On June 20, 2021, Beijing time, the Brooklyn Nets lost to the Milwaukee Bucks 111-115 in overtime, ending the Eastern Conference semifinals with a total score of 3-4! Kevin Durant played 53 minutes (48 minutes of regular time, 5 minutes of overtime), scoring 48 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal and 1 block. The series averaged 35.4 points, 10.7 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.6 steals, 1.1 blocks, 49.7% from the field and 35.2% from three-point range! Speaking of which, I don't think anyone would blame Durant after a ruptured Achilles tendon, no one would blame the Nets with injuries, and as most people said after the game, Durant has done everything he can!
Let's calm down and turn the clock of memory back to 2007, 14 years ago, when the NBA still belonged to the era of Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and other superstars of the older generation. Durant was selected by the Seattle SuperSonics with the second overall pick, and the tall, long-armed and thin player began his legendary NBA career as the top spot! In the 2007-2008 season, the Seattle SuperSonics failed to rise immediately because of the arrival of rookie Durant, but Durant's personal strength has been fully displayed, averaging more than 20 points per game in the season, and he was elected the best rookie without suspense, and the first important honor of entering the NBA declared the perfect starting point for Durant's NBA career, and the Seattle Supersonics have become the place where Durant's dream began!
In the 2008–2009 season, the team moved from Seattle to Oklahoma and renamed okc. Aside from Russell Westbrook being selected with the fourth overall pick and selected as an NBA rookie, Durant didn't make much of an impression this season, and the team still missed the playoffs!
In the 2009-2010 season, James Harden was selected by the Thunder with the third overall pick. At this point, the thunder three youngsters that have resounded throughout the NBA in the future have been completed. This is an important season for Durant's career as a superstar, he not only led the team to the playoffs, but also won the season scoring champion and was selected as an All-Star, losing to LeBron James in the regular season MVP, ranking second. But the young Thunder met the defending champion Lakers led by Kobe Bryant in the first round of the playoffs, and eventually lost to the Lakers 2-4, unfortunately out!
In the 2010-2011 season, Durant completed a 5-year contract extension with the Thunder, he led the team to go one step further, won the fourth regular season record in the West, and reached the Western Conference Finals in the playoffs, but finally lost 1-4 to Dirk Nowitzki who blocked the gods and buddhas in that season!
In the 2011-2012 season, every young team needs time to hone, and every player on the road to superstardom needs more games to grow. This season for the young Durant, for the Thunder three less, for the Thunder, should bear rich fruit. Durant won the first All-Star Game MVP, the second time in the regular season MVP vote (lost to LeBron James), and the third consecutive time to win the dominance title. On the tough journey in the Western Conference playoffs, facing the Dallas Mavericks in the first round, Durant's final 1.5-second kill was impressive; The second round's 4-1 gentleman sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers led by Kobe Bryant is still vivid; In the Western Conference Finals, facing veteran powerhouse Spurs, he won four consecutive games in the first two sets. The three emperor superstars dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan, who have eliminated the seventies generation, are all thunderous names, each of which is a legend, and durant's youthful vitality at this moment is entitled to make him stand with the above great names. The outside world has given high expectations and evaluations to Durant and the Thunder, and in the Finals they will face the Miami Heat, which has a big three, and the Thunder three less vs the Heat big three! James vs Durant! The young generation of the eighties has officially fully entered the peak showdown of the NBA's most central stage! The game has not yet begun, and the off-court comparisons are already rampant. Can Durant beat the son of genius James, who made him lose out twice to the regular season MVP? Will James be able to wash away the traitor's notoriety and win the first championship of his career? The answer is the latter, the Heat defeated the Thunder 4-1, LeBron James won the Finals Most Valuable Player trophy, complete the redemption! Durant is left with only gloom, and only gloom, just like today...
In the 2012-2013 season, after the collapse of the previous season, James Harden was abandoned, and the Thunder Three Lesser, which briefly experienced three seasons, disintegrated, which is not unspeakable. Durant finished second in the regular season MVP vote for the third time (still lost to James), at this time more and more people began to jokingly call Durant the "millennium old two", but the game continues, every season the championship trophy is still there, the Thunder two continue to regroup and attack the championship! But attentive friends will find that from this season, the shadow of injury continues to hang over the Thunder. The Houston Rockets faced "old friend, new rival" James Harden in the first round of the playoffs, and while the Thunder qualified 4-2, Westbrook was injured and the season was reimbursed. Durant lost to the Grizzlies under the single core leadership and stopped in the Western Conference Semifinals!
