It could be because he’s a big-shot lawyer now (at least in TV ads), but Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant seems to have developed an attitude. Or maybe members of the media and fans have simply stopped projecting onto him what we all imagined him to be.
“I’m a [expletive],” Durant told GQ, using a word that rhymes with “hick” to describe his attitude when it comes to his opponents. He explained more for the magazine’s March cover story, which came out Wednesday:
“I can’t sit there. I feel like I’m supporting them by watching it. I hope you have a bad game. Because I’m such a hater! I thought it was a bad trait I had. I was like, ‘Man, am I jealous? Why do I hate this guys? But I hope both of the teams lose!’ That’s how I feel.”
This seems a far cry from the man who collected the NBA MVP award last year and emotionally dedicated to his mom.
“You the real MVP,” Durant touchingly choked out last May, inspiring one of 2014′s most popular Internet memes, which, by the way, he also apparently hates.
“I was like, man, that was a real emotional moment for me, and you making a joke about it! Like, damn,” Durant told GQ. “Y’all don’t really believe in [expletive]. You don’t have no morals or nothing. You don’t care about nothing but just making fun. … I was serious as hell saying that…”
And while Durant has no problem telling it like it is to his opponents or what he thinks are Internet trolls, he apparently does have some regrets about how he’s treated the media lately.
He didn’t talk to GQ about it, but he talked to other reporters on Wednesday. Specifically, he addressed his telling reporters during last weekend’s NBA All-Star Weekend, “You guys really don’t know [expletive].”
It could’ve been a mea culpa of sorts, or maybe just a realization that being mean on the court will get you more endorsements than being mean off of it. Whatever the case, the media got an apology on Wednesday when Durant took to the podium for a Thunder press conference, according to ESPN’s Royce Young.
And reporters are more than willing to give the 26-year-old superstar a second chance.
Marissa Payne writes for The Early Lead, a fast-breaking sports blog, where she focuses on what she calls the “cultural anthropological” side of sports, aka “mostly the fun stuff.” She is also an avid WWE fan.
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