I don't recall KD being called one of the hardest workers in the NBA by any reputable insider, analyst, or commentators. I've heard that about Booker a lot and I believe that to be true. I believe we need Booker, and to a lesser extent Beal, to step up if we hope to win a championship. I believe Booker can, hopefully Beal does. Hitching our wagon to KD, especially at this stage of his career, isn't likely to produce a championship. I believe we need someone else to be the #1 to get to that level, which we saw briefly in this last postseason but behind them there was no one. Booker produced much more than KD and more efficiently as well while working within the confines of the team while KD seemed to force his shots and looked like he did the year prior in Brooklyn, like he was no longer a top 3 player in the league and father time had begun to knock on his door.
Feel free to think he's driven but I'd like to see some reports from those close to him that say something like that because I haven't seen anything of that sort. All I've seen is him talk about how he reached out to Adam Silver to remove marijuana from the banned substances list. That isn't refining or working on your game. If he had the work ethic you seemed to describe I wouldn't see his defense questioned somewhat regularly when analysts talk about the Suns chances next year as well as how they talked about the Nets the last 4 years.