Balls Out Guest Of the Day: Tom Scharpling Demands That You Exalt Kevin Durant

Throughout my life I have always gravitated toward the underdog. If there was an opportunity to root for any sort of lesser/fringy/flawed character over a clear-cut winner/dominator, you could bet the farm which side I would fall on. Hoover is my favorite character in Animal House—with Stork a close second! The Volcano Suns are vastly superior to Mission of Burma in my book. And the list of basketball players who I have felt an emotional connection to looks like a grown-up version of the Bad News Bears: John Starks, Ben Wallace, Latrell Sprewell, Michael Finley, Robert Pack, Gilbert Arenas...Robert Pack?! Seriously? What is wrong with me?!

So it surprises me that Kevin Durant is now on that list. He’s clearly not like the others who have captured my fancy, with his back-to-back scoring titles and being the next stage in the evolution of The Great NBA Player—you see so many past greats reflected in him, from Baylor to Gervin to Jordan to even Garnett, though never before in this configuration!—but the guy speaks to me. If I was starting a team I would pick him as the foundation without blinking. And in my heart of hearts I feel he is the best player in the game.

So it’s strange to be rooting for such a clear star. But when I look at how Durant is perceived by a shocking amount of people, it makes perfect sense. When I spout off about Durant to friends, it feels like I’m up to something, trying to get them to take the bait. Now I know how Ron Paul supporters must feel.

I wasn’t thrown when all the MVP talk shifted to Derrick Rose considering the year that the Bulls put together. But to see LeBron James ranked miles ahead of him in the final tally? The Heat won just eleven fewer games last season, when it was basically Wade playing one-on-five, before the addition of The Chosen One and the 6-foot-11 pile of soft serve ice cream that is Chris Bosh.

Awards are never the way to properly gauge these things; they’re good for little more than making sure people keep arguing about Bob McAdoo’s exclusion from the NBA’s Top 50. And the concept of "respect" isn’t much more reliable. Respect is a thing that is not always written out or openly declared—it often reverberates beneath the surface and only becomes plainly spoken after the games are over and the competition is in the rearview mirror. So if he’s not getting enough respect, that’s kinda just how it is. But there’s a larger sense of neglect going on here insofar as Durant goes. Something is up. I mean, the guy doesn’t even have a valid nickname (I refuse to acknowledge "Durantula", which is a handle that only diminishes us all).

There are a few reasons why KD might not be as marketable to the league as guys who are currently accomplishing a whole lot less: he plays for a team that gets mistook by non-diehards as an expansion hockey team, he is so unexcitable that he makes Tim Duncan look like Bobcat Goldthwait, and—to be fair—he hasn’t won anything yet. But neither has Dwight Howard or LeBron James or most of the guys who people talk about more than the youngest scoring champ in NBA history.

The most shocking piece of this conundrum—why isn’t everybody seeing what I’m seeing?!—isn’t that The People don’t think that Kevin Durant is the best player in the league. The part that throws me is that there are players ON THE OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER who don’t feel he’s the best player ON THEIR OWN TEAM. Actually just one player: Russell Westbrook.

I guess it makes sense. A young guy as good as Westbrook climbing the ladder each year has no reason to believe that he’s not the secret star of this whole thing (and herein is the downside of having a team populated with just young guys—a veteran presence would sit Westbrook down and tell him How It Is And How It Is Going To Be). And since Durant isn’t standing up to him, then why stop?

It seemed like a sense of balance was settling in after Durant shook off Westbrook’s one-man flameout in Game Four of the Thunder-Nuggets series two nights later with the kind of across-the-board dominant performance that makes stars into superstars. Plus, he did it with a new element in the mix—anger. His understated demeanor was replaced by someone who was straight-up mad at the situation and unwilling to let the stupidity go one game longer.

But watching the Westbrook Show in game three of the Thunder-Grizzlies series made me queasy; not only did Westbrook not learn his role on the team, he thought he could put on a solo show that would make everybody forget about his past sins. But the shots didn’t go down. So he kept shooting. And missing. And shooting. And missing. Westbrook was shaking off a wide-open Durant time and time again, preferring to just drive into the overstacked mass that is the Grizz front line. By the time Durant started getting the ball, he was so out of sorts that his shots weren’t dropping anymore. And the double-digit Thunder lead slowly and sadly turned into a Memphis win in OT.

I have no idea why Durant isn’t standing up to Westbrook. I can only speculate that on some level he feels that everything else is ultimately secondary to the game itself. He’s not wrong—after all, everybody is a fan of music, but only assholes are fans of the music business. But he’s not right, either. No matter how much he keeps his head down and just PLAYS—to the extent where he’s the first player of color in ages to get the crypto-racist term "gym rat" favorably tossed his way—the unfortunate and frustrating part of the equation is not going to go away no matter how many points you score.

Westbrook needs to wrap his head around the team concept sooner than later for a few reasons. The first being that any squad with him and Durant playing at their best is automatically one of the best in the game. But the biggest might be that while there is only one Durant—a frighteningly multi-dimensional player who can wreak havoc at just about any spot on the floor and from whom we have yet to see at his very best!—there are always a few guys like Westbrook kicking around. And those flashy point guards get traded when it’s time to actually win—just ask Jason Williams.

Hopefully Westbrook gets with the program and realizes that while he’s truly great, he’s sharing the ball with a once-a-generation player, and that might just be how it goes when you’re trying to win it all. The other side of the coin is ugly—there are plenty of dominant offensive-minded guards on losing teams, scoring empty point after empty point to the benefit of nobody outside of the fantasy sports player.

And here’s to Durant realizing that there’s nothing wrong with getting a little loud and declaring yourself The Man. Players have done it throughout the history of the NBA—at one point Cedric Ceballos nicknamed himself ’The ’Chise’! (As in ’The Franchise’! And he was just okay! Which is why he was another one of my favorites!) With his current temperament he’s more likely to consider wearing a basketball rim around his neck to trick Westbrook into throwing the ball his way, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Nobody wants to see Durant and Westbrook devolve into a modern version of the late-90’s T-Wolves, with Marbury stewing about how KG was king of the castle until he found himself traded again and again and again until he was riding the bench for the Knicks while Garnett was getting his ring.

In retrospect, maybe my appreciation for Durant ultimately has to do with the frustration of feeling that he’s under-appreciated. And I know I’m not alone—don’t we all sometimes feel like we’re surrounded by a bunch of Russell Westbrooks who refuse to acknowledge that, hey, we’re good too! I guess all I want is a hug. Two hugs, actually. One for me and one for Kevin Durant. And he can have his first.

—Tom Scharpling

Tom Scharpling is the host of The Best Show On WFMU, which can be heard every Tuesday night on WFMU. He also writes for television and is developing two shows with Comedy Central as you read this. Click here to follow him on Twitter.