The LeBron James Versus Kevin Durant Debate Is About to Be Replaced
The LeBron James-Kevin Durant duality has been such a steady narrative staple in the NBA for so long, it’s hard to remember what came immediately before (LBJ-Kobe Bryant?)—even while the whole of the league’s history seems so crystal clear to fervent fans.
We don’t know whence the KD-King James legend began, but we do know it’s poised to be replaced.
Anthony Davis is set to summit. The mystery is which of the aforementioned men will join him at the top.
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The Legend of the Unibrow continued apace Tuesday night, punctuated by Davis' 28 points, nine boards and three blocks in the New Orleans Pelicans' 106-100 win over DeMarcus Cousins and the similarly upstart Sacramento Kings.
With 24 points and 17 rebounds, Cousins was no slouch himself. Stardom-bound though Cousins has become, however, Davis has staked out a different terra entirely—that of a singular, sport-altering force far in front of not only our own projections and predictions for him but the language we use to talk about him.
It’s a trajectory James and Durant know all too well. Each entered the league awash in praise and expectations. Each has authored his chapter in the canon of positional revolutions. Each will go down as a pantheon-level player, TBD though the tiers may be.
Conventional wisdom has it that KD remains A1 to James' A—the product as much of rings and resumes as James' unrivaled five-tool talent.
Sooner or later, though, the myriad miles on LeBron’s body will begin to take their toll. Sooner or later, this magnificent machine, so long alone along the hardwood highway, will find himself being passed on the left.
Until that day comes, though—and we’ll know it when we see it—it’s the King’s road to race.
That leaves Davis and Durant to duel for the second slot. Which might sound absurd, given the latter’s ledger of accomplishments: five All-Star appearances, five All-NBA First-Team selections and one, hyper-impressive MVP award, lassoed last season.
Devastating as Davis is, there’s more than a bit to be said for paying one’s dues. Specifically, it seldom takes two years.
With Durant expected to miss at least another month recovering from a right foot injury, Davis’ ascendance couldn’t have been better timed. He would’ve reached the zenith anyway, of course. Call it our way of willing a silver lining from the thundercloud, of putting volume back in the vacuum.
All the more tragi-fitting that it was KD himself who seemed to summon the salutations during a Team USA practice this past summer.
"I know how good [Davis] is going to be," Durant told Pelicans.com’s Jim Eichenhofer. "I know how good he is now, but I know how good he’s going to be. He’s an MVP-caliber player. So he’s next. He’s next in line—a guy that has grown so much in just a year. I’m excited to see what he does from here. He’s definitely on pace."
"On pace" could be putting it politely, even guardedly. The expectations for Davis heading into the 2014-15 slate were geometric in nature. Predictable, patterned, purely "on pace."
What we’ve gotten instead is something much more logarithmic, a rise of such incendiary speed you wonder whether to worry about a basketball singularity.
Not that Durant was alone in his prognostication. Here’s the always-excellent Zach Lowe in a much-cited Grantland post from way back in April:
"It’s telling that the comparisons have mostly stopped. When Anthony Davis came into the league, with ridiculous arms and guard skills honed before a late growth spurt, everyone rushed to find his NBA analogue.
Kevin Garnett was a popular choice. Comparisons with Tim Duncan dominated the lead-up to Davis’s regular-season debut against San Antonio, even though Duncan as a rookie was older and stouter and he had a back-to-the-basket game that was historically great almost from the moment he entered the league.
Davis has murdered this parlor game. People around the league don’t know what to make of him anymore. They are just terrified, especially after having watched Davis average 30 points, 13.5 rebounds, and three blocks per game on 55 percent shooting over a 10-game stretch in March — a period during which he turned 21 freaking years old.
"
Like James and Durant before him, Davis' arrival was never in doubt. It’s that it happened this quickly and this loudly—long limbs the focused-flailing cues for some chaotic basketball concert—which makes the music all the more magical.
At the rate he’s going, bursting box scores and leading the Pelicans toward their first playoff appearance in four seasons, Davis will remain a serious MVP candidate. Should he snag it, he’d be the youngest player ever to do so, beating Derrick Rose's 2010 feat by six months and change.
Even if his ultimate leap happens three years from now, Davis' path to pinnacle is all but cast in platinum. The question is whether he’ll be joined in a league-burgeoning battle with the current King or the seasoned would-be usurper.
To those who offer that there’s nothing wrong with wishing for a troika—the best, the second and the next—to lead the league ahead, there’s certainly plenty in the way of precedents, with Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan being perhaps the best example.
What such sentiment ignores, though, is duality’s timeless pull. Yin and yang, good and evil, scorer and champion: It’s through dichotomy that the foremost things in life are processed, understood, even enjoyed.
LeBron James and Kevin Durant are just about done defining their NBA epoch. One will remain. But it’s Davis—the antithesis soon to be thesis—who’s got narrative next.
