The Brooklyn Nets are the hottest team in the NBA, and Kevin Durant is the biggest reason.
That Durant is even with the Nets is something of a surprise after the drama of this summer, when he requested a trade before his four-year max extension had even begun, then reversed course less than two months later.
It seemed as if the summer chaos had spilled into the season when Brooklyn began 1-5, leading to the departure of coach Steve Nash. However, since Nov. 1, the Nets have the best record in the NBA at 19-7 and have emerged as legitimate contenders in the Eastern Conference. Friday night, they beat the Milwaukee Bucks, the team with the best record in the league, for their 12th win in their past 13 games.
It has been a remarkable turnaround, led by Durant, who at 34 is playing some of the best basketball of his career on both ends of the court -- and making a legitimate case for MVP. Here's how he's doing it.
Durant's scoring as elite as ever
As a scorer, Durant remains the most versatile individual force in basketball. Averaging 29.9 points per game, this might be his best season as a scorer since 2013-14, when he racked up 32.0 points per game and won the MVP as a 25 year-old phenom with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Durant has logged ridiculous numbers inside the arc this season, converting 63% of his 2-point attempts, while also amassing the best efficiency numbers of his career in the paint and in the midrange.
His prime has coincided with a jump-shooting revolution that changed the NBA, but while almost all of his contemporaries are taking more 3s and fewer midrangers, Durant is going the other way.
Durant has made 164 2-point jumpers this season, the most in the NBA, on 59.6% shooting, an unbelievable mark that ranks first among the 30 NBA players who have tried at least 100 such shots.
It's hard to overstate how amazing that is. There are only two players who have blended midrange volume and efficiency like this since the NBA has been charting shot locations since 1996. Their names are Michael Jordan and Dirk Nowitzki, and Durant's numbers are better than both.
Durant's 59.6% conversion rate is nearly 10 points higher than Jordan's and Nowitzki's -- and five points higher than last season, when he set the highest mark for a volume midrange shooter over the past 25 years.
Durant might not just be the best midrange scorer of his own era; he might be the best we've ever seen.
In the time of endless 3s, he is not only dominating the much-maligned midrange, but he's single-handedly reminding the basketball world that midrange scoring can be both effective and beautiful to watch.
And he's doing so by dribbling into the heart of the defense, creating his own looks wherever he wants and knocking them down at historic rates, often in the faces of the best defenders the NBA has to offer.
This season Durant is shooting 55.2% on contested off-the-dribble jumpers, which is on pace to be the highest conversion rate among the more than 1,200 instances of a player attempting 100 of these shots in a season since 2013-14, per Second Spectrum.
And the Nets are reaping the benefits. With the league's best offense, the Nets rank first in the league by converting 53.6% of their non-paint 2s, easily outdistancing the Boston Celtics, who rank second at 47.1%.
Modern defenses prioritize taking away shots near the rim and from beyond the arc, but both Durant and Kyrie Irving are creating efficient offense in the wide-open spaces in between those zones. They're using huge chunks of the chessboard that most offensive players and teams have forsaken.
The conventional wisdom of the modern NBA says you can't find efficient offense in the barren areas between the paint and the 3-point line, but Brooklyn is stomping on that calculus.
The average 2-point jump shot is worth just 0.86 points this season, but this Nets team averages 1.11 points on such shots; no other team in the league is over 0.96.
The new two-way KD
This is Durant's 15th season in the NBA (not including the 2019-20 season, which he sat out while rehabbing an Achilles injury). He has been named an All-Star 12 times and earned 10 All-NBA selections. But for all the accolades Durant has racked up, he has never been considered an elite defender. He has never made an All-Defensive team, and he received Defensive Player of the Year votes just once -- in 2016-17, his first season with the Golden State Warriors.
Conversations around Durant almost always focus on his scoring, but he has become a major asset on defense this season.
Overall, Durant is holding opponents to 39.5% when contesting their shot. That ranks third among the 71 players to contest 300 shots, per Second Spectrum, but he does his best work closer to the basket.
