<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">SUITLAND, Md. ? Basketball waited for Kevin Durant on the far side of a football field. When her youngest son was 7, Wanda Pratt enrolled him in the Boys & Girls Club in Capital Heights, Md., across the Anacostia River from Washington D.C. The fee she paid entitled Durant to every sport the club offered; so when football season ended, Pratt gave his name to the basketball coach. And Durant reported to the gym. The coach knew nothing about Durant. But he recognized a born basketball player when one appeared on his court. "He was the tallest kid on the team," Pratt said. Eleven years later, Durant stands 6-foot-9. With his arms outstretched, he is seven inches wider than he is tall, projecting the appearance of a windmill with four blades. The gentle facial features of his boyhood remain. But the rest of him, which continues to grow in all the right ways for a basketball player, has evolved into something Dr. James Naismith likely never imagined in 1891, when he wrote the 13 original rules of the game. Durant can play all five positions on the court better than most of the population can play one. His dominion is rare for someone engaged in a team pursuit. Like Roger Federer in tennis or Tiger Woods in golf, Durant excels in every discipline of his sport, so much so that his weaknesses, like playing defense at the frenetic college level, are merely relative. Unlike a point guard whose genetics limit his height or a center whose genetics limit his range, Durant was blessed with the architecture of a prototype: if you have five Kevin Durants, you have a complete team. One that rebounds, dribbles, passes, blocks shots, defends and scores. But forces beyond physiology conspired to lead the 18-year-old freshman swingman and NCAA player of the year candidate to the University of Texas. One of those forces is the National Basketball Association, which instituted a new regulation for 2007 that requires players to turn 18 before they can pledge their names to the draft. Without that rule, Durant might be playing for the Portland Trail Blazers right now, earning millions of dollars as a lottery-pick rookie with a shoe contract and his image on "NBA 2K7." The rest of the forces are the people from his past. The evolution of Durant as a player began with his mother, who took him to the Boys & Girls Club so he would have something to do between school and dinner. Others entered his life at the crucial times. Many remain. Each left a remnant, a fleck of something that ? held up to light ? glows. "He had people around him who helped him remain committed," said Pratt, who views her son's success as validation and culmination of blind commitment. "It wasn't easy. But he persevered. Out of all of this, the one thing he knows for sure is that hard work pays off. He's living proof." Sometime during that first basketball season in Capital Heights, a grandmother of one of Durant's teammates approached Pratt. She told Pratt about a coach at a nearby activity center. He came from the neighborhood. He knew the game. "She suggested that he (Durant) play for coach Brown," Pratt said. </div> Source
