Kevin Durant, A Normal Guy (Who Dunks A Lot) in His ’35th Hour’ Series

There’s something unique about the NBA that allows us to expect more the league’s superstars. Maybe it’s the fact that it is the only professional sport where you can sit close enough to hear every word, feel every thundering dunk, and see every tiny movement of a player’s body. Perhaps more than any other sport, basketball allows for more individual creativity from each player (there’s so slam dunking in baseball). People feel a connection to the players almost more than any other sport (witness for the national Crucifixion of Lebron James for evidence).

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that superstar Kevin Durant has a web series called Kevin Durant’s 35th Hour where he wants to show he’s just a “regular person.”

Technically speaking, Durant who plays small forward/shooting guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder is not a regular person. Regular people aren’t 6’9’’, 230 pound athletes, capable of ripping three pointers and throwing NBA Jam style explosive dunks. Yet his new web series opens with a series of quotes to establish that he’s just like us, “Just because I play basketball doesn’t mean my life is different or I go through things differently. I still put my pants on the same way everybody else does.”

Yet Durant still lives and breaths basketball and the series first episode (above), titled “Capital Punishment” is centered around an August 20th exhibition game at Trinity University in Washington D.C.. We see Durant playing video games (he prefers Madden & NBA 2k11), telling a hilarious story about Megabus on the way to the game, signing autographs, and dominating on the court.

Produced by online brand managers Creative Endeavor and Durant’s management company Goodwin Sports Management

the video has hip-hop instrumentals on the soundtrack and flashy video edits that really give off the vibe that Durant is really chill bro who happens to be excellent at basketball or as Durant calls it ,”the greatest game in the world.”

With it’s crossovers, alley-ops, and slams the market for the series is definitely basketball junkies. However, he’s not the first, there is a small set of web video that involves basketball players who are (or who have managers) who know that the Internet is key to the brand of player. Lebron James has the animated YouTube mini-series The Lebrons. And earlier this season Kobe Bryant dropped a web film sponsored by Nike and featuring serious star power. Interesting to note is that Durant’s teammate Nate Robinson also has a web-series and is represented by the same management company.

So in a busy crop, Durant must do something different. A preview of later episodes show him doing normal every man stuff like bowling which is good because if he wants to reach a larger audience, he can’ just show basketball highlights. Durant has reputation in the league as being relaxed and very hip (here he is chilling with Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips and if achieves a balance of normal and ballin’ his new series should succeed in furthering the connection to his fans, and maybe making some new ones.

Tim Goessling is a contributing writer at Tubefilter. He’s a lifelong Celtics fan and thinks there are a lot of fake tough guys in the league (that’s a Durant quote). You can read more of his writing at thislalife.com