The Fantasy Basketball Encyclopedia

Player Dossier · Houston Rockets

Kevin Durant

Kevin Durant still supplies elite percentages and scoring, but his age-38 season makes games and workload more important than his stable per-minute skill.

Team: Houston Rockets · Status: standard contract · Positions: SF/PF · Age entering season: 38 · As of: 2026-07-18

2026-27 median projection

GP MPG FG% FT% 3PM PTS REB AST STL BLK TO
66 31.0 .515 .875 2.1 22.8 5.0 4.2 0.7 0.8 2.7

Nine-cat: top-20 to top-35 per game, with a totals discount. Reference points: 36.9 FP/G, grade A-. Dynasty: 4.0/10, elite win-now production with minimal long-horizon insulation.

Role and evidence

Durant averaged 26.0 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.8 assists, 2.4 threes, 0.79 steals, and 0.91 blocks in 36.4 minutes across 78 games, shooting .520/.413/.874 (Rockets game notes). The projection is not a skill collapse; it assumes intentional workload reduction because Houston can give more creation to VanVleet, Thompson, Şengün, and Sheppard.

He missed Houston's playoff opener after a practice collision bruised his right knee, and the team described the knee as tender with limited movement (AP, April 18). It was not reported as a chronic structural injury. Age, cumulative workload, and Houston's likely playoff position drive the 66-game median.

Early boards ranged widely: a Reddit nine-cat list placed Durant 18th on April 14, while Dynatyze's July 3 board put him 62nd. That spread is primarily a per-game versus totals and availability disagreement.

Team-change risk

Houston has open trade inquiries on Durant. Kelly Iko reported on June 22 2026 that rival teams in contact with Houston were told Amen Thompson is the "only near untouchable" player on the roster, and that the front office concluded after the Finals that the team is "a ways away" from contention. The reporting is careful and this file will be too: Houston is not actively shopping Durant, but it has not shut down inquiries. A three-team concept sending him to Detroit (with Şengün to Boston and Jaylen Brown to Houston) was discussed among the clubs and Houston declined to engage; Brown went to Philadelphia instead.

Fantasy consequence: the 4.0/10 dynasty grade is unaffected — a 38-year-old win-now asset is a win-now asset anywhere. The 31.0 MPG projection is more exposed, because it rests specifically on Rafael Stone's stated intent to reduce his load and on Houston having the depth to do it. A trade to a thinner team plausibly returns him toward 34-35 minutes with higher usage and worse efficiency; a trade to a contender keeps the projection roughly intact. Draft him for per-game rate, not for the Houston context in this file.

Range, confidence, and reversals

Career record

Pre-NBA: Texas, one season (2006-07). 35 games, 25.8 points, 11.1 rebounds, 1.3 assists per game, with 20 double-doubles including six straight. He swept the national player of the year awards — Naismith, Wooden and Rupp — becoming the first freshman in NCAA history to win any of them, and was Big 12 Player of the Year. Draft: 2007, round 1, pick 2, Seattle SuperSonics, behind Greg Oden. The franchise relocated to Oklahoma City after his rookie year, so his first two NBA seasons appear under two different team names without a trade.

