{"id":34191,"date":"2025-05-15T07:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T07:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/34191\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T07:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T07:14:11","slug":"kevin-durant-wins-pbwas-magic-johnson-award-for-second-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/34191\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Durant wins PBWA&#8217;s Magic Johnson Award for second time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;right:0;bottom:0;width:100%;height:100%;z-index:2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/77018986007-92-3353313.jpeg\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"vidplayicon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/icon-play-alt-white.svg.svg+xml\" alt=\"play\" style=\"height:40px;margin:auto 18px auto 27px;width:40px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Suns superstar Kevin Durant blasts new NBA All-Star Game format<\/p>\n<p>Phoenix Suns superstar Kevin Durant tears into the new NBA All-Star Game format, and sounds off about how he hates it.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/phoenix-suns\/21\/\" data-autotag=\"5b1d8499-f4c6-4857-a8e9-6d2e8a35bac3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Phoenix Suns<\/a> superstar Kevin Durant won the Professional Basketball Writers Association\u2019s Magic Johnson Award for the 2024-25 season.<\/p>\n<p>The award honors the NBA player who best displays on-court excellence as well as embraces media interviews and engages with fans.<\/p>\n<p>Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell finished second in this year\u2019s balloting. Miami Heat big Bam Adebayo, Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/golden-state-warriors\/9\/\" data-autotag=\"b851f12c-2556-43d0-b31a-c0eca28025da\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Golden State Warriors<\/a> forward Draymond Green were finalists based on nominations from PBWA members.<\/p>\n<p>A vote of the full PBWA membership determined the winner.<\/p>\n<p>Warriors guard Stephen Curry won the award last season. Durant also received the honor for the 2010-11 season while playing for the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/oklahoma-city-thunder\/25\/\" data-autotag=\"cd165858-eeda-4db8-a84a-db7a782e61e3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Durant is the second Suns player to receive the award. Steve Nash won it in 2011-12.<\/p>\n<p>Created in 2001, the award is named in honor of Earvin \u201cMagic\u201d Johnson, a five-time NBA champion, all with the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/los-angeles-lakers\/13\/\" data-autotag=\"4d34a300-3059-4ec4-a4d3-4d636ac95816\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>. The Hall of Famer was consistently engaging, thoughtful and gracious with the media throughout his career.<\/p>\n<p>Durant led Phoenix in scoring this season at 26.6 points a game, shooting 52.7% from the field overall, 43% from 3.<\/p>\n<p>Curry and Durant also made the 2024-25 PBWA\u2019s All-Interview first team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"exclude-from-newsgate\">Have opinions about the current state of the\u00a0Suns? Reach Suns Insider Duane Rankin at\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:dmrankin@gannett.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dmrankin@gannett.com<\/a>\u00a0or contact him at 480-810-5518. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DuaneRankin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">@DuaneRankin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"exclude-from-newsgate\">Support local journalism.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/offers.azcentral.com\/specialoffer?gps-source=CPNEWS&amp;itm_medium=onsite&amp;itm_source=TAGLINE&amp;itm_campaign=NEWSROOM&amp;itm_content=DUANERANKIN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Start your online subscription<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suns superstar Kevin Durant blasts new NBA All-Star Game format Phoenix Suns superstar Kevin Durant tears into the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[299,1085,7,311,2133,309,164,1187,1936,938,300,298,150,48,2682,70,85,6,239,1090,67,310,179,61,134,2065,472,4045,132,66,83,17,604,312,1084,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-34191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix-suns","8":"tag-angeles","9":"tag-az","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-city","12":"tag-durant","13":"tag-golden","14":"tag-golden-state-warriors","15":"tag-johnson","16":"tag-kevin","17":"tag-kevin-durant","18":"tag-lakers","19":"tag-los","20":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","21":"tag-magic","22":"tag-magic-johnson","23":"tag-national","24":"tag-national-sports","25":"tag-nba","26":"tag-new","27":"tag-new-visitors-az","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-oklahoma","30":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","31":"tag-overall","32":"tag-overall-positive","33":"tag-phoenix","34":"tag-phoenix-suns","35":"tag-phoenixsuns","36":"tag-positive","37":"tag-sports","38":"tag-sports-news","39":"tag-state","40":"tag-suns","41":"tag-thunder","42":"tag-visitors","43":"tag-warriors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114510617959059124","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}