Kevin Durant spent his one year in college at Texas, but it seems his heart was set on a different destination before he made his final decision.
Durant was heavily recruited by the North Carolina Tar Heels in 2006, and Durant even took an official visit to see the Heels beat Duke. Durant’s high school roommate Ty Lawson ended up committing, and North Carolina hoped Durant would join him.
“They were recruiting me heavy with (Lawson),” Durant said, via Ross Martin of 247 Sports. “They were expecting us to come together. I am going on official visits. I went to a game where they beat Duke at the buzzer. And they won a National Championship that year, my junior year in high school. So I was like, ‘Man I want to go to Carolina.'”
Durant would have joined a loaded Carolina squad that featured the likes of Tyler Hansbrough and Danny Green. Ultimately, that helped drive him away from the school, as he feared he wouldn’t get the playing time he felt he deserved.
“They were stacked though. They had a nice senior class. They went to the Elite Eight that year,” Durant said. “Tyler Hansbrough was there. Danny Green. All those dudes. So I would have gotten kind of lost. Not lost. Not lost, but I would have been playing 25 minutes instead of 40 minutes like I should have been playing.”
Durant starred for a year at Texas, became the No. 2 pick in the draft, and has since become a league MVP. He also very much took to his eventual college home. Putting him at North Carolina would have been tantalizing, and he may have helped them win a title, but things worked out for him in the long term.
