Does Kevin Durant Need to Beat LeBron James to Save His Reputation?
Regardless of what happens over the rest of this series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets, Kevin Durant is going to go down as one of the absolute greatest pure scorers in NBA history.
That part of his legacy is stamped. There's no debate to be had there.
But with each passing year since he left the Golden State Warriors, it gets easier to pick at his legacy as a winner. And losing this series to 41-year-old LeBron James and a Lakers squad missing its top two scorers would be disastrous for his already easy-to-target reputation.
KD surely wants to win four of the next five games for the sake of his current team, but something even bigger is on the line. And we explore the implications of this first-round series between two of the greatest forwards ever below.
Post-Warriors KD
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Durant is now playing on his third team over six seasons since leaving the Warriors. He's played for five different organizations, in total.
He's obviously too good for anyone to seriously entertain this classification, but five stops would be "journeyman" territory for most.
After winning two titles alongside Stephen Curry, tension within the Warriors (particularly, between Durant and Draymond Green) apparently reached unsalvageable levels during the 2018-19 season. KD bolted for the Brooklyn Nets as soon as he had the chance.
It would've been easy to pin a lot of the blame on Draymond for the souring relationship between the organization and the star, but unceremonious exits have sort of become a pattern for Durant.
In Brooklyn, he reportedly asked for head coach Steve Nash to be fired. And when that didn't make basketball life better, he eventually requested a trade.
The Phoenix Suns mortgaged their future to get him, never went further than the second round with him and missed the playoffs entirely in his final year there. That stint, like the one before it, ended with a trade.
Now, with the Rockets' backs against the wall, the team often looking uncomfortable trying to integrate Durant's isolation-heavy game and just a few months after the exposure of another alleged burner account, it's not hard to imagine another move for the all-timer.
Through all of the above, Durant has never advanced past the second round of the playoffs. Not even when he was in the Eastern Conference. And Curry, of course, led the Warriors to another title in 2022, three years after KD left.
Durant may have won back-to-back Finals MVPs with Golden State, but the further we get from those runs, the more obvious it is that those were always Curry's teams.
The LeBron-KD Distinction this Series Shows
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Durant has never held himself out to be a point forward or playmaker on the level of LeBron. Outside of those couple years he faced LeBron in the NBA Finals (2017 and 2018), these two haven't been the subject of a lot of direct comparisons.
But this matchup welcomes one again, especially with the way Game 2 played out.
In the second half of the Rockets' 101-94 loss, Los Angeles relentlessly double-teamed Durant all over the floor. And the results were disastrous for Houston.
For the whole game, Durant had almost as many turnovers (nine) as field-goal attempts (12).
LeBron, on the other hand, had 28 points, eight rebounds and seven assists. He was plus-six, while KD was a minus-two. And LeBron, of course, is 41. He has a game that has long been more reliant on athleticism than Durant's, but he also has a more wide-ranging skillset.
Durant has some great playmaking seasons in his career, but LeBron is one of the best ever in that category. And his ability to timely find his teammates and get them the ball in the right position to score makes him almost impossible to double.
Again, Durant is one of the best scorers ever. Despite LeBron having more total points than anyone in NBA history, you can make a reasonable argument that, peak for peak, KD is better in terms of that one skill. But this series, unlike those Finals when Durant had Curry with him, is proving how much more valuable LeBron's all-around game is.
How Will KD Be Remembered?
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If Durant were to retire in a couple weeks with his two Warriors titles, there would be two prominent talking points on his career: He's one of the best scorers ever, and he struggled to win at the highest level without Curry.
That probably sounds unfair to his most faithful fans, but we're all familiar enough with social media and today's sports commentary to know that'd be the case.
Right now, the scales on those two points are probably pretty well-balanced. Losing in this first-round series to LeBron, while the Lakers are without Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves, would put a lot of weight on the less flattering take.
Of course, Durant hasn't given any indication that he's near the end. He's 37, but his regular-season numbers (26.0 points and 4.8 assists, while shooting 57.2 percent on twos and 41.3 percent on threes) suggest he could still have a few more highly productive seasons.
If those are going to serve his legacy for good, he may have to embrace more of an off-ball role. He may have to become a bit more dynamic a passer. And he can't be a source (or even a rumored source) of any organizational strife.
That's a big transformation for an all-timer already near the end of his career. Regardless of what happens between now and his retirement, he'll go down as one of the 15-20 best players the NBA has ever seen.
But to climb any higher up that list and claim that first post-Curry title, the transformation is required.
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