Jimmy Butler Nicole yic Giannis an DMO Chris Paul Luca donic Jaylen Brunson Stephen Curry Jason Tatum Brandon Ingram John Morant jayen Brown DeAndre Aon Kyrie Irving Pascal seak Desmond Bane Jordan P Brandon Clark Carl Anthony towns Joel embiid James Harden Tyrese Maxi CJ McCollum Anthony Edwards Donovan Mitchell Klay Thompson and nicool lavich now you may be asking yourself why did I just name 26 random NBA players with absolutely no context well they're not random these are all the players who have outplayed Kevin Durant in the first round of the NBA Playoffs I've seen a lot
of things in my day but never ever did I think I'd see the day where Brandon Clark outperforms Kevin Durant in the playoffs and yet here we are after being held as the favorites coming into the 2022 NBA season the Nets have been bounced out of the playoffs in a first round sweep thanks to arguably the worst playoff series of Kevin Durant's career is this the worst playoff run we've ever seen from an NBA superstar or is Durant just the latest addition to a long list of alltime greats with alltime playoff [Music] meltdowns today's video
is brought to you by SeatGeek SeatGeek is a ticketing app that makes buying tickets faster and easier than ever before and with the NBA playoffs in full swing SE geek is here to get you in on the action just download the SeatGeek app and use the promo code Jimmy to get $20 off your first order by using their Interactive map you can search through venues to instantly find the best deals if it's green then you're looking at a good deal red not so much I've been using SeatGeek for years and once you use it you'll
never want to go back to anything else it's simple it's easy and it's a Surefire way to get the best deals for your tickets whether it's a concert basketball game football baseball Festival seat Geeks got it all download the app use promo code Jimmy and get $20 off your first order today the date is May 7th 1995 the Chicago Bulls are facing the Orlando Magic in the second round of the NBA Playoffs Michael Jordan had just returned to the NBA 6 weeks prior after his first retirement and was still shaking off the rust the Bulls
knew the magic were going to be a tough matchup but at the time no one knew just how dominant this magic Squad was only 27 years later can we look back on this game and say that it would go down as the worst playoff performance in Michael Jordan's entire career one finishing off Scot on Thursday night Jordan the clock shot clocked out of six Michael Jordan not able to hit oh Jordan slicing through and that is and didn't get one there long way up front Jordan and Armstrong at the Meli and that's his favorite spot
on the floor for that spot up jump shot shot very well Jim Gray over at the Chicago bench telling us Jordan kaga under 3 minutes to go in the third Jordan did not have the shot Jordan Now Grant over to help and Grant with the steel and Jordan spinning his way against Anderson the for two seconds to go 19 points eight turnovers 36% from the field and 0 for two from three the worst playoff statline of Michael Jordan's career the Bulls went on to lose this game and Michael ended up with a game score of
2.6 an average playoff game score from an average NBA player is about eight which means that for a single game Michael Jordan played considerably worse than an average player on that night MJ wasn't the best player on the court or the second or third or fourth in fact Michael had one of the worst games of anyone that suited it up that night this is the first and probably last time you'll see MJ at the bottom of any sort of list on this channel and I bring up this Infamous 1995 playoff game because after seeing Kevin
Durant play in this year's playoffs I began to wonder how bad can things truly get for an NBA superstar it's one thing to miss some shots get on a bad run and find yourself struggling to get out of it it's a completely different thing to collapse for an entire playoff series as your team gets swep out of the first round of the playoffs in Durant's 14-year NBA career I have never seen him play or even act like this on the court KD was playing so bad that I was genuinely wondering if he was dealing with
some sort of serious injury are KD and Kyrie beef are something did Durant bet against the Nets in this series I'm being serious those are genuine questions I've never seen Durant looks so hesitant and disengaged and just off the last time we saw KD in the playoffs he was averaging 35 points 11 rebounds and five assists a game while carrying the Nets and nearly taking down the eventual Champs in the Bucks by himself what happened just take a look at Katie's playoffs numbers throughout his career there's a steady increase in production and efficiency for over
a decade even last season at 32 years old after not playing basketball for a year his numbers were still off the charts now here's the scoring numbers from this year's playoffs I'm looking at a cliff right now from the Kevin Durant we all know and love to this player that seems so unsure in himself and his abilities we all watched this series unfold and we saw just how bad he was playing but the extent of his troubles goes much further than you may think the Nets are the only team that didn't win a single playoff
game in this year's playoffs this is the same team that was favored it to win the finals at the start of the Season well almost the same team with the subtraction of James Harden and the addition of bench Simmons he doesn't have the heart this guy doesn't have it there's no dog in it there's no dog there's no dog in the guy he's sof but I asked myself is this the worst playoff run from a superstar ever there's been some bad showings over the years playoff series that made us question the entire Legacy of a
