Kevin Durant responded to an Instagram commenter in a series of direct messages after he was asked whether he could sleep at night knowing he joined a 73-win Warriors team.
Quire Sultan KD just can’t seem to ignore it when he’s called out on social media, and that continued––albeit without the anonymity of a pseudonym––in the back-and-forth below with @bjaysowavy. Their DM exchange was promptly shared on Twitter, revealing Durant's inspired self-defense after being mocked for joining the “enemy.”
Durant performed admirably in the DM dialogue, as long as you willfully forget he's probably got a lot better things to do than this. When @bjaysowavy mentioned how LeBron James would never join a team like the Warriors, Durant reminded him of LeBron’s move to Miami, where Dwyane Wade was a top-5 player at the time; Chris Bosh also came to South Beach that summer, and he was an All-Star who led the Raptors to the playoffs the season before. However, James didn't join the Celtics team that had knocked him out of the playoffs the year before, and Miami wasn't a 73-win dynasty-in-the-making like Golden State.
When the IG commenter mentioned this, Durant offered up this aphorism: “My pride doesn't get in the way of my development.” When told LeBron would have never joined “the enemy,” Durant explained how tight elite NBA players really are, and how they all grew up playing together and respect one another; any talk of enemies is a media narrative, according to KD. That argument doesn't really hold water when you're talking about former NBA players, though.
Check out the rest of their exchange and decide for yourself if KD did a good job defending his decision:
Durant appears ready and willing to engage with any and all online trolls, even if they're teenagers. But his quick trigger for online hate isn't limited to random internet comments. He called C.J. McCollum a snake on Twitter after deriding the Blazers' playoff performance on McCollum's own podcast.
It's a stark change from the humble guy in Oklahoma City who tweeted out his contract extension the same summer LeBron made his own free agency decision in front of millions of ESPN viewers. But Durant has said since leaving OKC that was a "phony" version. The real Durant is going to engage if he disagrees with what someone is saying about him online.
That's probably why KD was involved in three of the top-10 biggest NBA social media beefs so far in 2018.
