Kevin Durant 2024-25 Suns season preview: How Mike Budenholzer can maximize KD in Year 18

As Kevin Durant embarks on his 18th year in the league, everyone knows his game well by now. The question is whether the Phoenix Suns and coach Mike Budenholzer can maximize what he does best, tweak a few areas that would make him even more dangerous, and generally make his life easier now that they’ve added some point guards.

Over the last three days of the week, we’ll be wrapping up our Suns season preview series that’s gone through all 17 players on the roster, one-by-one. That includes both a written piece for the avid readers (hello there!) and a video breakdown for the visual learners.

On Day 15, we begin our breakdowns on the Big 3, starting with the Suns’ best player from last year, Kevin Durant.

Kevin Durant 2024-25 Suns Season Preview

It sounds crazy to say this about a guy who just put up a 27-7-5 stat line on 52-41-86 shooting splits, but the Suns might be able to get even more out of a 36-year-old Kevin Durant this year. Durant is playing at levels we haven’t seen from any player in NBA history at this stage of their careers outside of LeBron James, and during exit interviews, that prompted a pretty interesting quote from general manager James Jones.

“That’s a constant focus for us is to continue to figure out how to maximize Kevin Durant,” Jones said. “No one’s done it yet. I believe we’ll be the first team to do it, because we can maximize him, we can maximize our entire roster, we’re a better team.”

The Golden State Warriors might have something to say about that bold proclamation, but there’s little doubt that the Suns feel they can optimize him better than last year. The Athletic reported that Durant was unhappy with his role last year under Frank Vogel, feeling he was relegated to the corner too often. Durant shot down that report, but either way, Phoenix will be hoping to unleash him in Mike Budenholzer’s offense.

The obvious question is how a midrange master will fit into a system that’s predicated on taking more 3-pointers. Durant is one of the purest scorers in NBA history, not just because of his combination of shooting, handles, length and ability to score from all three phases, but also because he puts in the reps to hit impossible shots like the defense isn’t even there.

“Every single rep he takes, it’s 100 percent,” rookie Ryan Dunn marveled.

Durant’s ability to get BUCKETS in the midrange is one of the most aesthetically pleasing parts of his game. He’s unstoppable one-on-one, getting to his favorite spots with unblockable turnarounds, nifty crossovers or deceptive hesitation moves, and if none of those works, he can just elevate over almost any contest.

Even when opponents send help defenders on his isos or double-teams on his post-ups, Durant can still create separation and knock down the types of shots that just make the other team shake their heads in disbelief. Having one of the best shot-makers in the league helps in a playoff setting when defenses tighten up and you just need a bucket.

“There’s some guys that we joke they just roll out of bed and they make shots and score 20 or 30,” Budenholzer said. “Just God-given talent. And I think it’s a lot of work and a lot of preparation throughout his whole life. He’s always working on his craft, he’s a committed professional. But there’s also just a feel that Kevin has, that is rare and unique.”

But as you can see from the clip above, the degree of difficulty on these shots is obscene. It’s part of what makes KD so special, and part of where he and the Suns need to try making his life easier. Putting the onus on KD to hit all these tough, contested 2s — even if he can make them — shouldn’t be the primary goal.

“It’s one of the great things about this job is trying to find all those guys, put them in their best spots,” Budenholzer said. “Kevin’s so good, and can we make it easier on him? Hopefully by moving him and moving everybody and making everybody live and just kind of playing basketball is what we’re leaning into right now the most.

“But we feel fortunate that he is gonna be able to make tough shots, and sometimes you need guys that can do that.”

According to Cleaning The Glass, Durant ranked in the 100th percentile in frequency of long midrange shots and the 98th percentile in frequency of all midrange shots. Sure, he also ranked in the 87th and 86th percentile in efficiency on those shots. And yes, he also placed in the 94th percentile in points over expectation!

But Phoenix should probably try to do something about the fact that Durant ranked in the third percentile in overall shot quality. A midrange jumper from KD is still one of the most efficient shots in the sport, but in this modern NBA where 3s and shots at the rim reign supreme, turning even 1-2 middies a night into 3s would make Kevin Durant and the Suns’ offense even deadlier.

More 3s for Kevin Durant

Durant understands the way the league is trending, and from his perspective, it’s all about taking what the defense gives him.

“If it’s an opportunity for me to shoot a lot of 3s that night, I will,” Durant said. “But if teams are up into my body and they want me to drive the basketball and be more aggressive to the rim and get free throws and get to my midrange, I’ll do that too. So I try to play the game. What the defense is dictating, I try to play off the defense a bit. I’m not just shooting midrange out of spite to piss people off, you know? I want to do what it takes to win the game, and sometimes, I gotta put my head down and be aggressive to go to the rim.”

So far in preseason, the Suns are getting up a whopping 46.0 3-point attempts per game, which ranks third in the NBA. Durant went from 7.0 attempts per 100 possessions last year to 11.3 under Bud. Preseason is preseason, but Durant and the Big 3 seem to have bought into Budenholzer’s approach.

To that end, getting Durant easier catch-and-shoot looks would be a godsend. KD drilled 43.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s and 52.9 percent of his wide open 3s last year, but he only got one wide-open 3 a night.

