Since Luka Doncic has been in the league, Kevin Durant has been very complimentary towards him on several occasions. However, it would seem that the Slim Reaper was not always sincere… He notably implied that he had lied, on one occasion.
From his rookie season in 2018-19, Luka Doncic showed everyone that he was not a young player like the others. It didn’t take long for him to put the basketball world at his feet, impressing with his total mastery of the game despite his below average athleticism. Acclaim from his peers therefore quickly multiplied, including from none other than Kevin Durant in November 2018:
I love her so much. We can say that he has already played professional basketball. They have a great guy who can take this franchise forward into the future.
A true student of the game, the Slim Reaper would therefore have immediately appreciated the way in which the No. 77 dominated the competition. Well, that’s what we thought at the time…because as the Nets superstar recently revealed, that wouldn’t be exactly what happened. During a recent interview with Boardroom , a site of which he is one of the co-creators, KD admitted that he had not been thrilled by what he saw from the Mavs player, at the start:
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Durant not convinced by Luka Doncic at first
He plays so slow… it’s difficult because he goes from slow to fast so easily and he’s so fluid doing that. I like his game. At first I didn’t like him when he came to the league because I thought all he did was stepback three point shots and they were very short.
Kevin Durant confesses his…about Luka Doncic!
He was shooting 27%-30% from the three-point line early on. I was like, “Is this the one everyone is talking about? »
But I think they beat us by 40 points when I was at Golden State (126-91 with a triple-double from Doncic, editor’s note). He was controlling every possession and then I was like, ‘Yeah, he’s good. His game started to pick up steam.
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It is true that not being the fastest player there is (far from it), Halleluka had something to disconcert in his debut, especially since he sometimes took a lot of shots compared to his performance.
However, today we are talking about the best scorer in the league with 33 units per game, and who has been playing almost triple-double for a few seasons. It’s simple, the Slovenian is in the Top 5 players in the league and that does not really suffer from dispute. With Ja Morant or Zion Williamson , he certainly embodies the future of the big league and when we see what it looks like for the moment, there is reason to be optimistic.
Contrary to what he had claimed a few years ago, Kevin Durant had not immediately fallen in love with Luka Doncic. Suffice to say that four years later, things have however changed since El Matador is acclaimed by the basketball world.