First the waiters in Delhi brought Kevin Durant a plate of butter chicken, and then what looked like…a pizza? Then some rice, and a glass of tequila, and then a plate of samosas. “I'm sorry,” Durant said to the waiter bending low over his shoulder. “What is this?” He was wearing a Morrissey “Boxers” tour T-shirt and black jeans and attempting to pretend that he couldn't see the long line of people trying to see him. He'd landed on a private jet a few hours ago: the first real NBA star in anyone's memory to come all this way, to India, where basketball is still a novelty. This dinner, out on the roof deck of a hotel in the city's diplomatic enclave and nominally hosted by the NBA, was in his honor. Well-intentioned waiters kept trying to bring him things. Scotch. An apron, for some reason. Naan. They brought out the biggest piece of naan bread you've ever seen. After some conversation, Durant was persuaded to hoist the bread in the air to the upper edge of his seven-foot wingspan, like a man offering a sacrifice to God, so that his YouTube guy could film this moment of cultural exchange for his YouTube channel.

Just six weeks earlier, Durant's team, the Golden State Warriors, won the NBA Finals in five games. Durant was the finals MVP. In Game 3, with his team trailing the Cleveland Cavaliers with under a minute to go, he hit the shot of his life—a three-pointer, tossed up as casually and optimistically as a wave hello, over LeBron James, his role model and rival. “That was the best moment I ever had,” Durant told me. “I made the game-winning shot in the finals against my fucking idol. Somebody that I really, really, really followed since I was a ninth-grade high schooler. I felt like he was passing the torch to me.”

Even before his Game 3 shot fell, it felt inevitable that the Warriors would win. They'd arrived in the finals without having lost a single playoff game. And Durant, who'd spent the season being cast as a villain for leaving the Oklahoma City Thunder—or at least a man more interested in winning a championship than remaining, for sentimental reasons, on the team that first drafted him—was playing to the full, lethal level of his abilities. It was merciless: 38 points in the first game of the finals, 33 in the second, 31 and 35 in Games 3 and 4, and 39 in the closeout game against a Cleveland team that likely went home seeing Durant's silky, improbably elegant jump shot in their dreams.

The night the Warriors won the title, Durant walked out of the arena tipsy from the beer he'd had in the locker room, waded through a crowd of fans, got in his Tesla, and was driven home, to celebrate more. After nine often frustrating years in the league, he was a champion, the consensus best player on the best team, and now, in the months that followed, he was enthusiastically exploring what that meant. He went to Vegas to celebrate, and to Hawaii to paddleboard, and to Sicily, where he attended Google Camp with Prince Harry and David Geffen. “I got to meet people I never thought I'd meet,” he told me. “I lived in L.A. all summer. I hung out at Nobu Malibu for July Fourth.” About a year ago, the NBA asked him if perhaps he'd come be a basketball ambassador for them for a few days in India, and he'd agreed—his charitable foundation could use the occasion to build a couple of courts there. He felt like, why not? How hard could it be, to be an ambassador?