Kevin Durant Went Back-And-Forth With Fans On Twitter About The NBA Adopting More FIBA Rules

The United States men’s basketball team emphatically began its stint at the Paris Olympics on Sunday. Team USA took on Nikola Jokic and Serbia — a team believed to be one of their top challengers for a gold medal this time around — and ran them off the floor, picking up a 110-84 win that made it clear that taking them down will not be easy.

The biggest reason for this was Kevin Durant, who did not play in the team’s warm-up games before the Olympics began due to a calf injury. Arguably the greatest player in USA Basketball history, Durant got cleared right before the game and came off the bench, where he relentlessly took it to Serbia. He didn’t miss a shot in the first half and ended the game with 23 points on 8-for-9 shooting and did not miss any of his five threes in 17 minutes of work.

One day later and Durant apparently had some downtime during the preparations for Wednesday’s game against South Sudan. Inevitably, whenever the United States plays in a FIBA tournament, there are people who want to see the NBA adopt more of the rules that makes FIBA basketball different. KD, it turns out, isn’t really one of them.

Durant pushed back against one charge: That there is more flopping in the NBA than there is in FIBA and pointed out that this is just not true.

He also went on to talk about the importance of randomness in basketball, and how striking a balance between that and the more rigid style of play that you see in FIBA is important.

Whether it is NBA or FIBA rules, I think two things are pretty clear: 1. Kevin Durant has a good perspective on all of this as someone who has been playing in the NBA and for the national team for years, 2. He’d be extremely good at basketball, no matter what.