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Through four games of the Finals, Durant has been Kobe-esque in the worst sense. He’s averaging 30 points a game, on 55 percent shooting (just for the sake of argument, we’ll pretend that Kobe is that efficient). But in the Thunder’s three consecutive losses, Durant has totaled 11 rebounds and four assists. One more time: He’s amassed 11 rebounds and four assists in three games combined. And unlike Kobe in his prime, Durant doesn’t stop anyone. After checking LeBron led to foul trouble, he was assigned the task of stifling Mario Chalmers, the scoring dynamo who contributed five points in the prior two games. In Game 4, Chalmers poured in 25.
The unimpressive numbers reflect what we’re seeing on the court. Durant isn’t getting teammates easy baskets, earning extra possessions on the glass, or preventing opponents from scoring. He’s simply not contributing enough. And, unfairly, people are going to say that he lacks experience or determination or some other fictitious attribute. But it’s not about that mythical Nietzschean superman gene. Durant just isn’t as good at passing or rebounding or defending as he is at scoring. This season, the most assists he had in a game was eight. LeBron had that many in the first half of Game 4.
If the Heat close out the Thunder, we’ll enter a furious spin cycle where LeBron’s most fervent detractors will claim that he was victorious because he changed. He matured. He stopped krumping and developed a detached million-yard stare. This time, he truly valued playing for a championship (unlike before, when he feared a shiny ring would attract more hungry seagulls to his yacht). In short, get ready to watch a bunch of people who were proven wrong belch, “I told you so.” But the Heat aren’t winning because LeBron James is playing like Kobe Bryant. Instead, the Thunder are losing because Kevin Durant is.