Kevin Durant had a regular-season debut with the Rockets that he would want to forget. Durant faced his former team, the Thunder, on the night when they got their championship rings. And instead of ruining their party, the 37-year-old veteran made several errors that ended up costing them the game.
The Thunder won the game 125-124 in double overtime after Durant fouled out in the final seconds while sending Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to the free throw line. Hence, despite scoring 23 points with nine rebounds and three assists in the game, Durant came under a lot of criticism from NBA fans, and he also blamed himself for the loss.
Following the game, Durant spoke to NBA Insider Marc J. Spears for an exclusive interview with Andscape, during which he made some eye-catching comments about the Rockets being considered as title contenders this early in the season.
“I mean, I don’t even look at a title. It’s Game 1, bro. I just want to solidify our offense and defense even more,” Durant said. “We will know more about our team as the season progresses. But I’m not looking at championships or playoffs. It’s about Game 2, how we can be better.”
Durant is not saying that the Rockets cannot be title contenders, but rather that it is way too early to consider them title contenders when they haven’t even played enough games together to build the chemistry needed to win a championship.
The Rockets really missed their veteran point guard, Fred VanVleet, on opening night as his replacement, Reed Sheppard, seemingly struggled to find his rhythm in that position on opening night. He finished the game with nine points, two rebounds, and four assists while shooting while shooting 27.3% from the field.
Durant acknowledged that Fred VanVleet’s loss was major for the team, and his sacrifice of taking lesser money in his contract extension will not go unnoticed.
“He was excited to be a part of this,” Durant said about VanVleet. “He took less money to stay with the team. [He is a] veteran presence, a leader in the locker room who was going to have a lot of opportunities to showcase his game and have more space.”
“It’s tough for Freddy, but he’s a dog. He’s a grown man and was like, ‘Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m coming to work every day. I will be better soon.’ That is what his mentality is. He has to keep putting in that work.”
Naturally, after just one official game with the team, Durant feels that this team is far away from truly feeling like title contenders internally. He further narrates how it is important for the team to tune out the external noise instead of getting way ahead of themselves.
He highlighted that while talking about his own experience over the years in the league how he does not adhere to what people expect from him, but rather to what he expects from himself. While addressing whether he expects any of the teams he has played on to retire his jersey, Durant gave a clear answer.
“I used to care about being honored and revered by people,” he said. “That doesn’t matter. People are fickle. The perception of you goes up and down depending on what people feel. I’m not expecting anybody to do anything for me, regardless. I just got to put in work and see what happens.”
Therefore, the message from Durant for this team is that they need to tune out the external noise, focus on one game at a time, to eventually build a championship culture.
Right now, the Rockets need to figure out their point guard problem since VanVleet is out for the season and Sheppard is in the very nascent stages of his career. Just to clarify, Durant is not saying that Reed Sheppard is not the right guy for the team. But rather that the team should not fixate on one bad game.
Moreover, from his experience on several superteams, he knows that things can go wrong very quickly for even the best players out there, and it is best not to jump the gun on the expectations that the team has for itself. The Rockets can only become title contenders by building the chemistry and experience one game at a time.
