Kevin Durant’s last season with Golden State did not go that well, ending with the two-time NBA Finals MVP missing out on that third championship as he left the team with an Achilles injury instead.
According to Ethan Sherwood Strauss of The Athletic, Durant was not happy with an article he wrote in January 2019 detailing the sacrifices the Warriors made for him with regards to their offense. In his new book, The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty, Strauss says he tried explaining he had a good reason for writing the piece to Durant but the player was not impressed and accused him of trying to rile up Steph Curry’s fans.
“I tried to make a few points, saying I didn’t begrudge him for having leverage with his contract, and insisted that I had good reason to write what I wrote,” an excerpt from the book reads (H/T Bleacher Report). “KD wasn’t impressed and accused me of trying to ‘rile up Steph’s fans.’
“He expressed that this was a constant theme in the Bay. All of us local guys just wanted to kiss Steph’s ass at his expense. This was KD’s consistent lament. He would frequently squabble in direct-message conversations with the Warriors fans of Twitter, frequently accusing them of favoring Steph at his expense. In one such exchange that foreshadowed things to come, he was asked by the WarriorsWorld account whether two-time MVP Steph Curry or Kyrie Irving was the better player. ‘I gotta really sit down and analyze it,’ Durant demurred.”
Durant has since claimed he felt he was always treated as an outsider by the fans, as opposed to being viewed as a core member of the Warriors dynasty. He wasted little time in signing for the Brooklyn Nets when he became a free agent last year.