KD only made 34.7 percent of his pull-up 3s, but that’s because most of them were so heavily guarded. According to The BBall Index, KD ranked in the zero-point-fourth percentile in 3-point openness rating, as well as the sixth percentile in 3-point shot quality. It’s honestly INSANE that Durant hit 41.3 percent of his 3s last year considering the types of looks he was having to take:

Some of that just comes down to how much attention defenses are always going to pay him, but having Tyus Jones and Monte Morris there to orchestrate and feed Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal in their spots should hopefully help.

“He scores the ball at a high, high level, and sometimes, he makes it look effortless,” Jones said. “He’s getting to his spots, catching and shooting, but at the same time, that is something that’s a product of the system, and why me and ‘Te were brought here is to make sure that him, Book and Brad can get easy shots and not have to work quite as hard to get their looks and to put the ball in the basket.”

Getting Durant more looks at the rim is step one. The Suns will have great spacing around him, and KD is still more than capable of crossing defenders up or blowing right past them before using his length to create separation at the basket.

Per Cleaning The Glass, Durant shot 77 percent at the rim, which placed him in the 90th percentile at his position. Defenders didn’t want to challenge him at the apex, and his backdoor cuts will be easy money with passing bigs like Jusuf Nurkic, Mason Plumlee and Oso Ighodaro.

Unfortunately, Durant only took 18 percent of his shots at the rim, which ranked in the fourth percentile at his position. That’s just not enough for a guy who’s downright deadly around the basket:

Using him in screens (as the ball-handler or the screener) and getting him going in transition could both help on that front. We already covered Tyus Jones’ hit-aheads in our last season preview, but the Suns were the NBA’s best team in points per possession in transition last year, and Durant was a big part of that, ranking in the 99th percentile among all players in points per possession on the break.

Even at age 36, Durant can still throw down electrifying dunks, so getting him a few easy ones around the basket would help create an even more dangerous shot profile for one of the game’s more unguardable scorers.

And as much as KD Stans objected to seeing Durant stand around in the corner, getting him corner 3s helps too. KD made a whopping 47.1 percent of his corner 3s last year, and his 68 attempts from the corners were by far a career high. For reference, the most he had ever taken in a season before last year was 40.

Relegating Kevin Durant to the corner and not involving him is one thing, but Budenholzer’s offense is predicated on playing random, which means putting different guys in different actions. If the end result is KD getting open corner 3s because of all the spacing out there, that should be seen as a positive.

Optimizing Kevin Durant

As we wait to see what unfolds with a possible contract extension for Kevin Durant, one last area for improvement would be cutting down on turnovers. Adding actual point guards with elite assist-to-turnover ratios will go a long way, but Durant has to be better about ball security this year. His 244 turnovers last year led the Suns — who ranked 25th in the NBA in that category — by more than 60.

He alone accounted for 21 percent of Phoenix’s player turnovers, and his 94 lost-ball turnovers were second in the league behind only Domantas Sabonis. It just seemed like there were a surprising amount of instances where he inexplicably lost the ball or his balance:

Only six players in the NBA committed more turnovers than Kevin Durant last year, and five of those six had a higher usage rate. Durant has averaged 3.2 turnovers a night for his career, but getting it down to 2.0 or 2.5 would go a long way in fixing last year’s turnover woes.

“I think that’s something we struggled with a lot last year, trying to get on the same page with one another,” Durant said. “So that’s been an emphasis since our first meeting with coach Bud is just nipping that in the bud, just making sure that we make the correct play, not trying to hit home runs all the time. And sometimes you can try to make the right play and end up turning the ball over, so you wanna try to find that balance as well.”

Durant could also be better about handling blitzes and double-teams. Turnovers are bound to happen in those scenarios, and Durant gets more attention in that way than anyone. But some of these errors feel avoidable if he’s able to get off the ball quicker, handle the pressure better, or just make a more precise pass:

A lot of this feels like nitpicking, and it is. Kevin Durant is still one of the most efficient scorers and lethal all-around players in the NBA, and we didn’t even talk about how he was Phoenix’s best defender last year, ranking in the 76th percentile in perimeter isolation defense, 85th percentile in post defense, 93rd percentile in screener mobile defense and 83rd percentile in blocks per 75 possessions.

But even in Year 18, KD remains hungry, and part of that is continuing to get better every day. If he’s able to make even the slightest improvements in some of these areas, he could be poised to have one of the easiest, most efficient seasons of his career — especially since his teammates all say he hasn’t lost a step.

“Been doing it a long time, and I don’t see any drop-off, which is the impressive, kinda crazy part,” Tyus Jones said. “One of the best players to ever play, still playing at an extremely, extremely high level.”

“He’s just a hooper,” Devin Booker added. “I think his love for the game is what keeps him going.”

More 2024-25 Suns season previews

• Collin Gillespie: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• TyTy Washington: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Jalen Bridges: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Ryan Dunn: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Oso Ighodaro: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Bol Bol: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Damion Lee: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Josh Okogie: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Monte Morris: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Mason Plumlee: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Royce O’Neale: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Grayson Allen: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Jusuf Nurkic: Written breakdown | Video breakdown
• Tyus Jones: Written breakdown | Video breakdown