Kevin Durant knew that he was going to piss a ton of people off with his decision, no matter how much he justified it in The Player's Tribune on July 4.
The number of NBA players, sports media personalities, and basketball fans who you personally know that hate on his decision to join the Warriors continues to exponentially increase by the day. They may have said some crazy things about him, posing like they're on ESPN's First Take replacing Skip Bayless' departure from the panel. And if they have, they're likely resorting to their thumbs, tweeting their issue with this off-season's most coveted free agent.
Obviously, he simply doesn't give AF what you, his former teammate Russell Westbrook, or anyone else thinks about it. Nor does he care if the detractors of his decision personally "like him" more than likely these haters simply don't know him at all. According to The Vertical,unsurprisingly no one has the guts to tell him their true feelings about his decision to his face. He specifically stated about his cyber-haters spewing their disdain for him from a distance:
"All that stuff happens on the Internet. I haven't had one person come to me and say anything negative. ... It's easy for the critics on the outside to tell you what to do, to tell you how to play. I'm the one that's going through it, so I can't really worry about the outside noise. The work don't stop. Everything stays the same."
This is true, as it seems that the Warriors have gone from underdog darlings of the NBA to the villains aboard the Death Star with a Dub Nation symbol to sport in its orbit throughout the league next season. Durant further detailed how much family matters more than anything to him, and answering his question about any ultimate desire to be liked by fans.
"No, I don't. I want to be liked by people that I think love me. People I don't know, I don't care about. I want you to respect my game and what I bring to the floor, and if you don't like what I do as a person, I don't care. I want you to respect my game and if you don't, that's your problem. But I don't want to be liked. If somebody says, 'KD's a bad person,' I'm not going to go in my home and boo-hoo tears. If you don't like my game, I'm going go work on it and prove people that I am who I am, so it's a difference."
That's as real as it gets from a guy came from humble beginnings who declared to his single mother that she was "the real 2014 MVP." But he's still madvillainy, in all caps, to many.
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