Despite being 6-foot-11, Kevin Durant still lies to women about his height. This makes the 27-year-old human beanstalk relatable to men who find themselves closer to Peter Dinklage than, say, Shaquille O'Neal on the tape measuring spectrum. Still, the Thunder star keeps it believable by only adding an inch.
"When I'm talking to women, I'm 7-feet," he told the Wall Street Journal recently for a piece about how most NBA players aren't always truthful about their heights. "In basketball circles, I’m 6-foot-9." (Pro tip: If you don't do this, too, you really should. Nobody outside of the most insecure person will ever fact check you.)
Additionally, the WSJ piece confirmed what we've known for some time, which is that game programs consistently lie to us about players' heights. Bill Walton, J.J. Barea, and others readily admit to fudging the numbers when it comes to their heights. In fact, as a rookie, Durant asked a team staffer to bump him down a few inches and list him as 6-foot-9. His reasoning for doing this was so that he could be a more prototypical small forward height because, as he puts it, "Anything taller than that, and they’ll start saying, ‘Ah, he’s a power forward.’”
While this may sound really strange at first, upon thinking about it, it's only kind of strange because, as anybody who's ever watched a combine or seen a guy fall in a draft knows, pro sports teams are obsessed with the measurements of prospective pro athletes. So if a guy can get away with lying about his height and make himself look better in the process, why not?
Anyway, the cat's out of the bag now. Women will surely look at KD differently knowing that the seven-time All-Star with a net worth of $80-plus million has been rounding up this whole time.
