OAKLAND – Kevin Durant spent a full week on the road, absorbing the worst of the noise around him, and upon returning home realized there was a simple way to achieve at least a modicum of tranquility.
Bury the uproar under an avalanche of points. Bury it once, twice, three times.
On Monday night, for the third time in four days, Durant calmly led the charge in demolishing an opponent that dared to confront the Warriors at Oracle Arena. He dropped 49 points on Orlando, shredding what had been an 18-point Magic lead in the process.
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SIGN UP HERE Yet there he was after the 116-110 Warriors victory, in the locker room grumbling, while grinning, about not getting 50.
“Should have had it,” he said. “I missed 17 shots.”
He made 16 shots, though, and the Warriors needed all 36 points compiled. Durant also attempted 13 free throws, draining every one of them.
“When he’s aggressive, we’re at our best,” said Klay Thompson, who scored 19 of his 29 points in the fourth quarter. “He’s been making quick decisions – that’s when we’re at our best as well – and he’s been leading us.
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“Obviously, we’re shorthanded. But Kevin’s taken it upon [himself] to treat these games like [they’re] his last. He plays with so much effort ... it’s November and he plays like it’s Game 5 of The Finals.”
Durant has scored 125 points over the three games -- all victories -- an average of 41.7 per, while shooting 52.5 percent from the field, including 34.8 percent from beyond the arc and 94.3 percent from the line.
He is the first member of the Warriors with consecutive games of at least 40 points since Thompson did it in March 2016 and only the seventh Warrior to do it at all, joining Stephen Curry, Antawn Jamison, Purvis Short, Rick Barry, Wilt Chamberlain and Thompson.
“Incredible. Incredible,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “The guy is just amazing. He’s so talented, and I think over the last few games he just kind of knew that he just had to put us on his shoulders because of the four-game losing streak and the struggles.”
The losing streak and the struggles followed the well-documented heated quarrel between teammate Draymond Green and Durant in the fourth quarter of the Nov. 12 game against the Clippers in Los Angeles. It was ugly enough that Warriors management felt a one-game suspension of Green was warranted.
The episode left Durant unnerved, to say the least. He neither looked nor played like himself, shooting 41.9 percent overall and 10.5 percent from deep, his visage alternating scowls with expressions of discouragement.
Those numbers are confined to perhaps the most inglorious week of Durant’s career. His entire countenance has been transformed. He’s having fun again, playing aggressively, being vocal and scoring as if some kind of bonus is at stake.
“We’ve moved on from that stuff,” Kerr said.
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What about Durant? Has he “moved on”? The numbers say he has. The eye test agrees. So does he.
“All the stuff that happened this month, that felt like so long ago,” he said. “We’re just moved past that and are just trying to play good basketball.”
Same skin, different dude.
Durant is now making himself and his teammates happier than they’ve been since they opened the season by winning 10 of their first 11 games, back when they were dancing together in locker rooms to a remixed version of Fergie’s national anthem.