Rockets 2026-2027 player previews: Kevin Durant

First off, happy belated birthday to the Easy Money Sniper, who turned 38 on September 29th. That’s certainly a ripe old age in the NBA. Durant was drafted in the 2007 draft, which feels like a different world entirely. There are a couple other 2007 draftees around besides Durant still in the NBA: Mike Conley, Al Horford. Uncle Jeff Green currently is unsigned, and the 28th pick, Tiago Splitter, is an NBA head coach.

This will mark Durant’s 20th season in the NBA, but in some ways it’s hard to tell. Here’s a sample of five Durant seasons, (chosen by rolling a 20 sided die except for one).

PTS

TRB

AST

FG%

FG3%

eFG%

TS%

GP

28.0

8

3.5

.496

.387

.547

.610

66

27.1

6.6

5.0

.523

.413

.581

.626

75

28.2

8.2

5.0

.505

.387

.573

.634

72

25.3

6.5

2.8

.476

.422

.510

.577

74

26

5.5

4.8

.520

.413

.588

.641

78

These are, again, four seasons chosen at random from Durant’s career, and in the last row, last season.

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Row one is 2011-2012 (5th Season, OKC, Age 23)

Row two is 2023-2024 (17th Season, PHX, Age 35)

Row three is 2015-2016 (9th Season, OKC (last season), Age 27)

Row four is 2008-2009 (2nd Season, OKC, Age 20)

Row five is 2025-2026 (19th Season, HOU, Age 37)

Over two decades it’s hard to imagine a more consistently excellent offensive player. Other than injury plagued seasons, pretty much every Durant season is within this range, with his MVP season of 2013-2014 in OKC being better still. The point here being, you can really take any season, from almost any point, of Kevin Durant’s entire career, at it will be in line with the five seasons above. He’s just that consistently superb. I might go so far as to say the most consistently good shooter in NBA history.

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Why is that important? Well, until we see evidence of a decline, why worry? It’s very hard to see much of any sign of it comparing Kevin Durant’s first season with the Rockets to any other (chosen at random) in his career. Fortunately we got early 20s, mid 20s, 30s season in that sample, and they’re all just excellent KD seasons. Combing through other stats, it’s hard to see signs of decline. I suppose his free throw rate has declined from his absolute offensive peak in his mid 20s, but not that…

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Publish date : 2026-10-10 11:55:00

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