So far this season, 30 NBA defenders have contested at least 200 shots in the paint. Among that group, Durant has allowed the lowest field goal percentage -- opponents are converting just 45.8% of their paint shots in those situations.
With Nash at the helm, the Nets ranked 29th in the league in defensive efficiency in October, but since Nov. 1, they rank eighth -- an improvement that bodes well for Brooklyn's championship aspirations, as just one of the past 10 NBA champions have ranked outside the top 10 in defense in the regular season (Durant's 2017-18 Warriors, who were 11th). Coach Jacque Vaughn has found new rotations that get stops, but it has been Durant and Nic Claxton who have been at the center of the team's defensive revival.
In addition to Durant, Claxton ranks third in that paint-defense group. While this frontcourt might not be the strongest or the best on the glass, these numbers reveal they are effective at protecting the rim, and that gives the Nets something they desperately lacked in the Nash era: some semblance of a defensive identity.
Making the MVP case
We've come to expect greatness from Durant, but what he's doing recently as a top scorer and top defender on one of the best teams in the league is rapidly changing the conversation around the Nets this season. Brooklyn is playing like a contender, and Durant is making a push for his second MVP trophy, nine years after he claimed his first one.
Durant's only MVP came way back in 2013-14, when he was 25 and playing most of his minutes as a small forward. Now he's logging most of his minutes as a power forward and center.
Durant has received just one MVP vote over the previous three seasons and hasn't finished in the top five in MVP voting since 2016. For someone who we think of as a perennial MVP candidate, and one of the best players of the era, he really hasn't been a contender in the MVP race since 2013-14.
Durant is by no means the only superstar making a strong early case to win the Michael Jordan Trophy. He was seventh in ESPN's first MVP straw poll of the season and didn't receive a single first-place or second-place vote. But it's hard to imagine any way this Nets team could be anywhere near the top of the East without him -- a scenario it was facing for much of the offseason.
Under normal circumstances, any hyper-efficient superstar scorer on any contender would be an MVP candidate, but against the chaotic backdrop of this Nets soap opera -- chaos that Durant himself admits he played a large role in -- what Durant has done this season has been especially noteworthy.
The Brooklyn Nets are the hottest team in the NBA, and Kevin Durant is the biggest reason.
That Durant is even with the Nets is something of a surprise after the drama of this summer, when he requested a trade before his four-year max extension had even begun, then reversed course less than two months later.
It seemed as if the summer chaos had spilled into the season when Brooklyn began 1-5, leading to the departure of coach Steve Nash. However, since Nov. 1, the Nets have the best record in the NBA at 19-7 and have emerged as legitimate contenders in the Eastern Conference. Friday night, they beat the Milwaukee Bucks, the team with the best record in the league, for their 12th win in their past 13 games.
It has been a remarkable turnaround, led by Durant, who at 34 is playing some of the best basketball of his career on both ends of the court -- and making a legitimate case for MVP. Here's how he's doing it.
Durant's scoring as elite as ever
As a scorer, Durant remains the most versatile individual force in basketball. Averaging 29.9 points per game, this might be his best season as a scorer since 2013-14, when he racked up 32.0 points per game and won the MVP as a 25 year-old phenom with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Durant has logged ridiculous numbers inside the arc this season, converting 63% of his 2-point attempts, while also amassing the best efficiency numbers of his career in the paint and in the midrange.
His prime has coincided with a jump-shooting revolution that changed the NBA, but while almost all of his contemporaries are taking more 3s and fewer midrangers, Durant is going the other way.
Durant has made 164 2-point jumpers this season, the most in the NBA, on 59.6% shooting, an unbelievable mark that ranks first among the 30 NBA players who have tried at least 100 such shots.
It's hard to overstate how amazing that is. There are only two players who have blended midrange volume and efficiency like this since the NBA has been charting shot locations since 1996. Their names are Michael Jordan and Dirk Nowitzki, and Durant's numbers are better than both.
Durant's 59.6% conversion rate is nearly 10 points higher than Jordan's and Nowitzki's -- and five points higher than last season, when he set the highest mark for a volume midrange shooter over the past 25 years.
Durant might not just be the best midrange scorer of his own era; he might be the best we've ever seen.
