Kevin Durant Patterned His Game After Larry Bird, Admires Celtics’ Past, Future

Before Saturday, if you had to guess which team out of the Boston Celtics and San Antonio Spurs would dominate the news cycle after their meetings with Kevin Durant, you probably wouldn’t have picked the team with 17 NBA championship banners.

But thanks to an impressive pitch, which included New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and the signing of Al Horford, it appears the Celtics still are in the running for Durant.

Also potentially working in Boston’s favor is Durant’s connection to one of the greatest C’s players of all time, Larry Bird.

“Larry Bird is a guy I like watching,” Durant told USA TODAY Sports’ Sam Amick back in 2012. “I watch film on him all the time. I like his approach to the game when he was playing. When I first started playing the game, my godfather Taras Brown — who taught me how to play — he always was a Larry Bird guy, always used to look up his stats.

“So of course as I got older and started to watch NBATV, legends games, and of course you hear the stories about the rivalries with him and the Lakers and him and Magic, so I like his competitiveness, how low-maintenance he was, how he just went out there and did his job. He played hard. He played for the love of the game, and that’s what I’ve got.”

Before you start seeing Durant in green, though, Amick pointed out Sunday night that OKC still is the favorite. However, Amick writes the Celtics’ meeting and other conversations could lay the groundwork for more discussions in 2017 if Durant hits free agency again.