The Kevin Durant era of Phoenix Suns basketball is over, and it’s fitting that an incredibly polarizing all-time great leaves the Valley with an incredibly polarizing legacy.
Durant was traded to the Houston Rockets on Sunday, so it is time to reflect.
The word “legacy” has followed Durant everywhere for the majority of his career. It is a meme at this point. The funniest thing he ever did in a press conference was use the word, saying it with such disdain in a way seemingly meant to amuse himself and also anyone in on the joke. This is admittedly tongue-in-cheek to treat it as our focus here.
Durant has a legacy in Phoenix that is both simple and complex.
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For some fans, it is not the latter at all, and that’s understandable. Acquiring him was the biggest gamble in franchise history, all to win the organization’s first championship. For him to be the guy with a statue outside the building before Charles Barkley, Steve Nash, Jerry Colangelo, Paul Westphal or even his teammate, Devin Booker.
The degree to which this failed is enormous. There were no “close calls” or “heartbreaks.” One playoff series win in three years is a humiliating result. Durant will tell you that’s just basketball, and in some ways (as he almost always is with the game), he’s right.
The closest Durant ever came to making a deep playoff run with Phoenix came during the 2023 second round in Denver. In Game 2, midway through the third quarter, Chris Paul drained his signature midrange jumper to put the Suns up eight. I embarrassingly said “here we go” out loud on media row as Paul stepped into the shot, because the moment signified a Phoenix team finally clicking into place and showing its true potential for the first time since the trade.
A moment we knew was only a matter of time, whether it was going to happen that year or the next, had arrived.
And it lasted 17 seconds in real time.
On the next possession, Paul tweaked his groin, then missed the rest of the series (and season).
And then the flash would never arrive again. That was it. A miserable degree of underachieving is all that would follow.
At the time, it wasn’t over because the Suns had Kevin [expletive]-ing Durant to still take them home.
But Durant, clearly trying to take over the game and do the superstar thing, shot 4-for-12 the rest of the way and Phoenix missed its biggest opportunity of his era, to split against the eventual champs in a building that was nearly impossible to win in. He was miraculous in Games 3 and 4, fine in Game 5 and had zero chance in Game 6 because a hurt Booker allowed Denver to completely deny Durant any room to put on the cape.
That series feels like a decade ago.
Phoenix whiffed on head-coach hirings and whiffed on rounding out the roster back-to-back years. It is entirely your own opinion whether you believe that the work of the front office and/or coaching staff deserves the majority of the blame for what transpired. This opinion is that those factors are not the most directly responsible for the lifeless and spiritless basketball the Suns routinely played.
That is on the players themselves. It is for Durant, Booker, Bradley Beal and others to wear.
Durant was the most noticeable out of anyone, because my goodness, the 8-1 start to this past season included a rejuvenated Durant defensively that was going to be in the hunt for an All-Defense nod if he kept that pace. He did not, and it flipped on its head expeditiously.
For a guy who loves the game far more than anyone reading this, it was always shocking how little that love translated into Durant’s all-around play. The purity of basketball that comes out when there are special elements of camaraderie was mostly nonexistent — and it was incredibly noticeable when they actually were present. Instead, the cancerous variables that are just as obvious were constant. There was a team-wide lack of connectivity and heart.
Like clockwork, these losing habits began seeping in around mid-December each year. By February, it was obvious what the team was and would be the rest of the season.
Lifelong Suns fans who stayed engaged through 87 combined wins in four years of the late 2010s were tapping out. They couldn’t watch anymore. That was the most telling part of this season.
Knowing the responses to the above that will come online from Durant’s fanbase, this is not a centralized shot at him or an insinuation that he was the cancerous part of the team. He let it happen on his watch, though, and that was a part of the problem. There is a lot of responsibility he has to wear for that: the abhorrent attention to detail, effort in the little things and connectivity for two straight years.
When things weren’t going well, Durant was the guy not even jogging back in transition after turnovers, many times his own. He was the guy with a half-assed rotation to the corner, or stuck ball-watching on an offensive rebound for the opponent. The back-half of this season was an abomination.
He was not the lone offender, but it would also be an insult to his greatness not to hold him to a standard above all the other offenders. For all the talk of leading by example — his lauded work-rate behind the scenes and so on — we actually saw how he led by example.
That should matter more than one playoff series win in three years.