player Monumental choke jobs but was Kevin Durant's first round series against the Celtics one of the worst we've ever seen from an all-time Talent well I checked I searched through hundreds of playoff series by some of the greatest players in NBA history and the answer may not be what you expect okay so here's a chart of the worst playoff performances by alltime great over the last 40 years with game score on the y-axis and net rating on the x-axis now I only included Seasons once a player reached their Prime and immediately there are some key
points that jump out this region right here is the Legacy tarnishing region if a player has a playoff series that lands them in this region it will inevitably lead to harsh criticisms of that player and their abilities as a whole within this region you will find a handful of the worst playoff series by some of the greatest players of all time but you know what series you won't find in this region LeBron's 2011 finals against the Mavericks one of the all-time biggest playoff meltdowns in NBA history and it's not even close to one of the
worst series by a superstar that we've ever seen here's Stephen Curry's 2016 finals performance where after winning the first and only unanimous MVP in league history Curry had an absolute meltdown in the finals his team blew a 3-1 lead and to this day he hasn't heard the end of it as Monumental as LeBron's collapse was in 2011 Curry's collapse in 2016 was even worse or what about Kobe Bryant's disastrous performance in the 2004 NBA Finals where in his prime Kobe averaged just 22 points per game on 38% shooting from the field and a dreadful 177%
shooting from three for the series the Lakers nearly got swept by the Pistons winning just one game in the series and Kobe would walk away from those five games with the worst playoff stretch of his entire career this was one of the worst playoff series by a superstar in league history but somehow Shaquille O'Neil matched this piss poor performance with a meltdown of his own in the 2006 NBA Finals with Dwayne Wade carrying the load for the Miami Heat Shaquille O'Neal had the worst stretch of playoff games in his entire career 14 points and 10
rebounds a game while shooting just 29% from the free throw line and being in allout liability on defense his average game score throughout this six-game series 9.6 literally equal to that of an average performance by an average NBA player in the finals the man scored five points in game two and just nine points in game six this series should have been a huge black mark on Shaq's Legacy but it's not 16 years later and no one even remembers the fact that Shaq was getting benched in the NBA Finals but wait it gets worse because back
in 2014 Dwayne Wade put together the worst finals appearance by a superstar in modern NBA history 153 and three a game on 43% shooting and finishing the series with an average game score of just 7.9 and a net rating of -7.8 a series this bad in the finals kind of makes you wonder how a performance like this went free of virtually any criticism maybe in the moment stepen A Smith spouted out a well-worded monologue but that's about it 8 years later in this series collaps from Dwayne Wade might as well have never even happened and
believe it or not there have been multiple Superstars that virtually never had a bad playoff run here's Tracy McGrady's worst playoff series against the Jazz in 2007 here's Dirk's worst playoff series against the rockets in 2005 Larry Bird and kawh Leonard have never had a bad playoff series Once they entered their Prime and with impossibly great consistency is Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan pretty much being the best all the time no matter what so if these are the worst playoff series by some of the greatest players of all time where does Durant's round one series
against the Celtics land well right here far from some of the worst playoff runs we've ever seen did Durant have a good first round series no far from it especially by his standards but let's look at the big picture here the man averaged 267 and six a game and nearly had a 40-point triple double in the closing game of the series now sure we're used to seeing even more from Kevin Durant and the fact that the Nets got swept out of the first round certainly doesn't help his case but I mean which is worse putting
together a masterpiece of a choke job in the finals with a championship on the line or getting bounced out of the first round of the playoffs long before you even had a shot if you think this is the worst meltdown from a superstar in the playoffs I've got some news for you it's not even close if this is the worst that we've ever seen and will ever see out of Kevin Durant then it's a whole lot better than what we've seen from other alltime greats Kobe was a shell of himself in a final series that
nearly ended up in a sweep Shaq was getting benched in the NBA Finals but because the Miami Heat walked away with the championship thanks to Dwayne Wade turning into God himself in a Heat jersey Sha's performance got swept under the rug back in 2010 Kevin Garnett averaged just 10 points per game against the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals but the Celtics still won in six so I guess we'll just act like that never happened don't get me wrong seeing Kevin Durant go 0 for 10 in the second half of a playoff game almost
feels like some sort of dream like I should be waking up any moment now watching Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving default to Bruce Brown in the playoffs might just be the least likely thing I'd ever thought I'd see on an NBA court but the fact is no matter how good a player is no matter what Legacy they've spent years building every single player has had a playoff run they wish they could get back a series where they wish they could hit the reset button on and get another chance at and this round one series just
happens to be Kevin Durant hope you all enjoyed and as always until next time [Music]
