The only super giant in the team is still in the West 🚀KD, if he leads the Rockets to win the championship, can it reverse public opinion?

(The original article was published on June 22, and the author is Brad Botkin of CBS Sports. The content of the article does not represent the translator's views)

First of all, I dislike the discussion of "historical status". Whether you like it or not, with the news that Durant was traded to the Rockets several hours ago in this year's NBA Finals tiebreak, major media will surely push the star's historical positioning analysis in a cycle - Durant has started his long "Champion Ring Journey" latest chapter!

On the surface, this is indeed the case, Durant can be regarded as one of the representative figures of the "star-dominated era" of the NBA. He has never really established a deep connection with any team since leaving Oklahoma City. This superstar is like a mercenary, usually playing for several seasons, and will switch to his team when the championship hopes dry up.

Durant is not the only player who has adopted this approach. He is just the strongest player besides James, who almost created a blueprint for forming a super team, and Durant tried to replicate it in the Warriors, Nets and Suns. The difference is that James successfully won the championship in all three teams, while Durant (please note that this is not his personal problem) has been defeated repeatedly from the perspective of championship competition since leaving the Warriors.

Of course, Durant did lead the Warriors to win two championships, but in the public opinion field, these achievements have become the reason many people blame him. In 2016, he won the 73-win Warriors who just eliminated himself and the Thunder became Durant's original sin, and a considerable number of people will never be able to view him with a normal perspective.

Durant can be said that he doesn't care about outside evaluations, maybe that's true. He shouldn't care, either, because he is one of the greatest players in basketball history, and what happened to the Nets and the Suns was not his fault unless the requirement to get a maximum salary, resulting in insufficient lineup depth can be a reason to blame almost all superstars. The Nets' chaos stems from Irving and Harden's injury at the worst time. It's that simple, and Durant has shown extraordinary strength in every team.

But Durant is a mortal after all, an extremely proud and competitive mortal. If you think deep down he doesn't want to prove that he can win the championship even if he leaves Curry, IMHO, this idea is really ridiculous. From this perspective, the Rockets have exactly all the necessary conditions and are expected to help him rewrite or at least significantly modify the outside world's evaluation of his career.

1. It is crucial that he defected to superstars to form a super team. After relying on the system created by Curry with the Warriors, Durant joined forces with Irving (and later Harden) at the Nets and Booker (and subsequently Bill) at the Suns. And in the Rockets, he is the only superstar. Because of this, if the Rockets finally reach the top, Durant will naturally receive the largest share of public acclaim. In today's alliance, where competition is the most intense and balanced, this is a difficult task.

2. The Rockets already have outstanding strength

Although Durant did not have superstars in the previous team, the Rockets have a young talented lineup led by All-Star center Shin Kyung, and may be the most unique talented player in the league. Perhaps he is the best defender except Wenban Yama. This team has top coaches and top defensive systems, and now it has added top scorers.

To win the championship, this team must have the ability to compete for the championship after you join. But this team cannot already have the ability to win the championship before you arrive, and it is this that initially tarnished Durant's historical evaluation. Joining the Rockets, who were eliminated in the first round but only one goal away from the championship, made Durant a historically level single player missing for this team that prefers singles (9th in the league this season) but is inefficient (27th in the league score per round). This is a perfect script to reshape historical positioning.

3, Still Stay in the West

This is a subtle key point that Durant is expected to win bonus points for historical evaluation. If he eventually settles in the East, critics who never give tolerance will have a ready-made excuse to continue accusing Durant of "taking shortcuts." But staying in the west means Durant is still in the battlefield of purgatory. In today's Western Conference, any top player, regardless of the team configuration, will win a substantial improvement in his historical status if he can win the championship. Even if James, who has locked in the "best player in history", can successfully break through the West today, his status will be taken to a higher level. If Durant did this, even for those who have been ruthless since joining the Warriors, his position as the true core of the championship team (rather than just a historical superstar) would be reproachable.

Of course, the above are just personal opinions, and Durant is a great player at the historical level. From a competitive perspective, I did not agree with his decision to join the Warriors at the beginning. But Durant himself always emphasized that this choice is not to ensure that he wins the championship ring, but to seize the once-in-a-lifetime growth opportunity and experience a completely different basketball system.

Durant was only 27 years old when he made that decision. We always forgot that players are ordinary people: How many 27-year-old young people who have no worries about food and clothing will refuse the opportunity to try new things and experience new cities? For people with low life tolerance, change is indeed daunting; but when the real risks are eliminated, every new place is like a feast? Come on, frankly, who hasn't experienced many job-changing times in his twenties?

Stop posing as arrogant. Durant has always been unparalleled, and it will be the case in the Rockets. The extra gain is: if he really cares about the opinions of ordinary fans, it will be an excellent opportunity to reverse public opinion. Perhaps the Rockets are the last stop to rewrite public opinion evaluation in Durant's most interesting career in NBA history.

Original text: Brad Botkin

Compiled by: Li Taibai