The obvious played out Wednesday night in Kevin Durant’s glittering debut as a member of the Phoenix Suns, but the obvious doesn’t always come to play with superteams, so let’s embrace it.
This Suns team, with Durant at its helm, is going to be an absolute force by the time the playoffs roll around. They’re Western Conference favorites. Finals contenders. A sure-thing top-three NBA team in the making, even if they’re coming together at a weirdly late time in the regular season.
Yes, a 105-91 win over the Charlotte Hornets is far from a top-tier test. Charlotte was a bad basketball team even before LaMelo Ball fractured his ankle this week and saw his season come to an end. And even though Phoenix only gave us a 27-minute sample size of KD-as-Sun what we did see was scary for every other NBA team still aspiring to become NBA champions this year.
Durant, who’d been sidelined with an MCL sprain since Jan. 8, looked incredible. He was with Brooklyn then, he’s with Phoenix now, but little else has changed. Rust and a new part of the country didn’t scramble any of his basketball gifts.
Durant missed his first shot — then the flashes of just how seamlessly he could integrate into this team unfurled.
There was Durant, with a driving layup off a pass from new teammate Chris Paul, for the first two points of his Suns career. There was Durant, blocking a shot on defense, then finding the ball on the other side of the floor and sinking a silky three, a sequence that — the obvious again — flashed just how great he is, and will be, with his new team.
Over the course of the game, Durant made 10 of his 15 shots. He scored 23 points. He pulled down six rebounds. He blocked two shots. He looked like he’d been playing without a hitch for months. All in just under 27 minutes on the floor.
Beyond that, it was easy to peer into a rather bad basketball game and see how a rather transcendent player has already convinced rival general managers and Las Vegas that Phoenix is a contender, today. How-will-it-all-come-together concerns be…
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