NBA – Is Kevin Durant (Brooklyn Nets) stronger than before his injury?

Is Kevin Durant already guaranteed to be MVP 2022? The question is a bit provocative and obviously it is too early to answer it, especially since on the other side of the United States, a certain Stephen Curry is shining brightly. If we allow ourselves it is that the number 33 of the Nets ticks a lot of boxes. The first is above all the link between his personal history, this Achilles tendon injury of June 2019, and his current level, stratospheric. It’s very simple: never has an NBA player come back so strong from such an injury. In the case of “KD”, one can even wonder if he is not stronger than before.

His last game against the Magic will not answer the question on its own, but he gives a rather incredible overview of what Kevin Durant is this season: 30 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists. So far, nothing extraordinary for Durant but everything was done at 11/12 on shots! Never in his career had he scored more than 30 points at such a percentage. Durant is the story of “the other best player in the world”. Arrived in 2007 in the league, four years after LeBron James, already a reference at the time and best player in the world from the beginning of the 2010s (four times MVP between 2009 and 2013), he gradually climbed the ranks to ‘to itself become a benchmark, in a slightly different field.

Better than Stephen Curry this season

At 29.5, Durant has the best points average in the NBA this season. He went back five years to the time when he was leading the Thunder attack. Was it at OKC that Kevin Durant was the best version of himself? It was there that he obtained his only MVP title in 2014 after a fabulous season completed with 32 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists on average, all at 50% on shots. That last number, for a player taking six three-pointers per game, was already extraordinary. During his Warriors years (2016-2019), where his efficiency was already impressive, the native of Washington rose to 53.7%, a figure explained in part by a team with an oiled collective game, with many weapons in attack (Curry, Thompson …) And therefore to advantageous shooting positions. How then to qualify his 58.5% success of this season?

That number places him 11th in the NBA. Behind him ? Ten real interiors and especially none who took as many shots as him (Jokic and Sabonis, 9th and 10th, took 70 less in 10 and 12 matches). Kevin Durant shoots a lot and excellently. No wonder then to see him enthroned at the top of the ranking of the best scorers, two points ahead of Stephen Curry.

More than half of Durant’s basket is an individual achievement

To find out if Kevin Durant is actually stronger than before, we looked at what makes his strength, his ability to make baskets. And where exactly did they come from? In 2016/2017, six in ten baskets (61.5%) scored by Durant were preceded by an assist, most often following a system that put him in a good position. This year, that percentage drops to … 44.8! More than one in two basket he scores is the result of personal action and therefore, by definition, more difficult. In what he does best, “KD” is therefore much stronger than before. If you need one last number to prove it to you: 68% of his shots are taken with a defender in contact with him. Durant puts his stitches on his own, like a grown-up.

To see him score is to think that it is easy to do so. Tall for his style of play and quick for his size, Durant has always been a puzzle, but it was imagined that his ruptured Achilles tendon would alter some of his immense natural qualities. It is not so. And even in the other more classic columns, Durant is doing better than his career averages (8.5 rebounds against 7.1 in career and 5 assists against 4.2). We can say it is a little less concerned in defense than in his Warriors years. Only downside in a huge start to the season of a fabulous player who has not finished putting on the show. Even at 33 and even after one of the worst injuries a basketball player can know.