Kevin Durant confronts LeBron James

How do you think Kevin Durant would have done in his one season at UNC?

In his 12 years in the NBA, Durant has become arguably the best basketball player on the planet. With his 45, 50 and 35 points in his last three playoffs games, Durant has established the defending and two-time NBA champion Warriors as again the overwhelming favorite to win their third straight world title and fourth in the last five years.

You know the story, told by KD himself, that his favorite college coming out of high school was Carolina and he expected to play his freshman year alongside Oak Hill Academy teammate Ty Lawson. Roy Williams recruited them both heavily, but after Lawson committed Durant somehow changed his mind and went to Texas, where he was national player of the year but the Longhorns were eliminated in the NCAA round of 32.

And while the Tar Heels won the ACC tournament and lost in overtime to Georgetown in the 2007 East Region championship game, how much better would that freshman class of Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Brandan Wright have been with Durant? The team was loaded with frosh big men Wright, Deon Thompson and Alex Stepheson, but add Durant and Carolina was easily the best team in the country.

Obviously unaware of just how good he was at 18 years old, Durant said he did not matriculate in Chapel Hill because the “Tar Heels were stacked” with the incoming freshmen and a sophomore class led by Tyler Hansbrough. Usually, a player that talented knows he can beat out anyone on the roster, regardless of their experience.

The Warriors’  Steph Curry is still the face of the team, with his long-range bombing and shimmy shake when he hits a big one. Durant was criticized by some fans and media for picking Golden State after leaving Oklahoma City as a free agent; yet he has well proven his worth to the team that has not failed to win an NBA title with him in the lineup.

The Dubs’ offense runs through the 6-foot-9 Durant on every possession, as he gets the ball on the wing where he often finds a mismatch against a single defender. To double-team him, means the ball will wind up in Curry’s hand with an open 3-pointer or driving lane, so it’s a matter of pick your poison when trying to defend an opponent that also has sharp-shooting Klay Thompson.

Fourth-seeded Houston is a scoring machine with James “The Beard” Harden and former Wake Forest star Chris Paul. But with Durant playing the best basketball of his career and life, the Rockets cannot find four wins over a team with a player as unique and unstoppable as the almost one-time Tar Heel.

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