Kevin Durant may have left the Phoenix Suns for the Houston Rockets this season – so that the window in the valley has been put to an end – but that does not mean that fans wonder what exactly went wrong. The combination of themselves, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal – plus some championship -winning head coaches – looked too good to fail.
In reality, the lack of depth and full contempt for defending – with a healthy sprinkling of failure to take care of the basketball – the title ambitions before they actually started. Yet we will always start 8-1 with the 2024-25 season.
Former durant teammates reveal that he was frustrated by lack of use.
A player who goes into the folklore of Suns is Vasilije Micic, but not for the reasons you would think. He only appeared once in five games for the franchise that had come from the Charlotte Hornets and immediately let walk because the team was in the second apron at that time. Ironically, Micic had a nice Eurobasket for Serbia and could have been useful for this group.
The 31-year-old was on “The chat of the Xs & O“Podcast recently and revealed that durant was surprised how little he was used by the Suns. You can fully view the interview below – and although we have no reason to doubt this, because he has nothing to win because he is probably going back to Europe – it is a strange attitude to take from Durant as true.
Was it not the whole point to work with Booker, so that he should not do everything alone? You would also be difficult to find a star that is as willing as Booker to change how he played to house durant, often at the expense of his own figures. It will not surprise you to discover that – as per Glass – Durant (28.3 percent) only booked booker (30.6) in use.
That figure represented the 95th percentile for Durant, which means that he was one of the highest use of boys throughout the NBA. Number three in Phoenix behind him? Beal at 22.1 percent. Then the Center Jusuf Nurkic came to 18.4 percent and he did not go through the entire season. The point is that Durant saw the ball a lot, and the attacking sets were designed with his incredible talents in mind.
Returning to the previous season because Durant’s number remained almost the same (28.4 percent) and again followed Booker’s (31.2), although he played more games in seven. Perhaps the most damn of all, is the fact that Durant led the Suns easily in both how many of his 2-Pointers came off (37 percent, 94th percentile) and 3-Pointers (89 percent, 91st percentile), per Glass.
Durant’s teammates found him a lot and he rewarded the team by stacking points. He also took most midrange attempts from each player – literally ranking in the 100th percentile over that one – at a time when there is a shot that everyone has moved from. So the 36-year-old was surrendered and was allowed to make the shots he wanted, and it ended in a 36-win season.
It is not as if Micic tries to put Durant here in trouble here and he remains loved by so many fans in the valley, but it is difficult to know how much more or other he could have been used. This was still the book of Booker – whether he liked it or not – and despite that fact could do a lot with the ball he wanted. It is hard to see that it is different for him in Houston.
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