1. Kevin Durant averaged over 11 rebounds for the University of Texas
Kevin Durant is going to go down as possibly the greatest pure scorer in the history of the NBA. Only recently he jumped Shaquille O'Neal and has now put up the eighth most points in league history. Yet in his single season with the University of Texas, Durant somehow averaged 11.1 rebounds in 35 games played.
That in itself is crazy because when we think of Durant now, what comes to mind is a seven foot player with the skills and pull-up ability of a guard, and not a lumbering big who likes to bang in the paint. Durant's current head coach Frank Vogel knows how good the player is defensively, he's just used his basketball intelligence instead of brute force in order to achieve this.
What makes this number stand out even more is not the 25.8 points Durant managed per game to go along with those boards, or even the 40.4 percent he shot from deep. Instead it is the simply mind-blowing fact that Durant grabbed more boards in only three more games all season that year than Greg Oden.
The center who would be taken first overall ahead of Durant, and who most certainly had the more conventional body type of a bruising big man. Which was all the rage at the time, with the NBA in a totally different place and not yet impacted by the 3-point scoring rush that would follow.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it is frankly incredible Durant wasn't taken first. He was even beating Oden at his own game, while also showing what a wonderful scorer he could be.