After Years Of Pushback, Kevin Durant Has Finally Embraced His "Slim Reaper" Nickname
Well I'll be damned. Let me begin by saying it's not even a contest who has the best nickname on Team USA. Slim Reaper is the obvious choice. Not The King, not The Process, not The Brow, not Chef Curry etc. I would argue it's one of the best nicknames any NBA player has ever had, which always made it so confusing as to why KD never fully embraced it. I'm not sure anything describes his game better
yet dating all the way back to 2014 he never really bought in
“That name is what it is,” Durant said at shootaround Monday. “It’s cool to have a nickname somebody else gave to you. It’s kind of weird if you make your own nickname up. But to have that out there, I guess, is cool. “I’m here to shine a bright light. I’m not here to be a guy of, I guess, death. We'll see what happens with that, but I just like KD better.”
Remember when he said he'd rather be called The Servant instead of Slim Reaper? Probably not because you're most likely a normal person who doesn't even remember shit like this, but you get my point. While his others like Easy Money Sniper and Durantula are also legit, they don't come close to Slim Reaper in my opinion which is why it was always sad that KD pushed back on it for so many years.
In some ways, I can see his reasoning for it. Back in 2014, while KD had obviously shown how devastating of a player he was, he was still missing the hardware. When you think of something that brings basketball death, it doesn't really hit as hard without the rings. But now? After what we've seen from him over these last 10 years? It makes sense that he's finally willing to rock with Slim Reaper. Because make no mistake, that's exactly what he was during the Warriors run. I know even today people still try to discredit those rings because the internet can't not be weird when it comes to KD, but he was insane in those Finals.
And while this is all nice and good, what I truly care about when it comes to KD right now is how he looks coming off that calf injury, and given what we saw from practice today I'd say he's moving pretty damn well
There's still some uncertainty if he'll be ready to go for Team USA's opener against Serbia, and while they already showed they technically don't need KD in order to win, life is sure as hell a lot better when you have him in the lineup. Team USA's offense could use an unguardable scorer in my opinion who just so happens to be the best scorer in Team USA history. Part of me thinks that's why they keep falling into all these bad isolation habits, and I feel like inserting KD into the mix solves a lot of that.
At the same time, given his injury history and how tricky calf injuries can be, it's not crazy to think Team USA will be extra cautious. We all saw what happened when he came back too quickly from a calf strain in the Finals, and I'd like to live in a world where KD doesn't have a ruptured Achilles given how fun he is to watch play.