The Whiteboard: A brief history of Kevin Durant as a Seattle SuperSonic

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The NBA’s coronavirus pandemic story took a sharp turn yesterday with the news that four Brooklyn Nets’ players had tested positive. Kevin Durant later confirmed to The Athletic that he was one of those four players. It’s not clear if he is one of the trio of that group who is not currently symptomatic but at this point, there’s not much to do beyond hoping he, and everyone else who has been exposed, makes a full and quick recovery.

Durant hasn’t played since Game 5 of last year’s NBA Finals, when he ruptured his Achilles’ tendon, and he has been largely out-of-sight and out-of-mind in one of the most fascinating seasons in recent NBA memory. His free-agent move to the Nets was eventually overshadowed by the stars (Paul George and Kawhi Leonard) aligning for the Clippers, LeBron James beginning the season with Anthony Davis by his side and the ongoing science experiment in Houston.

The narrative around Durant has changed so much over the course of his career, I thought it would be fun to look back at his rookie season, the one year he played in a Seattle SuperSonics uniform.

The whole thing feels like a portal to an alternate universe — images of him in green, yellow and white, baby-faced and somehow even more slight than the force we’ve come to know. Most will remember the debate about taking Durant or Greg Oden with the No. 1 pick, a decision the Portland Trail Blazers infamously got the worst of.

Durant, taken second, joined a roster that had won just 31 games the season before and had flipped Ray Allen on draft night for Wally Szczerbiak, Delone West and the No. 5 pick — Jeff Green. Luke Ridnour and Chris Wilcox were the only returning double-digit scorers and Durant spent his rookie season starting next to NBA legends like Johan Petro, Kurt Thomas, Damien Wilkins, Francisco Elson and Robert Swift. The player he shared the court with most often was a 28-year-old Earl Watson.

And on that roster of driftwood and tumbleweeds, Durant still won Rookie of the Year, averaging 20.3 points, 4.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.0 steals per game. He played more than 90 percent of his minutes as a shooting guard that season and you could see the rougher edges of what he’d eventually become, although the tools were mostly leveraged in ways that now seem oddly naive. More than a quarter of his shots came in the restricted area, a mark he would surpass just once (in his second season) over the rest of his career. Nearly a third of his shots were long 2-pointers, a career-high mark. He was a kinetic slasher, still learning how to use his unique length and jumpshot to break a defense.

Shooting efficiency was the most noticeable wart of that rookie season — 43.0 percent from the field, 28.8 percent on 3-pointers, both career-lows. But his defense was also a catastrophic negative, so much so that it wiped out most of the value of his prodigious offensive production. As we know, Durant would figure out how to fix all of that — becoming one of the most efficient scorers the league has ever seen and a capable enough defender to have received at least some Defensive Player of the Year buzz while playing as a big in Golden State.

That development occurred in Oklahoma City and Oakland, though. Seattle fans got a lifetime of heartbreak and just one season of Durant as their hero. However, he left them on a high note. Durant’s final game in a Sonics uniform was a monster — 42 points, 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 1 steal and 2 blocks, on just 25 shot attempts, in a five-point win over the Warriors in the regular-season finale. More than a decade later, it’s still one of the highest Game Scores he’s ever posted and was an incredible tease for what was to come.

Here’s hoping there is a whole new era of Kevin Durant highlights and high-points coming our way soon.

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