PARIS (France) - Kevin Durant is one of the greatest players in the history of USA Basketball. Many will call him the best, the most impactful of all time now that he has claimed four Olympic gold medals.
What's more, Durant is the USA's all-time scorer in Olympic history!
Yet the accolades are not, he says, what are most important for his Olympic experience.
"I don't want to downplay it, it's cool to accomplish it," he said.
"(But) The journey is more fulfilling to me than knowing that I got these medals.
"Every time I think about USAB, it's practices, bus rides, plane rides, the talks that we had, the relationships we had after we left. The gold is just the cherry on top. That's the main goal.
"'What did I build with these guys throughout this time?' That's more important to me than racking up the medals."
What is lost on no one is the importance of Durant to the USA team.
After winning the FIBA Basketball World Cup with the USA in 2010, when he was MVP of the event, Durant unleashed his unworldly talent on the competition at the Olympics and has been unstoppable. After the Gold Medal Game triumph in Paris, Durant was sitting on 518 points scored over four Summer Games.
Durant won't be surprised if one day, another player climbs above him on the scoring ladder.
"Yeah, I could see somebody beating that number," he said to Eurohoops.net. "New records are meant to be broken."
Being the all-time leading scorer was never his aim.
"Like I said, my goal every time I put this jersey on is to represent my country, my state, my street, my family name," he said.
In France this summer, the USA had what was widely accepted as their strongest possible team and it needed to be considering the challenges offered by Serbia in the Semi-Finals and France in the Gold Medal Game.
Durant says the latest version of USA definitely made its mark on international basketball.
"It helped push the game forward," he said. "And I think since I've been here, we've done that. We built off what the Dream Team did in '92 and we carried that torch.
"And that was the main goal."
What the USA did in France was extra special for Durant.
"The final was an incredible game, we had an incredible time here in Paris and Lille," he said.
The Olympic basketball tournaments in France can lay claim to being the best of all time. The competition was intense and the basketball played was of the highest order.
There was the attendance. The 1,078,319 fans attending the Women's and Men's Olympic Basketball Tournaments at Paris 2024 set a new Olympic attendance record for basketball.
The previous record of 1,068,032 spectators was set at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. Paris achieved this with 52 games—40 fewer than the format used in Atlanta. The competition in Lille's Pierre Mauroy Stadium was amazing.
There was a total of 876,686 spectators attending the 36 men's and women's games at the converted football arena.
"So much support for the game of basketball and gratefully I could do it again," Durant said. "Had so much fun, and some stuff like Steph’s (Curry) shooting was out of body performance, out of body experience."
What helped the USA find success, according to Durant, was that everyone was only concerned about winning. Everyone checked his ego at the door.
"So many great players that play in this program that don’t even think about who’s the best player, you just come out here try to contribute as much as you can for the big picture and that’s to continue to push our game forward around the world..."
Now the speculation is already underway about which players from this year's team, including Durant, will play at the next Olympics.
"And as far as playing in Los Angeles 2028, who knows man, we’ll see," he said.
FIBA