Rankings the best NBA nicknames of all time
27. Slim Reaper
Kevin Durant is a lot of things to a great many people. In D.C., at the University of Texas and in Seattle, he is revered as one of the greatest pure scorers each area ever produced. In Oklahoma City, though the fire has cooled, he is regarded as a traitor, a Benedict Arnold of the hardwood whose laid back demeanor concealed a serpentine desire to make it easy on himself by jumping to a team that had just beaten his own.
What Kevin Durant is not, however, nor has he ever been, is The Servant. As far as self-proclaimed nicknames go, The Servant is as bad as FredEx or any small-town high school wide receiver who dubs himself 7-11 because he’s always open. KD, shorthand Durant himself prefers, is better, but it’s lame and lacks creativity.
Enter Slim Reaper. Though it has lost steam in light of Durant’s departure from the Thunder and a subsequent public backlash that paints him as some kind of nerdy basketball savant, Slim Reaper was always the best of any nickname readily applicable to the four-time scoring champion.
His spindly limbs and precocious scoring ability have pinned him as perhaps the single most unstoppable scorer in NBA history, a true 7-footer who is as likely to back down smaller guards in the post as he is to pull up from distance when a big man switches onto him.
Durant’s killer instinct has certainly manifested itself at times: during his MVP campaign, when Russell Westbrook was injured for a long stretch; against LeBron in Game 3 of last year’s Finals, essentially ending the series; against the Spurs earlier this season, when Steph Curry went down with an ankle injury, and the Warriors came back to win, in the words of Deadspin’s Albert Burneko, “when Kevin Durant just kinda decided it was time to.”
Down with The Servant. Down with KD. Slim Reaper forever.