Despite only coming up 13 free throws short last season, see why shooting 40-50-90 is going to be harder to do than one might imagine. Believe it or not, the charity stripe has been the one thing holding Durant back.
The Houston Rockets were blessed with greatness on a nightly basis after the addition of Kevin Durant last summer. After playing in 78 regular season games at age 37, he nearly joined a realm of his own based on his incredible shooting splits.
The Slim Reaper nearly shot 50-40-90 for his third season, which would only put him behind Steve Nash’s four. Larry Bird is the only other player in NBA history to reach that feat twice, currently tied with Durant.
In his debut season with the Rockets, KD shot 52-percent from the field and 41.3-percent from deep. That means only his free throw shooting kept him away from that achievement. At 87.4-percent, he only needed to make 13 more of his 467 free throws to break that threshold, per Basketball-Reference.
That doesn’t seem like much at face value, but a third 50-40-90 season seems less likely when you realize Durant has only shot over 90-percent four times in his career. He’s shot over 40-percent from deep in nine different seasons now, and has a 13-year run of shooting above 50-percent from the field.
It all depends on his free throws, and at 88.2-percent for his career, he’s never far off. The first time he shot the requisite percentage was in back 2010, and he did on 840 attempts, which led the league. I think we can agree that’s out of the question, as well as the 2013 season where he shot 750 times.
That year was, however, his first 50-40-90 season, and the year prior to him winning MVP. Strangely his next time reaching 50-40-90 was a whole decade later. In a season split between the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns, Durant shot 91.9-percent on only 334 attempts.
In his last full year with Brooklyn (2022) he had 409 attempts, and those were his last two times shooting 90-percent or better from the stripe. They’re also much more comparable to his 467 free throws from last season, and that’s important. It shows he can do it when he’s in his early 20’s as well as in his late 30’s.
We can almost guarantee he makes more than half of his shots from the field, considering his career average sits at 50.3-percent. I’d also be willing to be he shoots over 40-percent from deep for the tenth time in his career. Unfortunately, I do have my doubts on whether or not he’ll shot above 90-percent from the free throw line for the fifth time in his career. I’d love for him to prove me wrong, though.
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