Ten years before they became teammates in Golden State, Texas freshman phenom Kevin Durant was the best player in college basketball, and Nick Young was a spectacular shooting guard at USC.
On March 18th of 2007, the two scoring machines faced off in what would turn out to be Durant’s final game of his collegiate career. In his final performance for the Longhorns, Durant scored a game-high 30 points on 11-of-24 shooting to go with a game-high nine boards, two blocks, and a steal. USC got 22 points (8-of-13 shooting) and seven boards from Young and a double-double (17 & 14) from freshman Taj Gibson in their 87-68 whooping of Texas.
After the game, Young was full of praise for his future Warrior teammate.
“Basically, there’s nothing you can do against Durant,” Young said. “You just focus on the other two guys, Augustin and Abrams.”
As for Durant, he was being bombarded with questions about his future.
“I don’t think that’s an appropriate question right now,” Durant said when asked about the possibility of declaring for the NBA draft. “I’m just worried about this team and what we can be next year as a team.”
You know the rest of the story.
Ten years later, and we are talking about the addition of Swaggy P, making the NBA Champs team an even tougher one to worry about.
NOTES FROM THE FUTURE: Nick was the 7th leading scorer on the 2017/18 Warriors and only averaged 1 point during the playoffs. That’s fine because they didn’t need much help sweeping the Cavs and repeating as NBA Champions, especially when they had back-to-back Finals MVP Kevin Durant, who had 43/13/7 in Game 3 and a 20-point triple-double in Game 4.
KEVIN DURANT IN COLLEGE