Kevin Durant

Kevin Wayne Durant was born on September 29, 1988, in Washington, D.C. — one of the greatest basketball players to ever live. Durant grew up in Prince George's County, Maryland and Seat Pleasant, and played college basketball at the University of Texas, where he averaged 25.8 points, 11.1 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks as the consensus National Player of the Year in 2006-07, becoming the first freshman to win the award. The Seattle SuperSonics selected him second overall in the 2007 NBA Draft — one pick behind Greg Oden in one of the most historically lopsided draft decisions. Durant's nine seasons in Seattle/Oklahoma City (2007-2016) established him as one of the most offensively gifted players in NBA history. In OKC, he formed a devastating partnership with Russell Westbrook that brought the Thunder to the 2012 NBA Finals and produced four consecutive scoring titles (2010-2014). His 2013-14 MVP season — in which he averaged 32.0 points, 7.4 rebounds, and 5.5 assists — remains one of the greatest individual campaigns in the sport's history. His speech calling his mother "the real MVP" became one of basketball's most celebrated moments. Durant left OKC for Golden State in 2016, where he won two NBA Championships (2017, 2018) and two Finals MVPs before moves to Brooklyn and then Phoenix. His career arc — four scoring titles, an MVP, two championships, 13 All-Star selections, and a place among the top three offensive players in NBA history — is almost incomprehensible in scope. For Oklahoma City, Durant remains the defining player of the franchise's identity: the face of the rebuild, the superstar who put OKC basketball on the global map, and the standard against which every Thunder player since has been measured.