Midsummer dream: Durant star of stars in D.C.

Of course, Kevin Durant was the Most Valuable Player of the most highly anticipated summer league basketball showdown in recent memory: Goodman vs. Drew, D.C. vs. L.A., East vs. West ... Capital Punishment (as all the signs pointing to the Trinity University gym in Northeast Washington proclaimed).

Yes, Durant scored a game-high 44 points Saturday night – pretty lukewarm for the guy who lit up cyberspace with 66 at Rucker Park earlier this summer, but the high total in this game. Yes, he scored the go-ahead points with 21.5 seconds left in a fourth quarter as riveting as any NBA playoff game, all things considered. Yes, he blocked Drew's James Harden (his Oklahoma City Thunder teammate) on a game-winning baseline jumper, preserving a 135-134 victory in a game that lived up to the massive hype.

Not bad. But Durant was the MVP before the doors to the gym even opened. Essentially, he's the one who opened them, and everyone made sure to give him full credit for the basketball moment of Lockout Summer.

"When a guy like Kevin Durant does something, with the power he has in the NBA and the power he will continue to have, it kind of makes things easier," said the San Antonio Spurs' Gary Neal, who grew up in Aberdeen, Md., played collegiately at Towson and is a Goodman League regular.

"It's kind of hard to have a game like this in the NBA if you don't have influence. But a guy like Kevin Durant can just get on the phone and call anybody. That's why this game is the way it is.”

"It's something that players only dream of," Durant said before the game. "To see so many great players at one time ... it's a blessing, man, to play a game like this in front of my hometown. You can't beat that."

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There was never a chance the players would go through the motions, try to protect themselves or do anything to take away from what the game had evolved into.

"It's great to have all these guys come together and enjoy basketball," Harden (29 points) said beforehand. "There are so many NBA guys here, who made the effort to put the game on and got so many fans to get involved in it. It's great to be here.

"We came all the way here. We're gonna fight, we're gonna battle, we're gonna play hard."

"I knew it was gonna be big," Wall said. "Who's gonna be the best?"

Well, who will? "We are!" he exclaimed in his next breath.