The NBA is definitely going through a major transition in eras. The young bucks of the league look ready to take over, and many think the veteran stars should now hand over the torch to the young guns. However, two-time champion Kevin Durant doesn’t seem to believe in the whole process of ‘passing the torch’. As per the Suns forward, greatness can only be achieved, not passed on.
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The 35-year-old, in a brief interview with Yahoo Sports, was questioned extensively about up-and-coming star Anthony Edwards. And Durant was all praise.
Further, the interviewer asked him if he was interested in passing the torch to Edwards as he took from Kobe. Durant dismissed the idea, saying he didn’t take anything from the Lakers legend. The two-time NBA champion further downplayed beating his idol,
“That don’t mean sh*t cuz he got five championships,” Durant said.“That mean nothing, we lost that year. So you want me to celebrate a second-round win because it’s Kobe Bryant.”
The match-up referred to in the duo’s conversation is Durant’s 2012 second-round face-off with Bryant’s Lakers. In the series, the Durant-led Thunder team proved too much for an aging Kobe Bryant, and the young stars from Oklahoma obliged with a gentleman’s sweep.
But the Western Conference champions would eventually fall to the Miami Heat, with the series ending on a 4-1 record. Even after beating Kobe, Durant isn’t interested in propagating the rhetoric that he took anything from Kobe. For him, the only win that matters is the last,
“I have him [ Kobe Bryant] on the pedestal like that. Once we on the same court playing against each other it’s just another win. It’s cool when y’all say it like, ‘Damn you beat Kobe Bryant’, but I dont even think about sh*t like that… I know how tough it is and the only win that matters is the last one.”
But Durant isn’t being overly humble with his statements about Bryant. In fact, the respect between him and Bryant was mutual. The Black Mamba even admitted that KD was the only player he retired without figuring out.
Kobe Bryant called Kevin Durant his toughest matchup
Whether you hate or love him, you can’t deny Durant’s ability to dominate the game in almost every single aspect of it. Standing at 6ft 11″, Durant is a shooting ‘unicorn’ with solid handles and can easily elevate over anyone. Most important, of all, Kobe Bryant labeled him his toughest matchup, and the only guy he couldn’t figure out before retiring.
The moment came during Bryant’s 2018 interview, on The Corp With A-Rod and Big Cat, when Bryant analyzed the 6ft 6″ forward’s game and gushed about his hooping skills,
“Kevin Durant. That was the one I retired without being able to figure out how I can stop him. When he first came into the league, he was easy to defend because he couldn’t go right and shoot… Also, in the post, he couldn’t turn left shoulder; everything was right shoulder, so that gave me areas that I could shut off.”
The Lakers legend took great pride in his two-way game. Not being able to figure Durant out must have been frustrating. But from the looks of it, KD also went through something similar during his first-round matchup with Ant-Man and the T-Wolves. For the first time, he looked outmatched while going back and forth with someone.