Season Age Team GP MPG PTS REB AST STL BLK 3PM FG% FT% TO
2007-08 19 SEA 80 34.6 20.3 4.4 2.4 1.0 0.9 0.7 .430 .873 2.9
2008-09 20 OKC 74 39.0 25.3 6.5 2.8 1.3 0.7 1.3 .476 .863 3.0
2009-10 21 OKC 82 39.5 30.1 7.6 2.8 1.4 1.0 1.6 .476 .900 3.3
2010-11 22 OKC 78 38.9 27.7 6.8 2.7 1.1 1.0 1.9 .462 .880 2.8
2011-12 23 OKC 66 38.6 28.0 8.0 3.5 1.3 1.2 2.0 .496 .860 3.8
2012-13 24 OKC 81 38.5 28.1 7.9 4.6 1.4 1.3 1.7 .510 .905 3.5
2013-14 25 OKC 81 38.5 32.0 7.4 5.5 1.3 0.7 2.4 .503 .873 3.5
2014-15 26 OKC 27 33.8 25.4 6.6 4.1 0.9 0.9 2.4 .510 .854 2.7
2015-16 27 OKC 72 35.8 28.2 8.2 5.0 1.0 1.2 2.6 .505 .898 3.5
2016-17 28 GSW 62 33.4 25.1 8.3 4.8 1.1 1.6 1.9 .537 .875 2.2
2017-18 29 GSW 68 34.2 26.4 6.8 5.4 0.7 1.8 2.5 .516 .889 3.0
2018-19 30 GSW 78 34.6 26.0 6.4 5.9 0.7 1.1 1.8 .521 .885 2.9
2019-20 31 BKN 0 — — — — — — — — — —
2020-21 32 BKN 35 33.1 26.9 7.1 5.6 0.7 1.3 2.4 .537 .882 3.4
2021-22 33 BKN 55 37.2 29.9 7.4 6.4 0.9 0.9 2.1 .518 .910 3.5
2022-23 34 BKN/PHX 47 35.6 29.1 6.7 5.0 0.7 1.4 2.0 .560 .919 3.3
2023-24 35 PHX 75 37.2 27.1 6.6 5.0 0.9 1.2 2.2 .523 .856 3.2
2024-25 36 PHX 62 36.5 26.6 6.0 4.2 0.8 1.2 2.6 .527 .839 3.1
2025-26 37 HOU 78 36.4 26.0 5.5 4.8 0.8 0.9 2.4 .520 .874 3.2
Career 1201 36.7 27.1 6.9 4.4 1.0 1.1 2.0 .503 .882 3.2

The 2022-23 row is a combined line: 39 games with Brooklyn before the February 2023 trade and eight with Phoenix after it. He missed the entire 2019-20 season and did not appear in a game, so that row carries no rates.

Fantasy history: Durant's category profile has been remarkably stable for eighteen years: elite points, elite FT%, top-tier FG% for a wing, useful threes and blocks, weak steals, and turnovers that are a genuine cost. He was a consensus top-five overall pick from roughly 2010 through 2016 and a per-game top-15 player in every healthy season since. Precise season-end 9-cat finishes from Basketball Monster or Hashtag are not retrievable from public pages, so specific ranks are not asserted. The points-league shape is close to the category shape in his case, which is unusual — his volume scoring, high efficiency and low-ish rebound totals net out similarly under both systems, and 36.9 fantasy points per game in 2025-26 is a top-25 points-league figure. The one systematic gap is that his elite free throw percentage is worth about a full round more in category leagues than in points leagues.

Durability: 80, 74, 82, 78, 66, 81, 81, 27, 72, 62, 68, 78, 0, 35, 55, 47, 75, 62, 78. Three distinct interruption clusters. The first was 2014-15, when a Jones fracture in his right foot required three separate surgeries and cost 55 games. The second was catastrophic and singular: a ruptured right Achilles in Game 5 of the 2019 Finals on June 10, 2019, which cost him the entire 2019-20 season at age 31. The third was a four-season soft-tissue stretch from 2020-21 to 2022-23 — a right hamstring strain plus health-and-safety protocols in 2020-21, a left MCL sprain in January 2022 that cost 21 games, and a right MCL sprain in January 2023 followed by a left ankle sprain in his Phoenix debut. Since then he has been durable: 75, 62 and 78 games. The 62-game 2024-25 was ankle and calf, not knee. In 2025-26 he missed four games and then sat Houston's playoff opener after a practice collision bruised his right knee, described as tender with limited movement and not a chronic structural issue.

Trajectory: The scoring peak was 2013-14 at 32.0 points and the efficiency peak came later, in the Phoenix years, at .560 and .527 from the field. What the recent table actually shows is a player whose per-minute skill has barely moved while his supporting counting stats erode: rebounds have fallen every year since 2021-22, from 7.4 to 6.7 to 6.6 to 6.0 to 5.5, and blocks dropped to 0.9 in 2025-26, the lowest since his rookie season. Scoring, assists and shooting held. That is the classic aging pattern for a tall wing — the shot survives, the physical events do not — and it means his category value is slowly narrowing to points, FG%, FT% and threes, which is a thinner base than it looks. The 78-game season at 36.4 minutes is genuinely impressive at 37 and argues the Achilles chapter is closed, but it is also the reason the 2026-27 projection should not assume a repeat: the dossier's 66-game, 31-minute median is a deliberate regression toward age-38 base rates rather than a read on his health, and that is the right call. Treat 2025-26 as the outlier it is, not as the new floor.

Career sources: StatMuse career per-game by season · ESPN career stats · Kevin Durant, Wikipedia · NCAA.com on Durant's Texas season · Rockets end-of-season game notes

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