Kevin Durant’s coming out playoff game

On some nights, players are described as having scored a “quiet” 20 points. This usually means they hit some shots and contributed sufficiently to the game, but that didn’t change the course of the contest; they weren’t gamebreakers.
This is the complete antithesis of what occurred in Oklahoma City.
Kevin Durant’s 41 points in Game 5 were jet-engine-screaming, 11-year-old-girls-at-a-Justin-Bieber-concert loud. With his team down nine, and the fourth quarter winding past the halfway point, Durant saw the situation was calling for a hero, and he took over.
One thing he made abundantly clear: Durant was NOT about to let this series stretch to a Game 6.
What was so special about the performance wasn’t the 41 points, or even the fourth quarter explosion itself. It was seeing Durant demonstrating himself as a wise, mature-beyond-his-years player before our very eyes. He was aware of the stakes: if Denver won tonight, the Nuggets would have an opportunity to play at home in Game 6, and they would be dangerous molotov of confidence and desperation.
Oklahoma City’s confidence was visibly wavering. They had collapsed in the final seconds of Game 3. All the statistics and questions about teams who had never won a playoff series were swirling around their heads, and it was starting to get to the young team.
So Durant made like Woody Harrelson, and had to nut up or shut up.
He chose to nut up, demonstrating a sense of all the over-used cliches that are so deservedly bestowed upon Kobe Bryant. One has to wonder how much good leading the USA national team to a World Basketball Championship over the summer did for Durant’s maturation, because, as he took an entire franchise upon his slender 22-year-old shoulders, it felt as natural as breathing.
Durant started elevating for jumpshot after unguardable jumpshot, pumping his fist after every basket, and gifting energy and confidence into the young Thunder, who followed his lead on offense, and chipped in an incredible six-minute effort on defense, propelling themselves into the second round for the first time since the move to Oklahoma City.
Welcome to the postseason, we’ve been expecting you.