In the NBA, last summer’s free agency period will always go down as the Kevin Durant sweepstakes. During this process, six different teams got their chance to meet with Durant in the early part of July. Durant later made his groundbreaking decision to join the Golden State Warriors, but for one city it was their team’s absence during the recruiting process that left a bad taste in their mouths.
That city was Durant’s hometown and where he first made a name for himself, the District of Columbia. For over two years, the Washington Wizards geared up to make a run at Durant and give him the proverbial hometown pitch. Those dreams quickly fell short when the Wizards weren’t even able to get a seat at the table with Durant.
Until a recent interview with the Washington Post, Durant had never given an explanation why he gave the Wizards no chance.
Following from Tim Bontemps and Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post.
“I don’t want to open up anything in the past, but I really just didn’t want to play at home,” Durant said. “It was nothing about the fans.
“I was like, I’m trying to build a second part of my life as a man living in a different part of the country, just trying to do different things. I did everything I was supposed to do in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, I felt. Now it’s time to do something new. I didn’t want to come back. That’s just my thought process behind it. It had nothing to do with basketball, the fans, the city.
It’s clear a Durant homecoming was never in the works after all, but hopefully, D.C. metropolitans have a sense of closure now because of this.
