KEVIN DURANT’S REVENGE: LAST ONE STANDING IN A CHAOTIC NBA

Quieting haters who’ve dogged him for years, Durant is painting an all-time inspirational portrait that could lead to a one-man championship in a league marred by injuries and non-stop drama

     Don’t tell him. He might glare at you and snarl, then ask if you’re posing ‘‘a real question.’’ So let’s not suggest to Kevin Durant that he already has won his war, the most meaningful prize in his vast and oddly complicated life.

     The inscription: THE BADASS WHO FINALLY SHUT THEM UP.

     Almost two years to the day his journey was supposed to end, after surgery for a ruptured Achilles tendon that kills careers and left him to admit he was ‘‘hurting deeply,’’ Durant used a New York stage this week to conquer every critic, hater and troll who dared to doubt, insult and bury him. He always has invited the abuse, continuing to plunge into nightly social-media battles as if needing rage to motivate him, and the two-way anger escalated when he fled teams in search of titles as a calculating capitalist. The years have formed a distrustful crust, not evident when I engaged him one-on-one back in his NBA infancy — an interview in a Santa Monica hotel lobby that revealed a pleasant, polite, joyful soul.

     But identifying enemies, real and imagined, turned out to be a game that works for him. It also worked for a boyhood idol named Michael Jordan, and here in the 2021 postseason, Durant suddenly finds himself in similar rarefied air — inspirational heights scaled by only a precious few in pro basketball. By overcoming a devastating injury, he is showcasing his character and purpose when other victims have hobbled and retired. By doing so without the ankle-ravaged Kyrie Irving, while James Harden stumbles around on one leg, he is disclaiming the Brooklyn Nets as another detestable superteam and producing a one-man June spectacular reminiscent of Jordan, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. By staring down two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, whose Bucks are healthy but down 3-2 to Durant in an Eastern Conference semifinal, he’s proving who might have won one of the Freak’s trophies if he’d been well.

     And as Kawhi Leonard deals with a serious knee injury, Chris Paul enters COVID-19 protocols, Donovan Mitchell fights through ankle pain and Joel Embiid tries to avoid another walking boot, guess which man is healthy and positioned to win another NBA championship — all by himself, if necessary?

     Kevin (Bleeping) Durant.

     Or, as he famously said weeks before the injury, ‘‘I’m Kevin Durant. You know who I am. Y’all know who I am.”

     He is winning the war of attrition in a league spinning out of control. Every day brings another injury or setback that points to commissioner Adam Silver’s money-driven mistake — launching the current season only 71 days after the Bubble season ended, leaving important players vulnerable to injuries. This prompted James, clearly in excuse mode but making a good point, to tweet two weeks after the Lakers were eliminated: ‘‘They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season. I knew exactly what would happen. I only wanted to protect the well being of players, which ultimately is the PRODUCT & BENEFIT of OUR GAME! These injuries isn’t just `PART OF THE GAME.’ It’s the lack of PURE REST rest before starting back up. 8, possibly 9 ALL-STARS has missed Playoff games (most in league history). This is the best time of the year for our league and fans but missing a ton of our fav players. It’s insane.’’

     Also insane: Every day brings the firing of another veteran coach — and another whisper that Becky Hammon and other female candidates are about to crash the ceiling, which qualifies as triumphant justice only if they validate themselves, like every other coach, in the ultimate win-loss metric. In Dallas, an unsteady Mark Cuban fired longtime front-office executive Donnie Nelson, who only delivered back-to-back franchise cornerstones Luka Doncic and Dirk Nowitzki, to promote a former high-stakes professional gambler — alarms, sirens, FBI probes! — named Haralabos Voulgaris, who is disliked by Doncic.

     Through all the chaos, Durant is the unlikely constant, the reason America should continue watching a disjointed postseason. He played every minute of Game 5, the first player to do so since James in 2018. And when coach Steve Nash asked him to take a breather, he said, ‘‘If you don’t need to take me out, I can do this. I think I can kind of tough it out from here.’’ Why sit when he was unguardable? Using his transcendent size, wingspan, shooting explosions and game command, he produced a stat line that already should be presented under glass at the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame: 48 minutes, 49 points, 17 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 steals, 2 blocks.

     That quickly, people forgot Giannis, LeBron, Luka, Kawhi, Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic, Damian Lillard and everyone else. Durant is the one thrillmaker who matters right now, and though Game 6 is in Milwaukee, only an injury — sorry, it’s my duty to acknowledge the NBA condition — can slow him now.

     Ever hear an elite opponent sound so … deflated and beaten? ‘‘Best player in the world. Best scorer in the world,” said Antetokounmpo, shaking his head.

