How well will Kevin Durant's game age?
That's a question any team interested in trading for the 12-time All-Star will be asking itself.
Durant is coming off one of the best seasons of his career, but he's not far removed from tearing his Achilles. He'll also turn 34 ahead of the 2022-23 season. With four more years remaining on his current contract, he will be knocking on the door of his 40th birthday the next time he's a free agent.
It's no secret that the Nets are looking for a whole lot in return for Durant — "one bona fide All-Star-caliber player, other contributing players and significant draft capital," according to Bleacher Report's Jake Fischer. With that in mind, whichever team makes a move for him will be hoping he'll give it more than just one bite at the championship apple.
That brings us back to the opening question.
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Where Kevin Durant's game should age gracefully
Once a shooter, always a shooter
Let's be clear: Durant is one of the best shooters in NBA history.
He's never been a particularly high-volume 3-point shooter, but Durant has been good for 1.9 3-pointers per game for his career, converting them at a 38.4 percent clip. And he's in the conversation for the greatest midrange scorer of all time.
This table from Cleaning The Glass tells you everything you need to know about Durant's shooting prowess:
The numbers reflect Durant's percentile rank among forwards for shooting accuracy. So, yeah, he's basically been the most efficient midrange and 3-point shooter at his position since his fifth season in the NBA.
Durant creates a lot of offense for himself, but he's always been an excellent standstill 3-point shooter. He's also elite operating off screens. While he can curl all the way out to the 3-point line in those situations, he prefers getting to the midrange area.
At his size with his length, Durant only needs a slither of space to get his shot off.
Durant's comfort playing without the ball makes him one of the more malleable superstars the NBA has ever had. It eased his fit next to Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green in Golden State. It should do the same for whichever star(s) he joins next.
Where Kevin Durant's game could decline with age
A walking mismatch
One thing Durant has going for him is his size.
At 6-10 with a 7-5 wingspan, there isn't much that can be done when Durant gets to his spots. It doesn't help that he's not phased by defenders being draped all over him.
According to NBA.com, more than half of Durant's shot attempts during the 2021-22 season were tightly contested 2-pointers. His success rate on those looks? A ridiculous 53.7 percent. Not all of those attempts were midrange jumpers, of course, but a good amount were.
Even as he enters his mid-30s, the degree of difficulty on many of Durant's baskets remains sky-high.
What will be interesting to see is how Durant losing a step or two impacts his playmaking.
Injuries limited Durant to 55 games last season, and yet only seven players scored more points than him in isolation. He didn't rank nearly as high in pick-and-roll scoring, but pick-and-rolls still made up a good chunk of his scoring.
How much longer can Durant continue to create for himself on that sort of volume?
James Harden isn't a bad reference point. His situation is different from Durant's — he's been dealing with a nagging hamstring injury — but his decline over the last couple of seasons has been far steeper than anyone could've expected. In 2019-20, he led the NBA in scoring for the third consecutive season with 34.3 points per game. In 2021-22, he averaged 22.0 points per game, his fewest since his third season.
Harden is still one of the league's most prolific isolation and pick-and-roll scorers, but he's lost some of the lift and burst that helped him become one of the greatest scorers we've ever seen.
Harden at least has his passing to fall back on. Durant is a good facilitator — he averaged a career-best 6.4 assists per game last season — but he's not at the same level as Harden. Scoring will probably always be his calling card, which is why his ability to play off-ball at such a high level is important when projecting his future.
A defensive dynamo
Durant has never made an All-Defensive team, but he was a mean defender in his prime, one capable of guarding multiple positions and operating as the four or the five in smaller lineups.
He still provides a lot of that same value. The BBall Index had Durant as one of the switchiest defenders in the league last season. While he averaged less than a block per game, opponents shot 8.4 percentage points worse than expected at the rim when he was anchoring the paint.
Again, it's on the margins where Durant's defense could start to slide. His size will always be an asset, but him struggling to stay in front of zippier guards and not being able to protect the basket quite as effectively would make him more of a one- or two-position defender.
As long as he's not the linchpin of a team's defense, you'd think Durant would be able to make enough plays to still be an overall positive.
What do the models say about Kevin Durant's longevity?
TSN's Steph Noh calls Kostya Medvedovsky's DARKO the "best public predictive model out there."
You can read more about how it works here, but one of DARKO's features is a career comparison tool using DPM, which measures a player's overall impact on the court.
Based on that, the trajectory of Durant's career is more similar to that of the ageless LeBron James than, say, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett or Dirk Nowitzki, three all-time greats who were each starting to decline in a meaningful way at Durant's age.
That's a promising sign for whichever team does end up with Durant.
