Toronto Raptors fall to Oklahoma City Thunder, 104-92

Kevin Durant may not have the brute strength and shocking power of a LeBron James or the outward intensity and drive of a Kobe Bryant but there aren’t a handful of people on the planet who can do what he does on the basketball court and the one memorable play of a Sunday afternoon at the Air Canada Centre was his.

Durant, who plays about five inches taller than his listed six-foot-nine frame, made one of the prettier moves of the season in the fourth quarter, blitzing past an overmatched DeMar DeRozan for two of his 22 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder blitzed the Raptors 104-92 before an announced crowd of 17,634.

“He has a game within the game,” Raptors coach Dwane Casey said of the perennial all-star. “When things got tough . . . he just put his head down and started going to the basket.”

The simple fact is that the team with by far the best player on the court won the game, as is usually the case in the NBA. Durant may have had somewhat pedestrian stats for him — 22 points, seven rebounds, seven assists — but when his team needed a play, he made it. He was effective defensively in calming a red-hot Alan Anderson of the Raptors (Anderson had a career-high 27 points but just eight in the second half), he pestered DeRozan into a difficult shooting night when he had to and he took over offensively at key junctures.

“His shot wasn’t falling early so he just mixed it up. He did a good job of catching and attacking, catching and whatever it was,” said Casey. “He’s an experienced enough guy to play the game within the game, which was what he had to do.”

The Raptors, despite being at a decided talent deficiency and playing with just two big men because Aaron Gray was sidelined by the flu, did put up a good fight, which the coach found heartening.

They stayed with the Thunder — owners of the NBA’s best record at 26-7 — for a large portion of the game before the inevitable happened.

“I praised our guys for the way they played — we fought, scrapped (but) at the end of the day, reality set in,” said Casey.

Still, there were still enough blips to cause some concern. In the face of the best defence they’ve met since a mid-December winning streak began, the Raptors reverted to some old habits.