Kevin Durant is mightily struggling in the 2022 NBA playoffs, unable to make a big impact on his Brooklyn Nets, who have looked lost against the Boston Celtics’ suffocating defense. KD has been the primary victim of this defense, as his numbers have been very poor knowing his standards, which means the C’s are doing a terrific job stopping him.
He’s only shooting 36% from the field against the Celtics, who are 3-0 headed to Monday’s game, where the Nets expect to have Ben Simmons on the court for the first time this season.
Simmons’ return to action could help the Nets, but in order to pull off the miracle, Steve Nash and co. need the best version of Kevin Durant. The 2x NBA champion is having a difficult first-round series, which has raised a lot of eyebrows around the league. Fans and analysts have attacked him and recently one Redditor compared KD’s first three games against the Celtics to LeBron James in the 2011 NBA Finals. Surprisingly, the King had better numbers during that span than KD has now.
LeBron in the first 3 games of the 2011 finals vs. KD in the first 3 games of the 2022 first round.
Bron: 20/7/6 on 62% TS.
KD: 22/4/5 on 52% TS.
KD also averaging 5.6 TOs compared to LeBron’s 3.3 TOs a game.
It’s interesting to see that Durant is getting stopped during the first season of the playoffs, and is having a worse series than LeBron had in the Finals. Of course, the King wasn’t 33 during that moment, but he had a bad series against the Dallas Mavericks that would upset the Miami Heat in six games.
The Durant comparison has always been LeBron and it’s interesting to see that the Los Angeles Lakers superstar posted better numbers than Durant during the worst series he had in his career.
KD has the responsibility of leading his team to the promised land. The time is now for him to show what he’s made of or have a worse fate than LeBron last season, where he was eliminated by the Phoenix Suns 4-2.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference
