
“All along, he just wanted to be part of something and specifically us. That’s why he made the leap to come here.”
Durant turns 30 in September. He publicly mused last weekend about potentially retiring at 35, though he backtracked a bit during his appearance on Kimmel’s show, saying he might have had too much Champagne when he said that.
Myers is just glad to hear that Durant, who can become an unrestricted free agent this summer, plans to stay in the Bay Area.
“Maybe I’m naive, but I never felt like he was leaving,” Myers said. “I think he’s enjoyed his time here. It’s been great for him and great for us, and hopefully we can keep it going.”
Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ronkroichick