And yet, you’d still leave the arena bewildered by the quality of basketball you just got to see played by an individual. Key phrasing there: “Got to see.” It felt like a gift, an honor to see what Durant could do.
His streak of 23 straight games with 25-plus points that began two contests into the 2023-24 season almost ran through to Christmas. Speaking as someone who feels incredibly privileged to have seen the game played at the highest levels, Durant a month later closed out a win over the Kings with five of the best minutes I’ve ever seen anyone play in the regular season, a two-way masterclass.
Six days later, he hit the most ridiculous shot I’ve ever seen in the regular season, a double-clutch game-winner in which Chicago’s Alex Caruso would have blocked it had Durant not moved the ball in his shooting pocket in mid-air. Forty-five minutes later in the locker room, I was still stunned. I don’t normally do this, but I asked Booker if he had seen the replay of how Durant moved the ball.
“Like 10 times,” he said, sharing the befuddlement and shaking his head.
Those are just two games that retain real estate in the noggin and will forever. There are plenty of different examples to rattle off. He very much was still Kevin [expletive]-ing Durant and the absurd statistical production that is even more asinine to accomplish in his mid-30s was commendable, to say the least.
What Durant did to grow the game with his aforementioned admiration for it deserves a shout, too. He constantly interacted with fans, signed autographs — even when he knew some people were going to sell them — and was almost always approachable to talk about basketball or whatever else, whether it was for a story or not. A guy of his stature to be that way is unexpected.
You would not believe his memory. If there was some sort of statistical aberration from the night he hadn’t accomplished in X-amount of years, it was a treat to approach him with it — not to quiz him but knowing he’d get a kick out of it. And then he’d rattle off the exact date of that game, who they played and then would say something like, “Russ went crazy that game too, right?!” and Russ did indeed go crazy that game.
The best indication we in the media get for how good of a teammate someone is, beyond the on-court stuff, does not come by locker room gossip or any other tidbits we glean behind the curtain. It’s an hour or two before the game on the court in front of everyone, when players are getting individual work in. Players will get greetings from visiting former coaches or teammates. The hugs, chuckles and extended conversations are exchanged.
Durant got the most of those out of anyone I’ve covered. And he is beaming when he sees his old pals, lighting up with a smile and a laugh every time. He is, by all accounts, adored and immensely respected leaguewide.
Feel free to psychoanalyze a guy who loves to troll online and aggressively defend himself to literally anyone. I’m not going to act like I actually know the dude even from the closer lens we got as day-to-day media. But since it is such a topic of fascination, those were my experiences with Durant. It did get a little stand-offish and combative at times. That can rub some people the wrong way. But doesn’t anyone occasionally get that way?
This should not diminish any of Durant’s previous accomplishments. The incessant need to invalidate them has always been a sad turn in the overall perception of his career. He outplayed peak LeBron James in back-to-back Finals, previously deferring to Stephen Curry to show respect for how the Warriors do things until it was winning time, and then he took over to individually outmatch James as the only player from James’ generation who could have.
That covers Durant’s legacy as a champion. Individually, he is the greatest scorer of all time. The combination of size, skill and versatility is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. What he continues to do at his age, especially after an injury that has derailed so many careers or at least heavily impacted most, is a testament to his greatness.
And yet, there has always been a desire for more. Maybe it’s because he joined a dynasty to get his rings. Maybe it’s because he replies online. Maybe it’s because of how he defends himself. Maybe it’s because of how openly he speaks his mind.
Whatever it is, Phoenix was supposed to be the place that fulfilled that desire. Cemented his legacy. Left no more doubt.
Instead, it might as well have been Hakeem Olajuwon in a Toronto Raptors jersey or Patrick Ewing in an Orlando Magic jersey. Not because it was sad to watch an all-time great fully washed, but sad to watch him fail so spectacularly while simultaneously showing he had the ability still to contend for a championship.
Durant now joins an even better situation in Houston, a Rockets team that didn’t even have to cut into its heart and soul to acquire him, let alone fully remove it like the Suns did.
Maybe this is what he has always needed, a clear culture and identity already set like Golden State’s was. Or maybe the guy thought of as malleable as any superstar has lost that superpower.
Whatever comes of it, his overall legacy was not even slightly altered, let alone affected by his time in Phoenix. The irrelevant footnote — a shrug — that Durant’s Suns tenure will be when looking back on a legendary career is the biggest shame of it all.
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