Isiah Thomas doesn’t have a whole lot of love for his great rival, Michael Jordan, and he recently fired off quite the hot take about him. Thomas claimed that the Chicago Bulls would have still won six titles if Jordan had been replaced with Kevin Durant, but not many agreed with him. We can now add NBA analyst Max Kellerman to that list, as he dismissed the Hall of Famer’s claim on his Game Over podcast.
“They wouldn’t have six, but they would have a handful,” Kellerman said. “I don’t think they have as many… To Michael Jordan’s point, Kevin Durant would not exist as the kind of player that he is now had he played then. First of all, if you’re seven feet tall, they’re going to ask you to do different things then than they let you do now.
“Secondly, no one’s going to let you shoot from three as much as they did post-Steph Curry,” Kellerman continued. “As a result, his three is not going to be as sweet. Now, he’d be better at certain other things…. Of course, if you put someone with Scottie Pippen, and Horace Grant, and Phil Jackson, and later Dennis Rodman, and he’s a super great player, they will win some championships.
“I don’t think they go six for six, but I think they win some,” Kellerman added.
The Jordan point Kellerman referred to was that there is no GOAT in basketball.
“There’s no such thing as a GOAT, not to me,” Jordan said. “We’re all built from the ones before us. Every generation learns from the last and pushes the game forward. So to say one is better than the other, that’s not really right.”
The point is that Durant, who has averaged 27.1 points, 6.9 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.0 steals, and 1.1 blocks per game for his career, would be a different player if he were entering the NBA in the 1980s. The Houston Rockets superstar wouldn’t be playing the way we see him play today.
Durant would still be a great player, no doubt, but it’s hard to see him come away with six championships like Jordan did. The 16-time All-Star has had talented supporting casts for much of his career, but has only won two titles. Those also came during his stint with the Golden State Warriors, when the odds were heavily stacked in their favor.
Durant would have been able to win titles with those great Bulls teams, but six seems a bit much. Even he himself might agree. Durant has called Jordan the perfect basketball player. He also believes the Bulls icon is bigger than the game.
Jordan hit incredible heights during his stint with the Bulls. He led the team to three-peats from 1991 to 1993 and then from 1996 to 1998. To go with the six titles, Jordan won six Finals MVPs, five MVPs, one DPOY, and 10 scoring titles. That’s an incredible resume, and it explains why Durant holds him in such high regard.
