It’s not often that I can make such a claim. Truthfully, most NFL kickers would out-lift me. I’m pretty skinny and scrappy, and back in high school baseball, the bat swung me. But I’ll be damned if I can’t get into a weight-lifting competition with none other than Texas’ finest, future NBA lottery pick, Kevin Durant. As Michael David Smith at FanHouse pointed out, Durant can’t bench 185 pounds!! From Jason Quick at the Oregonian,
Players were rated on how many times they could bench press 185 pounds. Oden didn’t attempt the bench press in order to prevent an injury to his right wrist, which has recently recovered from injury.
But get this: Only one player was unable to bench press 185 even once - Kevin Durant.
Quick also says that Oden is quicker, faster, and can jump higher than Durant. However, keep in mind that if all things were judged on combine numbers, then Darko would be first team All-NBA (as anyone who read the ESPN the Magazine draft issue on Darko would attest). Look, Durant probably needs to beef up in order to avoid being bullied on the court. But there’s no way this news would keep me from drafting him (although it does make me happy!)
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After I heard this, I was thinking the same thing. (Though, at this point, I might struggle to hoist 185, which is pathetic.) Anyway, you also have to consider his wingspan. It’s way, way harder for a guy with a 7′5 span to lift than it is for someone with more proportional arms, so all told, Durant’s probably stronger than his bench shows.
Still, “I can lift more than an NBA player” sure has an nice ring to it.