Kevin Durant, the 2013-14 MVP and Thunder superstar, will be a free agent at the end of this season. His free agency will generate LeBron James-esque levels of scrutiny, and every team in the league will try to get him. Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony looks like he's trying harder than most, however.
"I know for a fact that Carmelo Anthony has been and will continue to recruit Kevin Durant until the cows come home," ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith said on First Take, via Pro Basketball Talk. "I'm also hearing that Kevin Durant is giving the New York Knicks consideration."
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Durant's endorsement of former teammate Derek Fisher as head coach of the Knicks could be used as potential evidence of his interest in heading to New York. It's unclear if Oklahoma City's inability to coax another former teammate, Kevin Ollie, to coach the team once they fired Scott Brooks will affect his decision this summer. Ollie is currently coaching the UConn Huskies, and the Thunder eventually hired Florida coach Billy Donovan to take the reins.
Durant has averaged 27.3 points in his career, and in his MVP campaign upped that to 32. He has won four of the last five scoring titles; he was barley nudged out by Carmelo Anthony in the 2012-13 season. Mixing Durant and Anthony into the same offense could be an awkward fit, however. Both players are volume scorers that man the same position; both would be high-end stretch-fours, but it's unlikely ownership would want such expensive commodities taking a power forward banging on a nightly basis.
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Also, the Knicks just drafted Kristaps Porzingis, a Latvian teenager whose game has been compared to Durant's, to be a long-range sniper at power forward. The offensive upside of that trio is almost unlimited, but none of them are creators for other players. Durant and Anthony have co-existed well on previous U.S. Olympic teams, but the fit may not be the same on an NBA court.
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