“The crab legs — that’s what I had. They open them up for you so that you don’t have to do the work,” he says. Then he quickly adds, “But I don’t mind the work.” Bird counters by hyping the seafood at both Flying Fish and Cutters Bayhouse. “You like that kind of stuff, you’re in the right place,” she says.

The conversation closes with the veteran passing along a few first-year tips on coping and getting around to the newbie. Though Durant doesn’t acknowledge feeling any of the new-city jitters that Bird says she experienced during her first season (perhaps because he hasn’t, you know, really lived here yet), he asks her how she managed to familiarize herself with Seattle. “I just got in my car and drove,” she responds. “I didn’t know where I was going, but I was like, I’m going to figure it out. That’s how you get to know Seattle, whether you live here or not.”
With that, Bird and Durant exchange a quick handshake and are off. Durant, however, can’t resist taking one last shot with a ball that he found wedged under a courtside seat. He dribbles once, sets himself, and fires up a three from the far-right-hand corner of the court. It arches magnificently … and misses the basket entirely, the only one of the 300-odd shots he threw up during the photo session to meet such a fate.

The ball rolls toward the opposite sideline, intersecting Bird’s path on her walk to the locker room. Her photo-session blazer already doffed and slung over her shoulder, she grabs the ball off the floor and wordlessly slings it back to him. A slight half grin, half smirk creases her face as she, the veteran, again lends the rookie a hand. Durant nods appreciatively and then buries the follow-up.