For a long time the NBA searched for another Michael Jordan, and never found one. Kobe Bryant spent long stretches of his memorable career performing as a sort of top-shelf Michael tribute band — he was said to have watched and imitated Jordan interviews early on — but he was not the same. Beyond everything else, he wasn’t as good. He could play the song, but he could never quite inhabit it.
Kevin Durant, though: sometimes, maybe. He is not as predatory a personality; he is a flighty, sensitive soul who reads about himself on the internet, and was clearly fine with going to a team with another MVP whose primacy he couldn’t always surmount.