NBA Lookahead: Kevin Durant joins an (overly) exclusive club as All-Star weekend arrives

New York Times

13-02-2025

Every Thursday, I'll be taking you through the big story heading into the weekend. Or maybe the weirdest story? Or maybe just something that makes me laugh and I think will make you laugh too. Essentially, if you're subscribed to The Bounce and reading every day, we're going to have the same fun here as we do in that space.
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On top of that, I've culled the weekend schedule for you to know what to pay attention to. Weird bad streaks against teams? Beefs you need to track? Just fun games with matchups you may not have known were happening? We've got that for you. On top of that, we'll have a good old-fashioned Throwback Thursday to hit you with that feel-good nostalgia.
Let's have fun by starting with how we should talk about milestones.
Earlier this week, Kevin Durant passed 30,000 career points. Only eight players in NBA history have managed to make it into this club, as Durant joined Wilt Chamberlain, Dirk Nowitzki, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James. It speaks to the unreal production Durant has managed during his 18-year career. That's especially true when you realize he missed 3/4 of the 2014-15 season, the entirety of the 2019-20 season and big chunks of the next three seasons after that. If he doesn't have those big injuries, we're probably talking about how Durant has a chance to unseat LeBron on the all-time scoring list.
Here's the problem with all of this. He's not the eighth person to reach 30,000 points. He also broke the 30,000-point threshold years ago, so we're late. Are you a little confused by the contradicting statements? Well, that's because we don't look at any of this properly. There are a couple of things we should do when tracking and discussing milestones:
How would it change things? If we just use regular-season numbers, Durant became the ninth player (not the eighth) to crack 30,000. Julius Erving, one of the most prolific stars of the 1970s and '80s, would already be included in that list above.
If we include the ABA while also combining the regular-season and playoff numbers, then we actually have 17 players who've cracked 30,000 points. John Havlicek, James Harden, Carmelo Anthony, Dan Issel, Hakeem Olajuwon, Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal, Moses Malone and Dr. J would all be added to the list. Durant would have actually surpassed 35,000 points for his career after Wednesday night's game. It would also mean LeBron is not far away from breaking 50,000 points for his career. If we're going to talk about the history of the league and where players rank, then we should include the entire history.
The ABA matters. The playoffs really matter. And both should be added to the NBA's record books to make sure there's even more emphasis on being good enough to get to the postseason and perform.
Do you plan out your weekend around your sports-viewing schedule? You're not alone. Are you the type to want to look like a sports savant by going to your local sports bar, suggesting a game to put on and then reveling in the praise from fellow patrons you'll get for knowing what to watch? You're home. Are you the type to just fly by the seat of your pants and wing it last minute when you remember games are on? Bookmark this post and refer to it later! These are the best games to pay attention to this weekend.
(All times Eastern)
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Oklahoma City Thunder at Minnesota Timberwolves, 8:30 p.m. on TNT: The Wolves just had an embarrassing home loss to a Milwaukee Bucks team missing Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard. Now, the Thunder are in town. The Wolves might want to take this game more seriously.
Rising Stars Challenge, 9:15 p.m. on TNT: Here are the three matchups in the recently implemented tournament format for the Rising Stars Challenge.
All-Star Saturday Night, 8 p.m. on TNT: We've got the Skills Challenge, 3-Point Contest and Dunk Contest!
2025 NBA All-Star Game, 8:20 p.m. on TNT: The NBA debuts the new All-Star tournament format to try to inject some life and competition. Reminder of the rosters:
The first game will be Kenny's Young Stars against Chuck's Global Stars. Then, Shaq's OGs will face Candace's Rising Stars (winner of Friday night). The two winners of those games will face off to … win the All-Star Game? It's a little confusing, but we'll see how it goes.
Wednesday was the 25th anniversary of the Vince Carter dunk contest in Oakland. The NBA had spiked the dunk contest for a couple of years, having last seen it in 1997 when Kobe Bryant took home the title. By then, the league felt the event was losing its luster. Maybe, on some level, it was. The stars of the league weren't doing the dunk contest anymore. While Kobe eventually became one of the biggest names in sports history, he was just a rookie out of high school with a lot of buzz in 1997.
The year 2000 was supposed to be different, though. Carter didn't get a chance to participate in any dunk contest as a rookie because he entered the league during the lockout-truncated season of 1998-99. We didn't have the regular All-Star festivities that year as the NBA was trying to fit a 50-game campaign into a short amount of time. After Carter had built a ridiculous amount of hype around his rookie season, bringing the contest back in 2000 was a no-brainer for the league. The field was stacked with Tracy McGrady, Steve Francis, Ricky Davis, Jerry Stackhouse and Larry Hughes also participating.
