10 great NBA players and the conspiracy theories they could make you believe

8. Kevin Durant: Area 51 and Assorted Alien Encounters

Do aliens exist? That’s certainly a big question and plenty of smart people consider the possibility of some kind of life somewhere in our unfathomably vast universe to be greater than zero.

A better, more conspiratorial question is this: Have aliens ever contacted humans, either by way of visitations, abductions or construction contracts? A lot of people — 91 million Americans — are very confident the answer to this is also yes.

Area 51 is, of course, the primary setting of the modern American alien conspiracy theory. It refers to a remote military base in Nevada with a lot of questionable government and alien-adjacent history. In the 1950s, it was used to test top-secret high-altitude recon planes with the ultimate intent to spy on Russia. But the government didn’t tell anyone so around this time, various people began spotting UFOs that the government now claims were those test flights. Given said government has not been historically forthcoming with Area 51 information, a lot of people think those test planes are an awfully convenient piece of information to conveniently declassify now. Especially when you still can’t get anywhere near the base and all presumed mentions of it are always redacted.

You wouldn’t be alone if you hear all this and deduce that Area 51 is, in fact, where the Pentagon reverse engineers UFOs and stores aliens in freezers. (It also may or may not have been where the Moon landing may or may not have been staged.) And so Area 51 has become a general shorthand for Everything The Government Knows About Aliens.

Alien conspiracy theories and their transit-minded sibling, the UFO conspiracy theory, mostly arrive out of a lack of information or explanation. Historically-minded alien conspiracy theories suggest aliens helped build the Egyptian pyramids, Teotihuacan pyramids, Stonehenge, the Easter Islands and various other large and impressive ancient structures. Aliens, in theory, give an explanation to that which you can’t otherwise explain.

You may also struggle to explain Kevin Durant, basketball player and reported human being. He’s big and fast and strong and efficient, all to a degree generally not seen in one player. He can score and pass, he’s incredible in a pick-and-roll and pretty nifty 35-feet from the basket too. He can defend essentially anyone. He can do whatever you need him to do for no other reason than he just can. Kevin Durant is what you would call a great basketball player, but he’s also totally inexplicable, meaning he is not only good enough to make you believe in aliens, shit, he might also be an alien.

Kevin Durant is aliens-are-real good.