The Kind Of Guy You Want On Your Team

As Bill Simmons spends 700 pages explaining in “The Book of Basketball,” there can be a difference between being a good NBA player and being a foxhole player — the kind of guy you want to go to war with.

Sunday night, Kevin Durant had one of the worst games of his career. He went 4 for 16 and had five turnovers in a 121-101 loss at Indiana. But that’s not the point.

As you might expect, he bounced back ever so slightly Monday against San Antonio, going 15 of 24 and 14 of 15 while scoring 45 points (the Thunder still lost). But that’s not the point, either.

The point is what Durant did in between those two games. After the loss to Indiana, according to The Associated Press, Durant said:

Tonight was a disgrace to how we play and the game of basketball, how we came out, and that starts with me. I apologize to all the fans, all my teammates that I came out like that, and it translated to my team.”

Then he goes out and scores 45 points the next night. Now THAT is somebody you want to go to war with.