Durant causes panic by not picking a single Suns player in perfect starting five

We all know Kevin Durant is one of the greatest to ever play the games - James Worthy certainly does - and the Phoenix Suns are lucky to have him. Despite being nearly 36-years-old, the Olympic Games in Paris this summer showed us that if a team has Durant, then it has a chance to win.

Of course having Devin Booker alongside helps - he is the franchise player in The Valley after all - but Durant is probably the best second option in the league who can fill it as the go-to guy for however long you need him to during a game. He may also be the most automatic bucket in league history, which is crazy if you really think about it.

Durant was recently asked to name his perfect starting five of current players, and ignored Booker and every other Suns player.

The players that he did go ahead and pick were obvious choices - with the exception of one that we'll get to - but that hardly feels like the point. Despite having the opportunity to show some love to Booker, Durant instead went in another direction altogether. In the end opting for a pair of Dallas Mavericks to play alongside him.

Neither Durant or Booker particularly care what fans or media say about them - although they have wildly different ways of showing it - but in the case of Durant, he has been known to care about what even randomers on social media think. So surely he knew he'd be in for a rough time in not picking Booker, despite the fact he would have been an understandable choice.

He just kept Jayson Tatum - you know, the MVP of the NBA Finals - off the court in Paris, and looks like he still has one more level to reach in the league. The fit of Booker and Durant in The Valley has also been great since they joined forces, with injury to key teammates like Bradley Beal and a lack of depth some of the real reasons for their failure to have a deep playoff run.

In the end Luka Doncic running the show makes sense, as does playing with his good friend LeBron James. Joel Embiid at center might not be for everybody - but as Durant rightly put it - he can make 3-pointers at a higher rate than Nikola Jokic.

That might be correct in the sense Embiid shot 38.8 percent from deep last season, but Jokic actually has the better career average (35 percent versus 34.1 percent). Either way, you can't really argue that when healthy Embiid is at worst the second best center in the game, and his skill set meshes well with Durant too.

After that though - and with Booker sitting there and waiting to be slotted in - Durant instead opted for his former teammate in Klay Thompson. His argument that you need a "sniper" is again a valid one, but Booker can hit 3-pointers at a 36.4 percent rate. Thompson on the other hand is past his best, having had some tough injury luck in recent years.

If Durant really wanted to lean into the shooting, his current teammate Grayson Allen just led the entire league in this category last season, at 46.1 percent. He is in essence the reigning 3-point make king of the league, yet it was Thompson who got the nod.

There was a minute there earlier in the summer where it looked like the Houston Rockets might make a play for Durant. Yet perhaps it is another franchise in Texas that the Suns need to be wary of, as having your choice of every player in the league and picking two Mavericks is not nothing.