Trishtan Williams, the director for Netflix’s Starting 5, reflects on how the show brought KD’s compelling story arc throughout the 2024–25 season to the screen.
The opening scene of the new season of Netflix‘s Starting 5, which premiered Thursday, shows Indiana Pacers superstar Tyrese Haliburton in the most emotional, vulnerable, heart-wrenching moment of his young life. He’d just suffered a torn Achilles in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and the cameras documented every tear, every grimace, and the devastating realization that he had to helplessly watch the most important game he’d ever been a part of.
The second season of the hit series documented the 2024-25 year for Haliburton, league and NBA Finals MVP Shai-Gilgeous Alexander, Jaylen Brown, James Harden, and Kevin Durant. Here at Boardroom, we decided to go in-depth on how Starting 5 captured, documented, and portrayed what turned out to be a more dramatic season with the Phoenix Suns than anyone had anticipated.
Led by director Trishtan Williams, who’s produced such reality TV hits like Love Is Blind, The Amazing Race, and America’s Next Top Model, and director Susan Ansman, a six-time Emmy winner who helped capture Durant’s 2024 Olympic experience in Netflix’s excellent Court Of Gold series, they spent countless hours bringing KD’s story to life.
“We know he loves ball,” Williams told Boardroom last week, “But the other component to him is he’s going to talk trash to you. So when you get him in real time, sitting there to the camera, talking about tweeting and talking back, that’s like gold for any audience to see their superhero talk about how he’s talking to people. We don’t know these guys outside of what’s presented out there in the media. And then when you’re with them, it’s just like ‘I love you so much.'”
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In the first of the season’s eight episodes, you see him talking trash about Charles Barkley and Harden. Later in the season, the show documents an in-game exchange with legendary point guard and professional trash-talker Gary Payton, who’s sitting courtside as they chirp back and forth. Williams estimated that Netflix cameras were at roughly half of Durant’s games, capturing what she called countless hours of footage to then distill into a couple of hours interspersed throughout the year. Including Netflix, Omaha Productions, Higher Ground, and Uninterrupted, there was a full-time staff of over 100 working on bringing everything together.
As Phoenix entered the season with high expectations, the show wove in Durant’s experiences with Harden in Oklahoma City and Brooklyn, his championship-winning years with Golden State, and his own Achilles injury. Starting 5 also went into Durant’s history on social media, including his viral tweet claiming Twitter is better than going to the club.
“KD is himself. He doesn’t need help being KD,” Williams said. “He’s the king of that and knowing how to play the game at the same time.”
What the 15-time All-Star, two-time Finals MVP, 11-time All-NBA selection, and four-time scoring champ hadn’t experienced before in his 16 professional seasons was dealing with in-season trade rumors. With the Suns struggling and Durant having a year-and-a-half remaining on his contract, Williams, Ansman, and the show dedicated nearly an entire episode to the rumors, speculation, and drama surrounding KD’s trade saga that ended with him rejecting a deal to Golden State and other teams to remain in Phoenix for the full season. Not everyone would want cameras in their face during those moments, and ensuring there was a level of trust between Netflix and Durant was essential during a time when he said, “Anything is up for grabs with me,” especially given the shocking Luka Dončić trade that took place earlier in February.
“It’s having that trust to be with him in those key moments as these conversations are happening,” Williams said, “and for him to be so vulnerable and honest in the way he speaks about it was great. He’s really good at being who he is in this current climate of his career and saying, ‘I don’t have to pretend. I can say exactly what I want to say to exactly who I want to say it to, and I can be honest about exactly how I feel and where I want to go or where I don’t want to go.’ In any other case, this would be challenging for us, but for him it wasn’t at all.”
The fourth episode of the season, “Mama’s Boys,” focused on the five All-Stars’ relationships with their mothers, highlighted by Durant’s special bond with his mom, Wanda. The show described the sacrifices she made for him so Kevin could thrive as an athlete, culminating in the famous 2014 “real MVP” speech. The show shot scenes during Christmas at Durant’s Arizona house and her courtside presence at that night’s game against the Nuggets, where she wished happy holidays to Suns teammate Royce O’Neale and reunited with Russell Westbrook.
“Wanda is a star,” Williams said. “She is funny. She’s talking to people. People want to take pictures with her. She is talking to the refs. She’s mic’d up. She’s a born star. And I would not be surprised if there’s something spin-off for her and Kevin after this.”
While the Suns missed the postseason, the show veered away from Durant’s story and captured the thrilling Finals that peaked with Haliburton’s injury and the Thunder’s first championship in Oklahoma City. But the last episode showed Ansman capturing KD trying on a cowboy hat and boots, signifying his offseason trade from Phoenix to Houston to cap off his Starting 5 story arc, the culmination of hundreds of hours of filming and telling his story in a detailed, emotional, nuanced manner.
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