Less than an hour before the Team USA men's basketball squad made their Paris Olympics debut, head coach Steve Kerr got some great news from the medical staff… Kevin Durant, the all-time leading scorer in USA Basketball history, was cleared to return to action after a month of working his way back. Durant had been dealing with a nagging calf injury, and Kerr had remained careful throughout the summer, keeping KD sidelined for all five of Team USA's pre-Olympics tune-up games. But if you hadn't been paying attention over the past few weeks and only tuned in on Sunday morning, you would've had no clue that Durant had missed any time.
In just seventeen minutes of action, Kevin Durant scored a game-high 23 points in Team USA's 110-84 win over Serbia. But Durant's point total wasn't the impressive part of his performance. It was how effortlessly he scored those 23 points. KD made his first eight shots of the game, including a perfect 5-for-5 from three-point range and a falling out of bounds fadeaway at the buzzer that pushed Team USA's halftime lead to nine.
After the game, LeBron James spoke highly about his NBA rival, noting that it's great to be on the same side as the 8th-leading scorer in league history.
Perhaps the only person who was happier than LeBron James to be on Kevin Durant's side again was Steve Kerr, who won two titles in three seasons coaching Durant with the Golden State Warriors. Kerr knows firsthand what it's like to reintegrate Kevin Durant after a return from injury.
“Maybe more than any player I've ever been around, when he comes back from a long absence, you don't notice it,” Kerr said after the game, according to Duane Rankin of AZ Central.
So how exactly did Kevin Durant manage to look so crisp despite missing out on a month of Team USA practices?
“I've been playing ball my whole life, so I simplified it,” Durant noted following his first 5-on-5 action since April, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. “And when the ball touched my hand, it was be aggressive.”
Not a bad gameplan, if you ask me.
Kevin Durant and Steve Kerr show love for LeBron James in his Team USA return
In a less dramatic but much longer awaited return, LeBron James played in the Summer Olympics for the first time since he helped lead Team USA to Gold in London in 2012. Durant, who was on that 2012 team, was happy to have his former teammate back on the hunt for another Gold Medal.
“I'm so grateful to have him back,” Durant said following James' 21 point performance on Sunday. “We missed him the last two Olympics. He puts fear in the other team. I think that goes a long way.”
Steve Kerr, who is 3-1 in his career against LeBron James in the NBA Finals, noted how impactful the 39-year-old has been.
“LeBron puts his imprint on the game in so many different ways,” Kerr said. “It's not just his skill and his strength and his size, but it's his emotion, his confidence. Just the way he infuses our team with energy and confidence at 39 is just amazing.”
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