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While McGrady, Francis and Davis were legendary high-flyers in their own right, everybody was there to see Carter. Vinsanity drew on so many ideas of creativity to bring the dunk contest to its peak fervor while also bringing it to a screeching halt. If nobody knew how to react to what Carter was doing, that loss of self-control and fully functioning motor skills would be the ultimate appreciation of his aerial assault on the rim. Every dunk by Carter that night was legendary.
That first dunk was unreal. We didn't know what he was going to do. As he approached the runway, we still didn't realize what he was unleashing. He did a 360 'the wrong way.' He added a windmill to it. We saw Carter almost wait for gravity to catch up, like a boxer taunting an overmatched opponent and daring him to throw a punch while his hands are down.
Carter had so much adrenaline and energy coursing through his veins that he kept hopping after he landed the dunk. It was an easy 50 for the score. It set the tone for everything else, and we all knew anything short of a meteor hitting the earth wasn't going to stop him from being crowned the dunk champ.
On the surface, the second dunk looked a lot like the first dunk. He spun a similar way as the first dunk. He used the windmill. But Carter's approach from behind the baseline changes the entire physics of this attempt. He didn't have a big run-up to gain momentum to launch. He essentially takes three, maybe three and a half steps, before catapulting himself into the air. That's not 25 feet of runway. That's a rocket blasting straight up into the sky.
He showed the height of the dunk. I spoke to Carter about 10 years ago about this contest, and he told me he was looking to show the vertical and the height with this version of the dunk. Mission accomplished.
Isaiah Rider wasn't the first person to do the through-the-legs dunk, a.k.a. the East Bay Funk Dunk. But he was the one who popularized it in the '90s when he was battling it out with Harold Miner for dunk supremacy. Kobe won the 1997 contest with his version of it. Nobody had gone off the bounce to catch the ball in the air, put it between their legs and rip the ball through the rim. Carter used his teammate and dunk contest competitor McGrady to bounce the ball. His cousin needed a couple tries to get the right height on the bounce.
Even then, it was a little lower than Carter wanted. He still managed to pull off a dunk that shattered our minds. We didn't live in a time of social media and professional dunkers then. We lived in a time of Vinsanity taking form in front of our eyes.
This is my favorite dunk for a couple reasons. 1) Who thinks to even attempt this? This probably wasn't the first time it was done, but it was the first time it was done on this stage. Carter had to make sure his arm was dry enough to not slip off the rim and hurt himself. It was maybe the only time of the night Carter concerned himself with gravity. 2) When I spoke to Carter a decade ago, he said his goal for this particular dunk was to change the energy in the building. Everybody had been going nuts.
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He wanted everybody to be silent. He wanted to dumbfound the entire arena that was dying to explode with every dunk of his. The audacity to want to suck the air out of a building you're trying to work into a frenzy. That's not just dunking or showmanship. That's art. Every reaction to the Elbow Dunk is perfect.
• You can hear Danny Ainge giggle on the broadcast.
• Kenny Smith asks for a timeout as O'Neal is bewildered.
• Steve Francis is wondering if he even gets second place for this effort or if Carter gets all placements in the competition.
• Jason Kidd covers his face, almost in embarrassment for the futility of Sir Isaac Newton's infamous law.
• Isiah Thomas is celebrating profusely. He was a contest judge!
Michael Keaton was also in the crowd, and his face says it all:
pic.twitter.com/OwD88cb3AG
— Zach Harper (@talkhoops) September 21, 2019
We were all just trying to process what we just saw.
The last dunk wasn't the cleanest free-throw line dunk we've ever seen. He attempted to go with two hands from the free-throw line, which is far different and more difficult than what we're used to seeing. Most dunkers are stretching as far as they can with their one arm extended, opting for the lengthening of their leap beyond comprehension. Carter went with two hands, and it cost him roughly one step inside the free-throw line. It wasn't the ending we'd hoped for, but the night was so absurd that it didn't matter.
We've rarely approached that magic and hype since. Jason Richardson and Desmond Mason gave us a legendary duel. Dwight Howard provided us fun moments. In 2015, Zach LaVine took it to a new level before giving us the most legendary dunk contest showdown ever against Aaron Gordon in 2016. Even with all of the impressive exploits, I just don't see how we'll ever reach this hype and delivery again, mostly because the stars of today aren't brave enough to attempt it in the first place. That's something Carter never worried about.