CLEVELAND, Ohio - Kevin Durant had just scored 43 points with 13 rebounds and seven assists, not to mention his dagger 3-pointer with 49 seconds to play. So the first question Steve Kerr got Wednesday after Game 3 of the NBA Finals was about his bench.

Kerr politely talked about the impact of players such as Shaun Livingston and Jordan Bell before smiling and asking, "but we should probably go back to Kevin Durant, shouldn't we?"

Actually, let's go all the way back to Game 3 of the 2017 NBA Finals, when Durant's 3-pointer with 45 seconds left gave the Warriors the lead for good, not to mention a 3-0 lead in the series.

And now fast forward to Wednesday night, and Durant's 3-pointer with 49 seconds left, which put the Warriors up by six. And, again, helped secure a 3-0 lead in the series.

Or better yet (or worse yet, depending on who you ask), here's a synched comparison.

New year. Same spot for KD in Game 3. pic.twitter.com/yOZDD800Tc — ESPN (@espn) June 7, 2018

In three NBA Finals games at Quicken Loans Arena, Durant is averaging 36.3 points per game. He also has two shots that crushed the Cavs' title hopes.

When you consider that each shot was crucial to giving the Warriors a 3-0 series lead, and only three teams have ever forced a Game 7 after trailing 3-0 -- and none of them won Game 7 -- those shots seem like defining moments for Durant.

At least that's how everybody other than Durant probably feels about it.

"I'm not done playing basketball yet, so I don't really look at these as defining moments," said Durant, who insists that, as Draymond Green and Stephen Curry roared in his face following the shot, he wasn't thinking about 2017. "No, not at all. I just took the shot."

The impact of the moment was a little different for everybody else on the floor. Kevin Love said it was like deja vu. So did Green. Klay Thompson said Wednesday's shot was "even more of a dagger" than last year's because it gave the Warriors a bigger lead.

"You could relax a little more than we did last year, when we were only up one," said Thompson. "That was an amazing shot. He looked like he was 37-38 feet from the rim. When he's got it going, it's almost impossible to stop."

Or, as LeBron James put it: "I mean, that's what (Durant) does. He's a scorer. You know, he's an assassin, and that was one of those assassin plays right there."

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