Kevin Durant is speaking his mind more often, with varying results
Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Kevin Durant is perhaps the best liked player in the NBA, a future Hall of Famer who was held up as some sort of super-famous ideal in the wake of LeBron James’s “The Decision” fiasco. As the story goes, Durant is humble, kind, and everything the MVP of an internationally popular league should be. At its worst, this public image has been wielded by various groups as a cudgel against any players who may not conform to the dominant culture’s expectations, all while presenting Durant as a dull goody-two-shoes with no personality. Yet, if that brand has been unfair to KD as a person, it’s also allowed him not to get caught up in any dust-ups with the media.
That’s all changed in the past week, because Durant has been involved in several minor controversies that have added up to begin a shift in coverage. It started at All-Star Weekend in New York, when he stated that media members shouldn’t be voting on awards, generally don’t know what they’re talking about, and were only talking to him in that moment because it’s an obligation of his job. That slight fissure opened up a little more upon the publication of a new interview with Zach Baron for GQ.
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The piece is wide-ranging and touches on many subjects from Durant’s personal life to his exploits on the court, but it grabbed attention for his comments on the makeup of the current Thunder roster vs. what they had before trading NBA-leading scorer James Harden to avoid paying the luxury tax. Here’s a sample of what everyone is talking about:
Were the Thunder being loyal to Durant and his teammates when they traded James Harden, two and a half years ago, breaking up the best young core in the league in order to save a few luxury-tax dollars? Has the team ever really given Durant what he needs to win? Durant has been asked this question so many times he may not realize that he’s begun answering it honestly. “Players are paid to do their jobs, no matter who’s on the court. And as superstars, you gotta lead what you have. You gotta make them better. Some players might be better than others. Some teams might be better than others. You gotta do your job, and you gotta trust that the front office is going to do their job. It’s hard, though. You know what I’m saying? Because it’s like, s— [elided by BDL], I want win. Obviously our players aren’t as good as, you know, than they were before. But you have to figure it out.”
So you can ask him about D.C., about the prospect of coming home, sentimental montages on the JumboTron, he and LeBron defining some new sports era in which powerful athletes work their way back to the courts that birthed them and win championships for their little cousins and their little cousins’ friends. Geography becoming destiny. Destiny becoming dollars. But who knows, really? “I just don’t know who’s gonna be competitive, who’s not gonna be, you know? That’s why I can’t really think too far in my mind. Because you don’t know who’s going to be where. You know what I’m saying? It’s something you can’t control.”
Control. Another word you hear Kevin Durant say a lot these days. He recently moved, got out of the place he shared with a bunch of his friends. “I simplified everything this last year. It’s easier to kind of control now. There’s not a lot of crazy parts moving in my life anymore. I’m by myself.”
It’s news virtually any team a player says that his teammates are somehow lacking, so Durant’s comments have earned a lot of attention. Enough so, in fact, that he tried to explain himself further in an interview with Darnell Mayberry and Anthony Slater of The Oklahoman on Wednesday:
A story in GQ created some buzz, specifically the quote about your players not being as good in the past. What specifically did you mean?
I think my words were misinterpreted a little bit. I read that this morning and felt bad, but I was just talking in terms of how the public views our team, how everybody views us. Everybody talks about the James Harden trade to this day. Everybody else is asking about a player that’s a 3-time All-Star, leading scorer in the league, so we can’t do nothing about that. I never wanted to slight my teammates like I did, but just from the outside looking in, that’s how people view us. That we got worse. But we can’t control that. That’s what really I was trying to say, so I’m sorry if my words got misinterpreted, but I never want to slight my teammates.
Do you resent the organization for trading James Harden?
Do I resent the organization? Nah. Hell nah. Let’s look at it this way. We won 60 games the year he was gone, we won 59 the next year. Had a few injuries, never know what would have happened. So not at all. Plus they signed me to a max deal (smiles).
A lot of people on the outside looking in think that might be a factor in your decision next summer, the fact that they traded James and the talent hasn’t been the same as in the past and you haven’t been to the Finals since. What impact does that decision in 2012 make on your decision next summer?
