Fans play an important role in home-court advantage, particularly in the NBA, where there’s no obstacle obstructing a player’s visage when a boo or a particularly apt put-down echos around an arena. Hawks fans embraced this maxim, and during a Kevin Durant free throw on Monday night with the defending champs in town, reminded him of teammate Draymond Green’s biting words a couple of weeks ago.
“Draymond hates you” acts as a savage psych out, if KD were looking to ingratiate himself with his Warriors teammate. If not, it’s a commendable attempt to inject the bloggy news cycle into an NBA game. So bravo to the Twitter feeds of the fans. Increasingly, the game, and the noise away from the court, are one and the same—as if there’s a permanent rendezvous in Temecula for keyboard disagreements. The sound of the nylon shushing after KD’s charity stripe shimmy was louder than the cheers, so it was empty of any larger meaning expect that Hawks fans follow the league like everyone else.
Tangentially, this reminds us of when Charles Barkley said he’d like to punch Draymond Green. Chuck is OG, but you didn’t see him throw hands, did you? Instead, when confronted with his bluster getting called out as empty air, he apologized. We’d guess these Hawks fans would do the same if given an opportunity to listen to some reggae with Durant.
We’re all in the throes of our own narrative, and sometimes we forget we’re the only one really following the story. This often reveals itself as hubris, or in more extreme cases something like a tantrum on Twitter about not getting a seat upgrade while at the same time an active shooter snipes schoolchildren.
Less gruesome than that reality was Monday night at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Some fans impulsively composed a really wonderful vignette about the time they owned Durant with a mocking cheer, but KD had already skipped ahead to the end.
To end this pained metaphor, KD hit the foul shot.
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