Fuck Yea[h] NBA

There’s something about the way Kevin Durant moves on a basketball court that’s more like floating above the basketball court. And it’s not simply his rhythmic stride as he leaps like some twin-legged tyger on that slender 6’9”  frame; it’s the way he’ll cradle the ball between his left hand, as guide, and right hand, as a cradle ready to flip the rock through the twine, “out of the sea, endlessly rocking.” A deadly being, primordial in his excellence.

Durant’s jumper is so smooth and his release-point so high, you’d think he’d been crafted with the touch of Bernard King and the body of a Bill Russell. It’s not just his stroke (it is not a shot—which conjures up images of shot-putting and ramshackle attempts to heave something that produces a strain), but also his ability to get in the lane and above the fray is positively Gervian without the nonchalance that kept the Iceman from bigger things. He’s many different hall of fame players combined into one basketball assassin casually stalking a Larry O’Brien trophy.

At the end of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s 97-89 victory over the Orlando Magic, a score that wasn’t indicative of how easily OKC controlled the game, Kevin Durant paused atop the key during a stoppage in play, and seemed to reflect on the radiant way he and his team play basketball together. He walked over to the crowd and kissed his mom. The hearts of thousands of moms in the crowd and millions across the country dropped, and every mom wished their sons had a little Kevin Durant in them. 

I don’t know where Kevin Durant was crafted, if you believe there’s some omnipotent force/being/specter that crafts we human beings, but whatever entity or force forged the materials that made Kevin Durant combined both the Tyger and the Lamb, and it’s that duality that should be applauded. For “in what furnace was” Durant’s “brain, What the anvil? What dread grasp?  Dare its deadly terrors clasp?” also lies a man with a “tender voice” a “man” that “is mild.”

What created his fearful symmetry?  

top pic via; bottom pic via