Could Kevin Durant finally perfect his game this season?

Imagine if Michael Jordan had been a few inches taller.

That’s not the hypothetical you typically hear. More often, it’s Allen Iverson. Or, it’s Giannis Antetokounmpo with Steph Curry’s jump shot. More broadly, the formula usually involves fixing a player’s lone imperfection to make them the perfect basketball player.

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Michael Jordan was tall enough. Imagine if he’d been taller. He would have been the perfect basketball player.

As it stands, there has never been a perfect basketball player.

There’s no prototype, but there are prototypes. Jordan was the prototypical scoring guard. LeBron James is the prototypical point forward. The Houston Rockets’ Kevin Durant is the prototypical shot maker.

But one flaw has held him back from perfection.

Rockets’ Kevin Durant is a limited playmaker

Recall the 2016 NBA Western Conference Finals. Durant’s Oklahoma City Thunder (boy, does that make you feel old) faced Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors (maybe not that old yet).

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Durant averaged 30.0 points per game. He was not, by any measure, bad. Yet, if you recall the series, something was markedly missing from Durant’s game.

He fired midrange shot after midrange shot. Some nights they fell; other nights they did not. Ultimately, Durant finished the series with a somewhat pedestrian 53.9 True Shooting % (TS%). What stands out in the memory is middy, after middy, after middy.

You will not recall a dazzling Durant pass from that series, because that is the hole that he has never plugged in his game.

The Warriors denied Durant’s jumper to the fullest extent of natural law, and it worked as well as it could have. Durant did not have the playmaking juice to counter. Where James would look to get teammates involved when his jumper wasn’t falling, Durant could only look to keep firing his jumper.

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Durant isn’t a ball-hog. That would be unfair. The objective in basketball is to get the best shot, and his shot is often the best, so he ought to take it.

His career high in Assists Per Game (APG) isn’t even bad (6.4, in 2021-22 with a loaded Brooklyn Nets team), but it came with 3.5 Turnovers Per Game (TPG). It’s…

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Publish date : 2026-09-08 09:12:00

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