{"id":829799,"date":"2026-08-29T13:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T13:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/829799\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T13:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T13:14:10","slug":"kevin-durant-on-international-stars-who-do-they-imitate-the-dream-team-american-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/829799\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Durant on international stars: “Who do they imitate? The Dream Team, American players”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Aris Barkas\/ barkas@eurohoops.net<\/a><\/p>\n

In an era of international talent influx in the NBA, Kevin Durant argues that while there\u2019s criticism of how US players are groomed, players from overseas are equally influenced by the American game.<\/p>\n

According to Durant, the criticism is not valid, and that should be a debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur game is global\u201d, said KD. \u201cWe play basketball all around the world. The goal is to push the game around the world. And it\u2019s gotten there, and it\u2019s still expanding in certain countries. So it\u2019s about time. They\u2019ve been coming into the league since the 80s. It\u2019s just natural evolution that guys from around the world are going to assume those positions as the best players in the league. The real argument should be who are they influenced by?\u201d<\/p>\n

Durant explains his point: \u201cThey are influenced by Americans. It\u2019s cool that they win MVPs and stuff, but who did you watch? Jokic, and Porzingis and Shai\u2026 All these dudes with Iverson jerseys and braids in their hair, crossing over\u2026 They try to play like us too, and they accomplished it by executing it in their own way\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Durant, Canadian champion and MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the prime example of that influence: \u201cAnd then you look at Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Is he an international player? But most of his pipeline into being an NBA player came from the American system. Where did he go to college? Where did he play high school? So it\u2019s a lot of factors into why these guys are where they are, and mainly it\u2019s because of the hard work that they put in. But all this stuff is imitation. Who do you look up to and try to imitate on the court? That\u2019s how everybody gets better. Who did they imitate? The Dream Team, American players. So they just learn from us, like I also learned from American players. My generation learned from the guys before me. That\u2019s the natural evolution\u201d.<\/p>\n

The counterargument might be that right now international NBA stars are influencing more the next generation of players, but for Durant this is also part of an evolution that started from the US: \u201cWhere did Luka Doncic get his move from? And in the end of the day, it doesn\u2019t matter\u2026 I love guys who want to be like Luka Doncic and Michael Jordan\u2026 We need more inspiration from different countries and different backgrounds. Why not? I love seeing Luka from a different country crossing up as we do, and he is also bringing a piece of American basketball culture to his country, and I love that too\u201d.\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Aris Barkas\/ barkas@eurohoops.net In an era of international talent influx in the NBA, Kevin Durant argues that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":829800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-829799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}