Ethan Montague

With the Brooklyn Nets having been swept in the first round of the NBA playoffs at the hands of the Boston Celtics, Kevin Durant’s legacy has perhaps never been more in question. While he always took the Thunder far in the playoffs, he was never good enough to lead them to a NBA championship. There was no doubt about his ability to put up impressive numbers, but some had questions about his toughness, due to his extremely skinny frame, and how that physique impacted his ability to win deep in the playoffs.

Following his blowing of a 3-1 lead to the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 western conference finals, Durant decided his best chance to win was to join the same team that had defeated him just a few months earlier. While many complained that this made the team too stacked with elite players, others felt that, as a key member of this winning team, Durant had established himself as one of the all time great NBA players alongside NBA legends like Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jordan. After all, Durant had won 2 championships, 2 finals MVPs, and even averaged 35.2 points in his first championship finals series with the team.

Many fans even felt Durant had usurped the title of best player in the league from LeBron, a title that had been held for longer than a decade. But I don’t think Durant was even the best player on his own team. The Warriors didn’t need him to win. In fact, they had played Cleveland in two consecutive finals without him and won the first. The Warriors, moreover, had the best record in NBA history at 73-9 the season before adding Durant. And it certainly doesn’t appear they need him now as they just beat the Dallas Mavericks in the conference finals, giving Curry his sixth trip to the finals to Durants four.

While they had Durant, lineups with Curry (no Durant) performed better than Durant (no Curry) lineups in all three seasons. Somehow, the Curry (without Durant) lineups outperformed lineups with both Curry and Durant. So, while Durant took the lead in attempted shots and scoring, Curry remained the team's most valuable player in terms of actual impact on the game.

The Warriors’ tally of regular season wins also declined each year Durant was in the lineup. In his first season with the team, the Warriors won 67 regular season games, six less than they had the year before. The next season saw them lose nine more, dropping them a total of 15 games from just two years before adding Durant. By Durant’s last year, it had increased to 16 less regular season wins from the height of that 73-9 record breaking season.

This season saw Durant shoot below 39 percent from the field in a four game sweep at the hands of the Boston Celtics, while Curry will have another finals appearance. While the Warriors didn’t have Ben Simmons, who still isn’t playing, the roster Durant had was at least good enough to avoid an embarrassing sweep and his poor play was the difference in the series as Jayson Tatum significantly outperformed him. In a series where the Celtics won games by an average of 4.5 points. Curry never had to join a superteam to win, and his team impact is the difference in putting him over Durant, who still hasn’t shown he can make teammates better.