The 2013-2014 season, which can be regarded as a bumper harvest year for Durant's personal honors, led the Thunder to the second place in the league with his teammate Westbrook's injury for half a season, and won the fourth time in his career to score points, and after three regular season mvp rankings, finally won the regular season MVP without suspense this season. In the Western Conference Finals, he had to face the Spurs led by arch-rival Tim Duncan, and Ibaka's unexpected injury caused the team's defense to collapse, and he eventually lost 2-4 and missed the Finals. In particular, in the regular season MVP award speech, Durant said that the real MVP was the mom who brought him up, and yes, after the finals defeat two years ago, he cried in the players' tunnel and hugged his mom, and it was you who leaned on his mom's shoulder; After the Warriors won the championship, it was you who cried with joy and hugged your mother tightly; Today, the Bucks were touched by your mother's unwilling face on the court, and your mother is your hardest and last to rely on!
In the 2014-2015 season, Durant suffered frequent injuries, and after several injuries and returned, finally in March 2015, Durant was reimbursed for the season, and the team did not qualify for the playoffs!
The 2015-2016 season, the most dramatic season in NBA history, was also durant's Thunder finale. Once again facing Tim Duncan's Spurs (and the maturing Leonard) in the Western Conference Semifinals, Durant once again defeated Duncan to advance to the Western Conference Finals by a big score of 4-2. But this Western Conference Finals became the most painful series of Durant's career, and they were reversed by Curry and the Warriors, who had been in the limelight for nearly two years, with a 3-1 lead, and once again missed the Finals.
He had previously reached the Western Conference Finals three times, 10-11, 11-12, 13-14, twice directly defeated and 1 win, but still lost after winning. In the past six years, he has been fighting with the previous generation of Emperor superstars in the playoffs, and LeBron James, who is four years older than him, has been playing duos in the competition for the regular season MVP, and now he has to compete with "rising stars" such as Curry, who entered the league later than him, I don't know what Durant is thinking at the moment, maybe he just doesn't want to continue to fail, so he has taken a "difficult" for himself, "easiest" for others to win the championship!
In the 2016-2017 season, Durant joined the Golden State Warriors who had just beaten themselves in the Western Conference Finals Seven last season. Compared with James's decision to join the Heat 6 years ago, the response this time is even worse, which is probably what Durant himself did not expect, and people have scolded him as "soft egg Du" and "defect to Du". Hate the house and U, more and more people began to curse the Golden State Warriors for defeat, but competitive sports is the game of the winners, is the game of the winners! The Golden State Warriors then reached the Finals for three consecutive years, beating the Cavaliers led by LeBron James for two consecutive years to win the Cup and winning the Finals Most Valuable Player Trophy for two consecutive years. Durant's two desperate three-pointers on two championship trips will go down in history. Durant not only completed his revenge against LeBron James, but also completed his redemption of himself.
The Golden State Warriors are not Durant's ultimate home after all, they have a common opponent and can set aside the controversy in order to defeat the common enemy (LeBron James), but when the opponent is old, when the opponent no longer gives them the threat of facing the enemy, the internal dispute begins to stand out until Drummond Green says, "Before you come, we have won." Since then, the glorious warrior dynasty has officially disintegrated. The decline of the dynasty must be the internal disintegration is really an immutable truth!
In the 2019-2020 season, seeing the old rivals, the king of the league LeBron James joining the Lakers in the second season to win the championship again, the fourth championship, the fourth Finals Most Valuable Player trophy, and the four regular season Most Valuable Player trophies that have already been won, I don't know how Durant and Curry feel (including Drummond Green, Klay Thompson), as a bystander, I regret that they may have personally ruined their joy of winning for a long time, in this regret, No one is innocent, Durant is not, Curry is not, drummond Green is not! Durant's season reimbursement has long been foreseen, but he may not know that today's Nets Big Three stopped in the Eastern Conference semifinals due to injury; Klay Thompson is reimbursed for the season, but he will not think that he will suffer a serious leg injury, reimbursed for two consecutive seasons, and the contract worth nearly 200 million will become the most garbage contract in the history of the NBA; Curry was also reimbursed for the season after playing a few games, but what he did not expect was that the Splash Brothers would only have "water" left, and at the peak of his own, the Warriors would miss the playoffs for two consecutive seasons!
The future is unknown, according to the current facts: if there is no big change, durant's Nets Big Three will continue to be in the East next season, stirring up trouble in the league, and still in the top of the championship! The Warriors will see Klay Thompson returning from a serious injury, and the Golden State Warriors led by the Splash Brothers will be better than this year, but whether they can make the playoffs is still a question mark. The James combination is still quite anticipated, whether leBron James's era is completely over, next season is the last proof!