During a game in Washington, D.C. back in January, the Wizards weren’t shy about openly recruiting Kevin Durant to sign with them in the summer of 2016. Although they didn’t necessarily endorse KD’s recruitment, they ran a sponsored weather report on the JumboTron at the Verizon Center in the middle of a Thunder/Wizards game that featured a photoshopped picture of KD wearing a Washington jersey. The spot also featured the headline, “Come Home KD,” on it.
KD wasn’t amused. With the Thunder scheduled to play the Wizards in Washington on Tuesday night, he spoke with reporters about the recruiting practices that the Wizards put into place last season and said that he wasn’t a fan of them.
“[The January 22 visit] was kind of disrespectful, in my opinion, because you’ve got a great team there already that deserves your full 100 percent support,” he said. “I wouldn’t like that if I was on that team. I didn’t like that, but it comes with it nowadays.”
Wizards star Bradley Beal agreed with KD when he was told about his comments today:
KD went on to explain that he also doesn’t like talking about his impending free agency.
“Free agency is like a season now, and it shouldn’t be that big,” he said. “Me, I feel, is you should focus on who you have on your team. It’s easy to get your hopes up and expect a guy to come to your team or whatever—and I’m not talking about myself, I’m just talking about free agency in the past years and in the future—you get your hopes up as a fan, and then they let you down and you end up not liking the player. There’s a little bit too much emphasis on that type of stuff, but it’s part of the game.”
Fortunately for KD, the talk about his free agency has died down a little bit. But that’ll likely end this week since he’ll be playing in Washington. Think the Wizards will have another presentation prepared for him?
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[via USA Today]
