All these initiatives possess an incredibly potent marketing solution, the ten-bagger kind. The secret sits in those workout machines in Durant’s apartment. No player of Durant’s caliber has ever returned from a ruptured Achilles to the same level of dominance. No player in almost half a century has brought an NBA trophy to the country’s largest city, one mad for basketball. “The team is in the garage stage, where we are putting the idea together. It’s more intimate, everyone understands the goal and has a fresh experience,” Durant says. “A championship would be a whole other level, but injecting a new energy into a city through basketball would be even cooler.”