Kevin Durant felt the wrath of the Black Mamba when he played the Los Angeles Lakers.
Kevin Durant has played against some of the best players in NBA history. He has gone toe-to-toe with LeBron James three times in the NBA Finals, beating him twice as a member of the Golden State Warriors. He has also had some playoff battles with the late great Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Durant naturally gets parallels to LeBron James as they share the same position, were the best players on the two best teams in the league for a multi-year stretch and because their primes are also intersecting.
There are not as many parallels between Durant and Kobe. They play different positions, Kobe’s later prime was during the beginning of Durant’s career and while they played together, they just missed being in the same generation.
However, Durant still earned his first all-star berth in the same year that Bryant won his last championship (and got through the Thunder in round one to do so), so there is some intersect there. That was enough of an intersect for Durant to feel the wrath of the Black Mamba.
Kevin Durant was scared of Kobe Bryant late in games.
Appearing on The Corp podcast, hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Barstool Big Cat, Durant rattled off some of the best players he has been around: best natural shooter, best rebounder, best ball-handler, etc.
When it came to the best “clutch money player” Durant did not hold back about Kobe’s impact late in games.
"“Kobe. I was scared s—less of Kobe late in games.”"
Durant saw it first hand in his first playoff berth. In Game 3 in the first round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs, Kobe scored 15 points in the fourth quarter, leading the Lakers to edge out the Thunder 95-92. The Thunder, as a team, scored 23 in the fourth. Kobe finished with 39.
Then there was the double-overtime regular-season game in 2012 in which the Lakers overcame an 18-point deficit to win. Kobe hit two clutch threes in regulation to get it to overtime and continued to knock down shots in the extra periods to win the game.
Durant’s response sums it up perfectly. It was really fun to watch as a Laker fan, but for fans of other teams (and even the other players), it scared the you-know-what out of them.
Kobe Bryant’s legacy will live on forever.