In late September 2019, Kevin Durant climbed the stairs to the rooftop of the Brooklyn Nets’ training facility and stared out across his new city. From his perch atop the eight-story building in the Sunset Park neighborhood, he could see One World Trade Center and the rest of Lower Manhattan. Durant, dressed in a black no. 7 Nets jersey for the first time for media day, felt at home. “I looked at it as a new beginning,” he tells me, slumping into an office chair a few hours before a recent game against the Trail Blazers. “There’s a certain level of pride that you have as a basketball player when you’re playing in the city of New York.”