© Troy Taormina | 2019 May 6
Kevin Durant gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal that dropped on Tuesday morning and boy is it a doozy.
Durant touches on a number of topics, most notably his sometimes hatred of the “circus” of the NBA, and his assertion that he’ll never be attached to Oklahoma City again after their “toxic” behavior following his exit in 2016.
The most newsworthy portion for Warriors fans, however, involves Steve Kerr’s motion offense and Durant’s belief that it’s not a system without flaws.
“The motion offense we run in Golden State, it only works to a certain point,” Durant said to the Wall Street Journal’s J.R. Moehringer. “We can totally rely on our system for maybe the first two rounds. Then the next two rounds we’re going to have to mix in individual play. We’ve got to throw teams off, because they’re smarter in that round of playoffs.
“So now I have to dive into my bag, deep, to create stuff on my own, off the dribble, isos, pick-and-rolls, more so than let the offense create points for me.”
Durant’s comments here aren’t all that unreasonable. Success at the highest level of basketball has almost always involved stars stepping up and putting forth great individual performances in order to take their teams over the top. Any offensive system, no matter how innovative, is not without flaws, and is susceptible to being defended by great teams with the right personnel.
Regardless of your opinion on Kerr’s offense, it’s hard to argue that Durant didn’t thrive within it during his three years in Golden State. Durant shot 53, 51 and 52 percent in his three respective seasons with the Warriors, the three most efficient shooting seasons of his 12-year-career.