An exclusive with Kevin Durant: On his time in OKC, his legacy and the Thunder's 2025 title

• Baxter Holmes and David Seronick

Oct 30, 2026, 07:00 AM ET

Nearly two decades ago, in July 2008, Kevin Durant arrived in Oklahoma City.

He was 19 years old, in just his second season in the NBA and the new face of a young franchise that had just moved from Seattle.

Though the Thunder started slowly in his first season, the team famously reached the NBA Finals in its fourth season in Oklahoma with a promising young core of Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden -- all future NBA MVPs.

The Thunder fell in the 2012 Finals to the Miami Heat, but the team seemed poised for a dynastic run. Yet 2012 marked that core's only Finals appearance in Oklahoma City. All three players moved on, with Durant leaving in 2016 for Golden State, where he won consecutive NBA championships and Finals MVPs with the Warriors.

Years later, in a weird twist of cosmic fate, the Thunder completed what that Durant, Westbrook, Harden core could not: They won a championship.

The Thunder won the 2025 title and are well-positioned to contend for years to come.

Durant, a 19-year veteran, is now in his second season with the Houston Rockets.

After being selected second in the 2007 draft by the Seattle SuperSonics, he played eight seasons in Oklahoma City, and for all the accolades he received there, some in OKC viewed his departure in 2016 with acrimony. He has been welcomed back, at times, with boos.

In an exclusive interview with ESPN's David Seronick for the E60 documentary "The Oklahoma Standard," which details the Thunder's connection to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, Durant reflected on his time with the Thunder, the city and the team's 2025 championship.

"I really, really am grateful to be an alumni of the Thunder and to help kick-start this thing off with a lot of my teammates," Durant said. "It's amazing to see. It's tough to play against as a player, but there's still a little side of me when I play against these guys, I've got a soft spot in my heart for that state."

Durant and the Rockets play the Thunder on Oct. 31 in their first meeting of the season.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity:

ESPN: What do you remember about arriving in Oklahoma City in 2008 and how the city greeted you?

Durant: With open arms. The excitement, the energy level was high. We weren't a great team. We were a young team in rebuilding mode. But you wouldn't have thought that from listening and hearing the fans around the city once we got there. You could tell that region was waiting for a professional team to come. And I felt right at home early.

ESPN: The city had been the temporary home of the New Orleans Hornets when that team was displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but what do you think it meant to fans to have their own team?

Durant: It meant everything. It was finally a way to get out of that dark cloud of the Oklahoma City bombing. Obviously, inside the state of Oklahoma, the community means much more (than that). But outside, people who've never been to Oklahoma, who only heard about Oklahoma, it was about the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVeigh and the tragedy that came with that.

And once we got there, I mean, we didn't realize this, but we were forming a new culture for the whole state of Oklahoma. It was something to feel proud of. It was something to hang on to.

Sports is something that brings everybody together. So I could sense that early. The crowd energy was different -- how loud they were. You go to arenas and you hear the noise level, but this felt a little different to me. The energy ... you could just feel it through the crowd every game. Once (Thunder general manager) Sam Presti and those guys introduced us to the history of the state of Oklahoma and took us to the site where the bombing was and let us know what these people went through and what we're actually planning for it, it made it way more meaningful to go out there and put the jersey on.

ESPN: What do you remember about your first visit to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum?

Durant: [Sam] was really adamant about us touching the community, being outside, going to see the people and feel the people and letting them understand that we were here to stay and that we care about the community. It was powerful. It was powerful. And [the city] has a special place in my heart because of the tragedy it'd been through. And now that we can shed some light on the town and the city and the state, I felt the level of pride that I was from there.

ESPN: You've played in other markets. What makes Oklahoma City different?

Durant: I played in some of the biggest markets, and it felt like coming to those games was just another hobby, something else to do within that city. You got plays, you got Broadway. You've just got so much. It felt like coming to those games was just another hobby, something else to do within that city. You just got so much. You got baseball teams, football teams. Like, it's just something else to add, something else to do.

I felt like going to a Thunder game is ... that was all our people had to do. It was like when the Thunder game was on, I just imagined every small town within Oklahoma that's an hour or two outside of the city shutting down and watching those games.

