Kevin Durant is one of the league’s most prolific scorers and has been for the majority of his 10 year NBA career. Durant’s only season in which he averaged fewer than 25 points per game was his rookie season, when he still managed 20.3 points per game. It’s rare for a player to come straight out of college and put up that kind of production, but Durant has always been an other worldly scoring talent.
It should come as no surprise that, considering Durant’s age, on of his favorite players growing up was Kobe Bryant. So when an 18-year-old Durant got the chance to meet Kobe at a USA Basketball event, he was in awe that the legend was aware of him and knew his name.
Durant told that story during a recent recording of First We Feast’s “Hot Ones,” in which guests eat chicken wings with various hot sauces on them and answer questions and tell stories. Durant was asked about a picture of him and Kobe from an old Instagram post, and Durant explained how that meeting was inspirational for him and the lesson he learned from Bryant (28:48 of the below video).
“Yeah that was the first time. I don’t remember the conversation, but I remember that I was shaking. Kobe is a god to me, basketball-wise. To see him actually know my name at that time, I was 18, it was surreal.”
Did you learn anything from him?
“Yeah, every time you touch the ball, shoot it.”
There are a couple things here. First, Durant noting that Kobe is that dude to him isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s further evidence that guys around the league love Kobe as a ball player and respect him as much as anyone. Second, while it was a bit tongue in cheek, I absolutely believe that Kobe was telling a young KD to shoot the ball more and take advantage of his incredible abilities.
It’s incredibly Kobe advice — a reminder that the season Kobe averaged 35.4 per game his usage rate was an insane 38.7 percent — and while Durant has been an incredibly efficient scorer and plays on one of the league’s most unselfish teams in the league, he can, and sometimes does, completely take over games when he’s in that zone. In those moments, he forces everyone else to defer to him and carries the load, much like Kobe in his post-Shaq years.
