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Kevin Durant has played a large role in keeping the ship afloat with Golden State Warriors teammates Stephen Curry and Draymond Green sitting the last couple of weeks.
While a 23-point loss to the Milwaukee Bucks brought insult to injury, as the Warriors lost Curry to a groin injury, the team was able to rebound with a win over the Brooklyn Nets — all before a nightmarish stretch saw them lose four of five games as the team struggled to adapt.
The problem lingered, as a loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder compiled a four-game skid — the longest in Steve Kerr's tenure.
Durant, who played well but not excellent during that losing streak, remembers how he was able to snap out of that funk.
“Portland got us started,” Durant told Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “Because they played back in the pick-and-roll. I was able to get some space.”
“The previous four games (before Portland), there was a lot of help, but it was just, well, sometimes there was help and sometimes there wasn’t and it kind of threw me off a bit, had me forcing and pressing things. Especially since we weren’t making shots.
“Everything just kind of compounds itself. You can’t make a shot, you feel like there’s a lot of help, you don’t know where the help is going to come from. My mind was scrambled. I’ve slowed down a bit since that Portland game. We got some stops, they played back in the pick-and-roll and I got going.”
Durant has scored 176 points in the last four games, starting with the Trail Blazers — 100 of them in the last two games alone. He's shooting a blistering 54 percent throughout those games, despite getting the bulk of playmaking duties and some of the defensive load with Green out with a toe injury.
The game has surely slowed down for Kevin Durant, who has now climbed to the second spot on the scoring leader's ladder with 30.1 points per game, second only to former teammate James Harden of the Houston Rockets.