In the time of endless 3s, he is not only dominating the much-maligned midrange, but he's single-handedly reminding the basketball world that midrange scoring can be both effective and beautiful to watch.
And he's doing so by dribbling into the heart of the defense, creating his own looks wherever he wants and knocking them down at historic rates, often in the faces of the best defenders the NBA has to offer.
This season Durant is shooting 55.2% on contested off-the-dribble jumpers, which is on pace to be the highest conversion rate among the more than 1,200 instances of a player attempting 100 of these shots in a season since 2013-14, per Second Spectrum.
And the Nets are reaping the benefits. With the league's best offense, the Nets rank first in the league by converting 53.6% of their non-paint 2s, easily outdistancing the Boston Celtics, who rank second at 47.1%.
Modern defenses prioritize taking away shots near the rim and from beyond the arc, but both Durant and Kyrie Irving are creating efficient offense in the wide-open spaces in between those zones. They're using huge chunks of the chessboard that most offensive players and teams have forsaken.
The conventional wisdom of the modern NBA says you can't find efficient offense in the barren areas between the paint and the 3-point line, but Brooklyn is stomping on that calculus.
The average 2-point jump shot is worth just 0.86 points this season, but this Nets team averages 1.11 points on such shots; no other team in the league is over 0.96.
The new two-way KD
This is Durant's 15th season in the NBA (not including the 2019-20 season, which he sat out while rehabbing an Achilles injury). He has been named an All-Star 12 times and earned 10 All-NBA selections. But for all the accolades Durant has racked up, he has never been considered an elite defender. He has never made an All-Defensive team, and he received Defensive Player of the Year votes just once -- in 2016-17, his first season with the Golden State Warriors.
Conversations around Durant almost always focus on his scoring, but he has become a major asset on defense this season.
Overall, Durant is holding opponents to 39.5% when contesting their shot. That ranks third among the 71 players to contest 300 shots, per Second Spectrum, but he does his best work closer to the basket.
So far this season, 30 NBA defenders have contested at least 200 shots in the paint. Among that group, Durant has allowed the lowest field goal percentage -- opponents are converting just 45.8% of their paint shots in those situations.
With Nash at the helm, the Nets ranked 29th in the league in defensive efficiency in October, but since Nov. 1, they rank eighth -- an improvement that bodes well for Brooklyn's championship aspirations, as just one of the past 10 NBA champions have ranked outside the top 10 in defense in the regular season (Durant's 2017-18 Warriors, who were 11th). Coach Jacque Vaughn has found new rotations that get stops, but it has been Durant and Nic Claxton who have been at the center of the team's defensive revival.
In addition to Durant, Claxton ranks third in that paint-defense group. While this frontcourt might not be the strongest or the best on the glass, these numbers reveal they are effective at protecting the rim, and that gives the Nets something they desperately lacked in the Nash era: some semblance of a defensive identity.
Making the MVP case
We've come to expect greatness from Durant, but what he's doing recently as a top scorer and top defender on one of the best teams in the league is rapidly changing the conversation around the Nets this season. Brooklyn is playing like a contender, and Durant is making a push for his second MVP trophy, nine years after he claimed his first one.
Durant's only MVP came way back in 2013-14, when he was 25 and playing most of his minutes as a small forward. Now he's logging most of his minutes as a power forward and center.
Durant has received just one MVP vote over the previous three seasons and hasn't finished in the top five in MVP voting since 2016. For someone who we think of as a perennial MVP candidate, and one of the best players of the era, he really hasn't been a contender in the MVP race since 2013-14.
Durant is by no means the only superstar making a strong early case to win the Michael Jordan Trophy. He was seventh in ESPN's first MVP straw poll of the season and didn't receive a single first-place or second-place vote. But it's hard to imagine any way this Nets team could be anywhere near the top of the East without him -- a scenario it was facing for much of the offseason.
Under normal circumstances, any hyper-efficient superstar scorer on any contender would be an MVP candidate, but against the chaotic backdrop of this Nets soap opera -- chaos that Durant himself admits he played a large role in -- what Durant has done this season has been especially noteworthy.