So being the only sports team there, it felt like we were in college. And I got close with people who came to the games, fans who came to the games. Players were building relationships with people who supported season-ticket holders, people in the front row. It just felt like a family atmosphere, man. It was unique. Once I left and saw how other markets operate, some fans may come to the game halfway through the first quarter. Our fans (in Oklahoma City) were standing up during warmups. It was packed.

That level of enthusiasm for the game of basketball, but also understanding that we're uniting the community at the same time, is pretty dope.

Oklahoma City itself just went through a lot in those times and has always been an overlooked city compared to most cities around the country. And it was that sense of pride. It was just what we wanted to represent -- we're bigger than this. Our city's about love. I know it was a tragedy, a hateful crime that killed a lot of people, but we're a city of love and camaraderie and togetherness.

ESPN: The team's culture has been represented by the ideals of "The Oklahoma Standard," the term for the collective response by the community to the bombing. What did that mean to you during your time there? What do you remember?

Durant: I embodied it every day -- the blue-collar, hard-working, disciplined approach. Sam Presti was the leader in that. When we first got in, everything we did was buttoned up, militant almost. We moved together as a unit. We wore the same things on the plane. You could tell that a team was coming when you saw us pull up to a hotel, came to a game. We were always together as a group.

I can remember early on, our first few years, every time we went on a road trip, we would land and six or seven of us would go through to the mall in every city together -- it's crazy to think about it -- with Oklahoma City Thunder sweats on. But we moved as a unit, and people understood that about us. We were young and energetic. And that matched the franchise in Oklahoma City itself.

The young, new franchise within the NBA -- almost an expansion-like franchise, even though we moved from Seattle. But it felt like an expansion franchise. We had to find our practice facility. First, we were (practicing) in a D2 college. Then we went to the roller rink; they bought that out and renovated that out. So I saw the grind from the ground floor up until where it is now.

Our team and the personalities on our team kind of formed that way. Two young guys that were growing, that were learning, that were in this new city, and the new city was embracing us and vice versa. [The] timing was just perfect when it came to that.

ESPN: You reached your Finals quickly. What was the early success like?

Durant: It was fun because it was unexpected. There was no pressure on us to go win. The pressure was on each one of us individually to get better as players, to become more and more professional. And once we became more and more professional and better individually as players, we always liked playing with each other.

So, once we got on the floor, that was even easier. So once we all got comfortable with the game of basketball, we took off -- and I think our whole organization took off. Sam Presti was a young GM at the time ... so we were all growing at the same time. And we were experiencing things pretty quickly.

So we were hitting these marks early on, and things happened pretty fast for us. And that's from Sam setting the culture where we care strictly about the game and getting better, and everybody -- the coaching staff and the executives -- cared about putting us in a good position to just focus on the game of basketball.

ESPN: When the Thunder won in 2025 and had the parade in downtown Oklahoma City, was there any part of you that was happy for the community to experience that?

Durant: Most definitely. I mean, when we lost in 2012, we almost had like a small parade. So many people came and welcomed us back home and showed us so much love and congratulated us on a great season. I knew at that moment, if the city ever wins a championship, the amount of people that's going to show up for this parade and the energy they're going to have for this parade is going to be insane. ...

I wish our [Thunder] team could have been the one to do it because we were young and we showed we could. But I felt the sense of pride of being an alumni of the Thunder, seeing this team win as well, because I felt that's the evolution of what we did. I felt like Sam Presti hit his final form and figured out the best way for him to be. And Shai and Jalen Williams, I just felt like they all hit that mark, and we kind of laid the foundation on what it meant to be successful young players in this league, and they built upon that.

ESPN: And to see how far the team and city have come with their relationship all these years later, knowing you were there at the start?

Durant: It's one of the most special things that I can say I've been a part of, man. You don't get to be at the infant stages of a lot of things and to see it blossom to where it is now.

And then to also still see some of the people that I work with still there to this day, it's just a testament to everybody that's worked there, that's poured everything into the organization, into the city, and really cared about making the team synonymous with everybody in the city and the state and wanting the community to feel a part of that success. ...

I felt that from the beginning. They were preaching that from the beginning. And to see that culture still going on today, on top of winning a championship and having a good opportunity to keep winning championships? Like I said, I have a sense of pride, man. I really, really am grateful to be an alumni of the Thunder and to help kickstart this thing off with a lot of my teammates.

It's amazing to see ... There's still a little side of me when I play against these guys, I've got a soft spot in my heart for that state."