Editor’s Note: This story is one of two covers of Fast Company‘s November 2017 Tech + Culture Issue.
On a crystalline day this past summer, about eight weeks before the official start of the basketball season, Kevin Durant—the Golden State Warrior, reigning NBA Finals MVP, and (depending on your criteria) either the best or second-best pure player on Planet Earth—is standing on a makeshift court in the darkened corner of a YouTube soundstage in Los Angeles, bouncing a ball between his size 18 kicks. On television, Durant looks tall. In person, especially in the presence of regulation-size humans, he is alpine: 6 feet 9 inches of spindled limbs, elongated torso, and flashbulb-reflecting smile.
Today, he’s dressed in a style that might be described as High Grunge: faded concert T-shirt, billowy flannel, extremely expensive designer cargo pants. It’s not ideal on-court apparel, but it doesn’t seem to be holding him back. While the technicians on the set do their best not to gawk, he drives toward the hoop and, bending his frame around the side of the net, deposits the ball so precisely the fabric hardly whispers.
“My turn,” shouts his opponent, a towheaded middle schooler. “I just want to say, though, that I have to use both of my hands to shoot the ball.”
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