     Ever hear a coach rhapsodize so poetically, so perfectly? ‘‘Historic, historic performance,” Nash said. ‘‘He played the entire game — he barely missed. I mean, 49 points. I mean it’s ridiculous what he’s able to do. I think we know he’s capable of nights like this, but to do it tonight, we lose (Irving), James obviously is going through his ailments, we’re down bodies, we’re wounded. And for him to have the toughness, that mentality — that’s what makes him one of the all-time greats. And so this is a performance that’s a signature performance for Kevin, and it was beautiful to watch.”

     Ever hear a teammate tie it all into a historical perspective? ‘‘He’s just letting the game come to him, and he’s playing it so effortlessly. And we’re so used to seeing Kevin do that,’’ Irving said. ‘‘So wherever you put him in the ranking of the best players ever or the best players playing our game or whatever, for us — as historians of the game here, in terms of the culture we protect here, in terms of brotherhood and the respect we have — we’re seeing him just continue to get better. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s just slow for him. The game is so slow.”

     And ever hear another teammate frame the new reality so bluntly? ‘‘The world is witnessing once again who the best player in the world is. And it’s amazing to see,’’ said Jeff Green, Durant’s childhood pal in the disadvantaged Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C.

     The only one not raving about Durant, naturally, is Durant. Last week, TNT sideline reporter Jared Greenberg asked a fair and obvious question in a post-game interview: ‘‘Tomorrow marks two years since your injury. Did you ever think you’d be this good again?’’

     Durant just stared at the poor guy. ‘‘Is that a real question?’’ he snapped. ‘‘Of course. What you want me to say to that?’’

     So anyone expecting a self-tribute will be disappointed. ‘‘I know the perception of me is that I can score the basketball well, but any team that I’ve played on, I’ve been asked to do pretty much everything from rebounding to defending to initiating to scoring,” Durant said after his latest legacy game. ‘‘I might not do it all the time but I do a little bit of everything, just like I do every night, some more than others.

     ‘‘I didn’t even think about nothing but just each possession. I was trying to win each possession, and I didn’t think of how many points I had or shot attempts, rebounds, assists. That’s the approach I always take.’’

     He has saved his deepest thoughts for his business partners, such as ESPN, which is linked with his Thirty Five Ventures media company. Never forget: Kevin Durant is a man first, a brand second and an athlete third. The brand is doing very well today, as he assumed all along. His reputation took a hit in the Bay Area, where he joined the Golden State Warriors — and was accused of riding the capes of Curry and his champion teammates — while winning two titles and two Finals MVP awards. When he left and signed with Brooklyn, he admitted those rings didn’t bring him satisfaction.

     ‘‘I wasn't expecting to be a happy human being from a title," Durant told ESPN's Rachel Nichols. ‘‘I was just expecting like, you know, the ending of a movie -- once you worked so hard and everybody tells you like, ‘Yo, this is what you need to be working for, is this gold ball and these rings.’ And I'm just like, ‘All right, cool, let me lock in on that.' And I locked in on wanting to achieve that, but I also realized it's a lot of stuff that factors in it that's out of my control. And once I won a championship (with Golden State), I realized that, like, my view on this game is really about development. Like, how good can I be? It's not about, you know, let's go get this championship. I appreciate that stuff and I want to win to experience that stuff, but it's not the end-all, be-all of why I play the game."

     He’s a complex man, but also one who needlessly leaves himself open to darts. If he wasn’t obsessed with championships, why head to Brooklyn with Irving, openly recruit the disgruntled Harden and form a superteam? This led to more social-media shots at Durant — and more fire-backs, sometimes from his burner accounts and even in the third person. Why would a 32-year-old adult, with all the wealth and fame imaginable, stoop to such levels? ‘‘Kevin Durant Spends All Day Feuding With Own Burner Account,’’ came an inevitable headline in The Onion.

     In a recent lengthy profile in the New York Times Magazine, Durant didn’t let a reporter view his Twitter mentions. But he did describe what the trolls generally write: ‘‘It’s like: ‘u a bitch.’ ‘u soft.’ ‘u insecure.’ ‘i love u kd, can you respond?’ ‘’ And why would he engage in crossfire with an attention-grabber like actor Michael Rapaport, who goaded Durant into a series of homophobic and crude direct messages that landed him a $50,000 league fine?

     ‘‘Anybody that’s crucifying me for some (expletive) that I said behind closed doors,’’ said Durant, ‘‘I would definitely love to see y’all phones.”

     That isn’t the point. What is: Why would Kevin Durant care about these losers when he’s winning? Maybe now, with validation pouring upon him, he will turn off the phone and appreciate the view from on high. Because with each passing day — and injury — it’s looking more like a mountaintop.

     Jay Mariotti, called ‘‘the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes sports columns for Substack and a Wednesday media column for Barrett Sports Media while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts in production today. He’s an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and radio talk host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects. Compensation for this column is donated to the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.