Kevin Durant Harder To Guard Than LeBron James, Hayward Says

Boston Celtics’ Gordon Hayward has been out of action for almost a year after he suffered a horrific ankle injury just about five minutes into his team’s opening game of the 2017-18 season against the Cleveland Cavaliers at the Quicken Loans Arena.

The Celtics small forward has been sidelined ever since and is currently on the road to recovery ahead of the new season. It is as good as his debut season with the Boston franchise having played just five minutes since joining from the Utah Jazz last summer.

Hayward knows a thing or two about defending against small forwards as he plays in the same position and revealed it is harder to guard Golden State Warriors’ Kevin Durant than Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James. The Celtics star was answering a question posed by a fan when he was playing Fortnite – the online video game released in 2017.

Durant and James are arguably two of the greatest players of the current generation and will be considered among the best once they call time on their careers. It is almost an impossible task to keep either player quiet during a game and they can singlehandedly influence the outcome.

The former showed it during the 2017 and 2018 NBA Finals when he played a major role in the Warriors winning back-to-back titles, especially in Game 3 in 2018, where he singlehandedly gave them the win scoring 43 points. James has proved, on more than one occasion, that he can drag a team to the finish without too much help as he did during his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“They’re both tough to guard man, for me KD’s always been a little tougher to guard, but like when LeBron just puts his shoulder down, sometimes, it makes it a little difficult,” Hayward said, as per Clutch Points.

The report claims that Hayward could be a little biased as he spent all of his career before moving to the Celtics in the Western Conference where he would have come up against Durant rather than James, who was in the East before his move to Los Angeles this summer.

The four-time MVP’s move, meanwhile, has made the Celtics favorites to progress to the NBA Finals from the East owing to the presence of Kyrie Irving and Hayward. Washington Wizards’ John Wall, however, thinks it will not be as easy as it looks on paper.

The Celtics made it to the Eastern Conference finals last season and lost in Game 7 to the James-led Cavaliers and they did it without Irving and Hayward, who were both injured. It was a team with young potential that surprised everyone by making a deep run in the playoffs.

Wall believes it could be difficult for them to mesh with Irving and Hayward, after playing without both the players in the latter stages of the campaign.

He admits that they have got a great team and backroom staff including head coach Brad Stevens, but insists that it is not easy to put everything together. Wall is of the opinion that the Wizards will compete for the East title once again after falling in the first round of play-offs last season.

"Boston looks great on paper. But how are all those young guys going to mesh with Kyrie [Irving] being back? Or Gordon Hayward being back?" Wall told Yahoo Sports. "Nobody knows how that’s going to work."

"They’ve got a hell of a coach in Brad Stevens, and [with GM and president] Danny Ainge, they’re going to figure it out," he added. "But you still got to put it all together. You’ve still got to make it work on the court.”