As a rookie, Kevin Durant has had his moments. But by and large, the opening season of the Durant era has not been the victory tour everyone had been planning. In place of highlights and victories there have been missed shots and losses.

Last summer he was, sing it with me, the next Michael Jordan.

As his rookie year winds up, he's more like the latest guy who was once the next Michael Jordan, but still has a ton to prove.

Kobe Bryant and LeBron James can tell you that it can take a long time to get out of that club.

By a million statistical measures Durant has been pretty much just bad, although there are a lot of mitigating factors, including his youth, his young team, and the fact that for some reason he is playing out of position at shooting guard.

So there have been a lot of people saying he's not what he could be. And now he's talking back. 

Eric D. Williams of the Tacoma News Tribune writes:

"Honestly, I don't know what the critics want me to do," Durant said after practice in preparation for tonight's game against Detroit. "I mean, do they want me to average 30 points a game in this league as a rookie? On a new team? I don't see how I can do that. But I think I'm getting better and helping this team out as much as possible.

"I'm playing a new position that I've never played before (shooting guard) and guarding players that I've never guarded before, you know, 6-foot-2 and 6-foot-3 players, and just trying to do my best on that. And as time goes on I'm only going to get better if I keep working. I think right now, compared to the beginning of the year, I'm much better."

KD, baby: Read ESPN's David Thorpe and you will wonder no more. 

Thorpe has, in the big picture, always been a huge Kevin Durant fan. Nevertheless, Thorpe recently bumped Al Horford to the top of his rookie rankings (Insider), and his explanation has food for thought for Durant.

It helps that he is displaying better shot selection (barely better, but improved nonetheless), forcing defenders to deal with his craftiness, size and length on the dribble or post up.

Unfortunately, much of this is lost in his overall lack of success as a shooter and scorer. He just misses too many shots. Jumpers that he doesn't follow through on. Layups that he shoots terribly off balance. Even dunks that are too casual, which allow smaller players to block him from behind.

Durant really struggles with the concept, and the practice, of the second defender. He appears to be too narrowly focused on getting a shot over or around his defender, neglecting to consider that ultimately, his shot could be easily blocked or affected by that second guy, thus driving down his shooting percentages even further.

The result is Durant suffers very poor shooting games -- 2-of-12, 7-of-21 (twice), 5-of-20, 6-of-26. Those are five shooting lines from his past 15 games, four of them from losses. He literally has been shooting his team out of games. Factor in his overall lack of impact in games (outside of his recent efforts at creating steals on defense), and you can understand my willingness to drop him down a peg, even though he is having a great rookie season in terms of raw scoring.