One Area Kevin Durant Excelled in and One Area That was a Struggle

Unlike the other players featured in this series, Kevin Durant's legacy is already cemented. The 37-year-old future Hall of Famer has a resume that few will ever match.

MVP award, two-time NBA Finals MVP, two-time NBA Champion, 16-time All-Star, 12-time All-NBA team selections, and this past season moved up to the top five on the all-time NBA scoring list.

Despite how people feel about his moves to different teams, specifically signing with the Golden State Warriors after losing to them the year before, he will go down as one of the greatest players of all time.

Durant was the big name traded last offseason as the Rockets swung for the fences and brought in the multi-time all-star. The move signaled that the Rockets were ready to compete for a title. Durant, even towards the end of his illustrious career, is still one of the best players in the NBA.

Despite how the season ended, he proved it again in 2025-26, making another All-Star team and earning second-team All-NBA honors. Even more impressive, he played the second-most minutes in the NBA, only trailing his teammate Amen Thompson.

In an up-and-down season for the team, Durant was the Rockets' most consistent player. When you are as good as Durant, there isn't a lot that you need to improve on, but even the top players still have room to improve, and Durant has one area in particular that he can do better in for the 2026-27 season.

One Area Kevin Durant Thrived in and One Area That Needs Improving

As mentioned earlier Durant has accomplished everything a player can do in the NBA. He is coming off another great season, so it's not easy to narrow down what he excelled at to one area.

Instead of just one specific area we can narrow it down to one general area and tha is consistency. In a season when the Rockets were without their floor general, Fred VanVleet, and their best rebounder, Steven Adams, and several players in the rotation were inconsistent, Durant, at least in the regular season, showed up for almost every game, missing only 4 regular-season games all year.

As mentioned earlier, he played the second-most minutes in the NBA this season, and the 78 games were the most he had played since the 2013-14 season, which is remarkable considering Durant’s age and the major injury he suffered several seasons ago.

That was the regular season, of course, as Durant would play only one playoff game, missing five games due to various injuries. Despite the playoff absence, Durant's regular season was elite, as he led the Rockets in scoring, 3-point percentage, and field goal percentage, ranked second in minutes, and finished third in assists.

Even with all of the great parts of Durant’s 2025-26 season, he did struggle with turnovers at times. One reason is that the absence of VanVleet led Durant to have to initiate the offense much more than expected when the Rockets first traded for him, and it was also due to not taking care of the basketball.

Durant finished with 3.2 turnovers per game, which is about his career average, but it was the type of turnovers that were the issue. With Durant at the top of the key a alot of the time, the turnovers would lead to easy fastbreaks on the other end, which caused some issues for the Rockets in close games.

These types of turnovers are issues during the regular season, but are devastating at times in the playoffs when most games come down to the last couple of minutes. Durant has been in every situation you can think of in the playoffs, so there is little doubt that he will clean this up, especially in the playoffs, but it is the one area where he can improve on for next season.

Durant will look to help the Rockets finally take the next step in 2026-27, as they have not been out of the first round since the 2020 playoffs.

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