None. None. We’re still a good team. Still a good team. Let’s be real now. We’d still be up there if we didn’t have injuries. If I wasn’t out, if Russ wasn’t out, we’d be up there. So don’t act like we a bad team or we got worse. Nah, we had injuries. It’s a part of the game and I understand that, not crying about it. But that’s what happened. We lost Russell for a playoff series, we lost Serge for a playoff series. Stuff like that happens, but to say all because we lost James we didn’t make it to the Finals. Everybody’s going to have their opinion, especially with the time winding down and the summer coming up with me, but I love where I’m at right now and I’m just trying to focus on that every single day.
It should be noted that these two interviews do not contradict each other, even if Durant’s explanation of the GQ context doesn’t entirely convince. It’s possible to believe that a team misses an MVP candidate and also think that the roster is perfectly capable of winning a title, especially when his arguments about past injuries are valid and too often forgotten in considerations of the Thunder’s progress. While the San Antonio Spurs sprinted through the 2014 playoffs, OKC gave them their toughest challenge even without a healthy Ibaka, a player San Antonio has had trouble solving in the past. Playing without Durant and Russell Westbrook for long stretches of the first half of the season has already harmed the Thunder’s chances of contention — they’re not even a playoff team right now — but it wouldn’t be terribly shocking to see them to win three playoff series and represent the West in the NBA Finals regardless of seeding.
However, the question up for debate here isn’t really if Durant is correct — anyone with any sense knows that the Thunder are worse off without Harden — but whether saying as much in public is a good idea. If we take Durant at his word, then he’s doing all this simply because he wants to express himself more often than he has previously in his career. Here’s what he said in New York on Friday:
“My first few years in the league, I was just finding myself,” Durant said Friday. “I think most of the time, I reacted based off of what everybody else wanted and how they viewed me as a person. I am just learning to be myself, not worrying about what everybody else says, I am going to make mistakes. I just want to show kids out here that athletes, entertainers, whoever, so-called celebrities, we aren’t robots. We go through emotions and go through feelings and I am just trying to express mine and try to help people along the way. I am not going to sit here and tell you that I am just this guy that is programmed to say the right stuff all the time and politically correct answers. I am done with that. I am just trying to be me and continue to grow as a man.”
If we take Durant at his word, then he’s making these comments not because he is trying to sell himself as some kind of new, tougher KD, but because he’s trying to be a more complete person in private and public. That desire comes across in the GQ interview as a whole, particularly in passages where Durant discusses his engagement to ex-fiancee Monica Wright, a WNBA player with the Minnesota Lynx, and wonders if he’ll end up alone. He also says that he’s learning how to be comfortable with crying and even mentions specific things that have caused him to tear up. These are not standard athlete interview subjects — he comes across as a professional in an overwhelmingly masculine field trying to figure out how to get in touch with his emotions. It sounds more like Drake than his All-Star peers.
It’s fair to say that Durant isn’t handling his new willingness to speak up particularly well. If this is a new persona conceived in conjunction with public relations experts, then the execution looks pretty incompetent. Durant doesn’t seem in control of the various aspects of the emotional badass image. They contradict each other in all the wrong ways — he started by insulting the media he would need to sell people on his new self, has tried to avoid speculation about his free-agent future while supplying plenty of fodder for the rumor mill, and then tried to walk it all back in a local interview that seems more like the work of a cliche-spewing veteran.
So, yes, it’s a failure. But it’s a very different kind of screw-up if Durant is just speaking his mind when he feels it’s appropriate instead of attempting to sell anyone on a new, not-your-grandma’s superstar. It might help to conceive of Durant not as a public figure first, but as a 26-year-old who happens to live his life in public. He is growing up, learning about what matters to him, and doing his best to express how it connects to his career and life. He could be speaking up because he considers it more important than he ever did before, not because he wants to change up his brand.
Yet Durant is also new to all this, so it makes total sense that he would not be in total control of the impact of his words. It’s possible that the media caught him in a bad mood at All-Star Weekend, that a GQ interview turned into more of a controversy given recent events, and that he thought damage control would be the best move no matter the contradictions. Durant might look unsure of himself because he’s actually unsure of himself. Plenty of people in or who remember their mid-20s should be able to relate.
It’s worth remembering that Durant earned his reputation as a nice boy not just because he was kind to reporters, but because he did so while appearing totally genuine. The only difference now could be that the authenticity is getting him into more trouble than it ever used to. A change in outcome does not ensure that there’s been a massive change in approach.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
