SuperSonics teammate Nick Collison also was dropped when the Americans announced their decisions about two hours after practicing at the Thomas & Mack Center. The final roster needed to be submitted Tuesday, a day before the U.S. opens the FIBA Americas tournament against Venezuela.
The Americans have learned in recent years that international basketball is not a young man's game.
"The experience of the team helps us, there's no question," U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "The good teams we play against are not only older individually, they're old collectively. They've grown old together. So maybe we can make up some of that with the selections that we made."
As expected, Michael Redd and Mike Miller had nothing to worry about. The Americans have gone too long without a reliable perimeter threat, so they weren't going to send home two of the NBA's best.
Besides the shooters, USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo and Krzyzewski also sought some stoppers. That created spots for New Orleans' Tyson Chandler, one of the NBA's top rebounders and shot blockers, and versatile Detroit forward Tayshaun Prince.
"We knew exactly what we felt we needed in terms of adding certain components to our roster, and the good news is we were able to accomplish that," Colangelo said.
The U.S. roster includes: Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, Dwight Howard, Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups, Redd, Miller, Chandler, Prince and Deron Williams.
When the 18-year-old Durant was added to the national team roster in May, it was thought that he was a pick for the future. Then he showed he was a legitimate candidate to make the team this year when he scored 22 points last month in the intrasquad game to close minicamp.
But the Americans were looking for more experience after the average age of the players on last year's world championships team was 24.5. This squad averages 26.2, largely because of the additions of veteran point guards Kidd and Billups.
"With Kevin, one year in college and 18 years old and he's made giant progress and he's going to be one of the faces of the NBA and USA Basketball who will be considered next year because 10 months from now he's only going to get better," Krzyzewski said.
Collison has played on eight USA Basketball teams, including one in the 2003 Olympic qualifier. He missed minicamp after getting married, but played well after joining the team for practices last week.
"Nick wasn't involved from the very beginning, so to be this close to making it after being here for about a week shows what a tremendous job he did," Krzyzewski said. "This was an extremely difficult decision because for both kids you can make a case for either one."