By Alex Molina / info@eurohoops.net
In less than two years, the United States men’s basketball team will return home for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, looking to defend the gold medal it has won at each of the past four Games and Kevin Durant wants to be part of it.
The Houston Rockets star, who will be just months away from his 40th birthday when the Los Angeles Olympics begin, recently reaffirmed his desire to represent the United States for a fifth time. Speaking at a USA Basketball charity event in Southern California, Durant made it clear that the prospect of another Olympic run remains firmly on his mind.
If he makes the team, Durant would become a five-time Olympian. He would also have another opportunity to add to his already substantial Olympic scoring record. Durant is Team USA’s all-time leading Olympic scorer, male or female, and every point he scores in Los Angeles would further extend that mark.
“I’m just grateful that I can walk around and people just show me respect and love for what I do on the basketball court and inspiring some people,” Durant said. “That keeps me going, for sure.”
Age, at least for now, has done little to slow him down. Durant averaged 26 points per game for the Rockets last season and remains one of the NBA’s most productive offensive players. His place among the greatest players in basketball history is already secure. Yet his motivation for returning to the Olympic stage is remarkably simple.
“It’s just fun, man,” Durant told The Athletic late last season. “It’s an incredible time.”
For Durant, playing for Team USA has always been about more than basketball. The Olympic experience has taken him around the world, exposing him to places and cultures he might never have encountered without the game. “I’ve been in places I’ve never even thought about being in if it wasn’t for the game,” Durant said. “That experience is one of the best, man. I encourage everybody to play for their country.”
Durant’s effectiveness in international basketball has long been recognized by those who have coached him. Before facing Durant and the Rockets in March, former Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr — who coached Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics — called Durant the greatest American men’s FIBA player in history, a claim made due to the fact that Durant has helped the United States win four consecutive Olympic gold medals, beginning in London in 2012 and continuing through Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Tokyo in 2021 and Paris in 2024.
“He also loves FIBA,” Kerr said. “He loves the experience of being on a team, with all these guys who he is normally competing against. I think he likes eliminating the NBA bulls— that you have to go through for eight months, and it becomes the most pure sporting experience of a player’s life at that level,” Kerr said. “Kevin, at his core, he loves basketball as much as anybody I’ve ever been around.”
Former Team USA coach Gregg Popovich put it even more bluntly after coaching Durant at the Tokyo Games in 2021. “No Kevin, no gold.”
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