Even though he only spent one season on the Forty Acres, you can’t have a conversation about the greatest Texas Longhorns of all time and not include Kevin Durant.
Coming out of high school, Durant was the 2006 McDonald’s All-American game MVP and widely regarded as one of the top two prospects in the country alongside Ohio State Buckeye commit Greg Oden. Durant held offers from all of the major blue bloods, before ultimately choosing the Longhorns as he wanted to create his own path.
In his lone season in Austin, Durant averaged 25.8 ppg, 11.1 rpg and 1.3apg and led Texas to a four-seed in the 2007 NCAA Tournament. Durant became the first freshman to win any national Player of the Year awards as he won both the John R. Wooden Award and Naismith College Player of the Year as well as a handful of others.
Durant was selected No. 2 overall by the Seattle SuperSonics in the 2007 NBA draft and the rest is history. The 6’11 sniper is one of the most accomplished athletes of this generation with a laundry list of accolades including being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary team, two-time champion, two-time Finals MVP, 14-time All-Star, two-time All-Star Game MVP, 2013-14 MVP, 10-time All-NBA, four-time scoring leader and the 2007-08 Rookie of the Year. You can’t tell the full story of the NBA and not include Kevin Durant.
As we are in the midst of the dog days of summer, ESPN has released the top 100 athletes of this century to pass the time. Durant enters the rankings at No. 39 behind MLB all-time Home Run leader Barry Bonds. Tim MacMahon, an NBA expert for ESPN makes the case for KD saying,
“I’m Kevin Durant. You know who I am. Y’all know who I am.” That was Durant’s conclusion to a lengthy answer about pesky Patrick Beverley’s defense against him (with a whole lot of help, as Durant noted) early in a 2019 playoff series. Durant’s point: He had proved himself as one of the best scorers to ever play the game, a four-time scoring champion who had won the previous two NBA Finals MVPs, a blend of size and skill that had never been seen before. Then he averaged 41.5 points the rest of that series as the Warriors finished off the Clippers. As he has bounced from team to team, there has been one constant about KD’s identity: When he’s healthy, he has always been impossible to guard.”