Last two years, Durant took 17 and 18, and his team is getting better, not worse. He COULD average 40, and I agree that there are few people with the skill sets to do it, but he’d have to average at LEAST 27 shots per game.

In today’s NBA, it becomes detrimental to the team to take so many shots. But I’m thinking about buying league pass so I can watch Durant.

The thing about Durant is, he’s not a guy who does a ton of different things on the court. He’s a scorer, pure and simple. He was put on this earth to shoot a basketball. He’s a lengthy 6′9 guy who shoots the lights out and has an ultra-quick release, there’s only so many ways teams can gameplan against that. Hollinger’s projection system has him averaging 30 points next year as a 21 year old, and I think even that is probably a few points too low.

Again, I don’t predict that it’s going to happen. It may even be that his teammates progress quickly enough that he never needs to take on quite that large a load. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility though. If someone were to come from the future and tell me that Dwyane Wade or Carmelo Anthony averaged 40 points in the next few years, I’d be shocked. Durant? I could see it happening if things fall right.

I think you’re underestimating how difficult it would be to average 40 a game over the course of an 82-game season.

Listen to the greatest scorer of all-time.

From Michael Jordan’s autobiography, “For Love of the Game”:

“Before the 1997-98 season, Penny Hardaway told me he was going to win the scoring title and average 40 points a game. Shaquille O’Neal was gone and Hardaway figured he would have all the opportunities. Do you know how hard it is to average 40 points? That’s 10 points a quarter, every quarter of every game. And that’s just your average. Now, if you don’t score at least 10, then you have to score even more later.”

Think about that.

Every 30-point game would need to be followed up with a 50-point explosion to maintain a 40-point average. Only two players — Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady — have averaged more than 32 points per game over the last decade.

Jordan continues:

“Scoring like I do doesn’t happen because a situation changes or a player decides to be more aggressive. You have to study the game, find opportunities. The opportunities you find one night might not be there the next night. You have to figure out ways to beat virtually every one of your opponents because you can be darn sure that if you’re scoring that many points every one of your opponents is going to make a point of shutting you down. You have to be aggressive at all times mentally, then pick and choose when to attack physically. These kids don’t understand that. They don’t have any understanding of the mental aspect necessary to score 40 points even one night.”