Kristian Winfield: Kevin Durant is a basketball god, according to the NBA’s GM survey

Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News

NEW YORK — Kevin Durant must be a living, breathing basketball god. Such high praise could be the only possible explanation for the results of an anonymous poll of the NBA’s 30 general managers for each of its teams.

Sure, 72% of those GMs liked the Nets’ odds at winning the 2022 NBA Finals. However, 37% of them believe Durant will win the 2022 NBA Most Valuable Player of the Year award, 67% believe he’s the league’s best small forward (well ahead of LeBron James, 17%, and Kawhi Leonard, 7%), and 41% want Durant taking the final shot with a game on the line.

For comparison, 24% of GMs voted Stephen Curry for a game’s final shot, 17% voted Damian Lillard, 7% each for Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic, and 3% for Durant’s teammate, Kyrie Irving.

Those GMs are right. Durant is coming off possibly the most impressive season of a first-ballot Hall of Fame career. His team’s second-round playoff exit was hardly his fault, as he proved by powering Team USA to gold in the Tokyo Olympics. He did so in dominant fashion, forcing the hands of ESPN and Sports Illustrated, who each named the Nets’ superstar as the best player in basketball.

So have the league’s GMs, who each wish they had the opportunity to sign Durant two summers ago, even if it meant signing Irving and, yes, even if it meant signing DeAndre Jordan. Those same GMs also voted Durant’s Nets as the NBA’s most fun team to watch and ranked Durant as the league’s third-most versatile player behind LeBron and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

It’s almost like they remembered who he was in the first place.

Recency bias has proven to be a real thing, and when Durant was forced to sit an entire season due to his ruptured Achilles, the entire world — fans and league GMs alike — questioned whether he’d return to form. In his absence, Leonard, James and Antetokounmpo took their turns battling for status as the league’s best player.

Yet in his first year back from the injury that has derailed many storied NBA careers, Durant posted averages of 27 points, seven rebounds and 5.6 assists per game. He shot a career-high both from the field (53.7%) and from 3 (43.7%) and fell just 1.2% free-throw shooting shy of joining Irving in the 50-40-90 club last season.

That, of course, would have been Durant’s second induction into the club, first joining in 2013 with the Oklahoma City Thunder. His dominance as the league’s best player has been nothing new.

Those GMs also voted James Harden as the NBA’s best shooting guard, which may come as a surprise to most who know Harden has been the full-time point guard since a month into his trade to the Brooklyn. Nets head coach Steve Nash also ranked fourth in GM voting for which coach runs the best offense.

That offense runs through Durant, who has finally been given his flowers as the best player in basketball. And if his Nets can win a ring this season, and maybe more in future seasons, maybe the conversation on Durant’s dominance will begin to extend beyond the scope of a single year.

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