Stephen A. Smith responds to Kevin Durant: ‘You don’t want to make an enemy out of me’
You had to know this was coming.
Last week, Kevin Durant responded to reports that the Los Angeles Lakers are his “primary objective and landing spot” should he choose not to re-sign with the Oklahoma City Thunder this summer by saying that the generator of those reports — ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith — hadn’t spoken to him, his family or his friends on the matter, and that Smith was “lying” and “making up stories.”
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Smith offered a response of sorts via Twitter on Friday. He said that he never claimed he’d spoken to Durant, any members of his family or any of his teammates about Durant’s free agency, reaffirming that he’d “heard from folks I know” that “the cities” Durant would consider if he chose to leave OKC were Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, D.C., and New York, and it was both false and “totally uncalled for” to say that he was lying.
“It just appears that @KDTrey5 needs to learn something about today’s world in professional sports: We don’t have to talk TO HIM to talk ABOUT HIM!” Smith wrote, referencing Durant’s discussion of his displeasure with the media during 2015 All-Star Weekend in New York. “Folks like ME will still be here. Watching! Listening! Waiting! Reporting! Whether he likes it or not. While he’s here and long after he’s gone.”
Smith could have stood on that statement. Instead, he reopened the floor on Monday’s episode of “First Take,” launching into an 11-minute monologue on his journalistic integrity and the “sensitivity” of today’s players regarding media reports, among other things, followed by a reiteration of the content of his Friday tweet during a subsequent discussion with co-host Skip Bayless.
Here’s the monologue, via The Big Lead:
Real quick, on the point Smith raises about Durant not having signed an extension “to stay in Oklahoma City for years and years to come”: — KD would be giving up an awful lot of money if he made that decision.
League rules limit the length of veterans’ contract extensions to four years, including the years already existing on the contract. In Durant’s case, that means the longest extension he could sign with the Thunder would run through the end of the 2018-19 season; if he plays out the season and hits free agency, he can ink a new five-year deal with OKC that lasts until the ’20-’21 campaign, or a four-year contract with another suitor that still guarantees him an extra year beyond what an early extension could offer.
The CBA also caps the salary of the first year of a veteran’s extension at 107.5 percent of the player’s previous salary, and limits year-over-year raises to 7.5 percent of the salary in the first year of the extension. In Durant’s case, that means he’d stand to make a shade under $69.9 million over the course of the longest extension he could receive from the Thunder today:
| 2015-16 | $20,158,622.00 |
| Year 1 starting salary (’15-’16 x 107.5%) | $21,670,518.65 |
| 7.5% raise | $1,625,288.90 |
| Year 2 salary (Year 1 + raise) | $23,295,807.55 |
| Year 3 salary (Year 2 + raise) | $24,921,096.45 |
| Total extension value | $69,887,422.65 |
If Durant plays out this season and enters unrestricted free agency next summer, though, he can re-up with OKC on a full five-year maximum-salaried contract. We don’t know exactly how big that contract would be just yet — the starting value of a max deal are calculated based on a percentage of the NBA’s projected basketball-related income, and projections are subject to change — but an estimated ’16-’17 starting max salary of either $25 million or $25.1 million for a player with Durant’s level of service time would result in a deal either just below or just above $144 million over five years:
| 2016-17 Year 1 max for 7-9 years of service time | $25,000,000.00 | $25,100,000.00 |
| 7.5% raise | $1,875,000.00 | $1,882,500.00 |
| Year 2 (Year 1 + raise) | $26,875,000.00 | $26,982,500.00 |
| Year 3 (Year 2 + raise) | $28,750,000.00 | $28,865,000.00 |
| Year 4 (Year 3 + raise) | $30,625,000.00 | $30,747,500.00 |
| Year 5 (Year 4 + raise) | $32,500,000.00 | $32,630,000.00 |
| Total new contract value | $143,750,000.00 | $144,325,000.00 |
And if Durant elected this summer to follow in the footsteps of players like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, signing either a one-year deal or a two-year deal with a player option or Year 2, he could afford himself the opportunity to re-enter unrestricted free agency in the summer of 2017. That’s when the infusion of cash from the league’s new broadcast rights deal is expected to send the salary cap skyrocketing to $108 million, creating record-setting first-year salaries and a chance to “potentially rake in over $200 million over five seasons,” according to Jon Hamm of The Oklahoman. (Provided, of course, we don’t have a work stoppage.)
All of which is to say: not signing an extension doesn’t necessarily mean that Durant doesn’t want to stay in Oklahoma City. It might just mean he’s not willing to pass up the payday of a lifetime to do it now.
But that, obviously, is not the sexy takeaway here.
That distinction falls to Smith’s monologue-closing note about the relative wisdom of questioning the reporting of a “black man on national television with a big mouth,” which included something that sounded to many viewers like a thinly veiled threat:
I still stand here today telling you: [Durant’s] a good dude, but he’s wrong. And the guys that put it up to him, put him up to it, in their own way — I’m not talking about literally his comments, but in their own way, with their chirping behind my back all the time — they’re wrong too. And the sensitivity that these guys are showing, they are making unnecessary enemies. I am not one of them. I won’t be. I’ve got too much love and respect for who these guys are and what they mean to my community.
But I will say this lastly: you don’t want to make an enemy out of me. And I’m looking right into the camera, and I’m going to say it again. You do not want to make an enemy out of me. I’m not having it. I’ve done nothing wrong and I’m not going to tolerate it.
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There were some valid-enough signposts on Smith’s long and winding road: that reporters and commentators can talk about players whether or not they’ve spoken to them; that saying “I heard from folks I know” is different than saying “I talked to a source close to Kevin Durant,” and that the former does not necessarily constitute a lie; and that Durant (and other Thunderers) have seemed to grow increasingly testy with the media over the years in a fashion that doesn’t necessarily track with the often positive coverage they’ve received (understandably, given their success over the years) from both local and national outlets.
That doesn’t mean it’s not sort of jarring to hear someone claim he’s giving you more accurate information about a player’s future plans than the player himself; then again, y’know, it’s sometimes in a player’s best interest to not tell the general public what he might have said to someone behind closed doors. In any event, there is a way to look at this in which neither person is wrong — that Smith might not have spoken to the people whom Durant has said he trusts implicitly and whom he’s said will be the only people to consider viable sources on his future plans, and that that doesn’t necessarily make Smith a liar when he says he’s heard that KD would consider L.A. — even if not much about this seems really “right.”
After taking flak for that “threat,” Smith later went on SiriusXM Radio and attempted to clarify that all he intended to do was communicate to Durant that he would not allow the former NBA Most Valuable Player to have the last word in this squabble. Thus far, Durant hasn’t responded; he was apparently out dedicating a basketball court today. Maybe he’ll think better of it, preferring instead to just let this tempest-in-a-teapot lose its steam and peter out.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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