Kevin Durant will be a free agent after this season, and there is much speculation among fans, the media, and even the NBA about where the Golden State Warrior will remain as such.
Durant, 29, has been a polarizing figure in the league since his early years with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The once reserved and calculated player has, over time, become more expressive and reflective, allowing his thoughts to flow freely without being encumbered by them.
One of Durant’s recent thought exercise’s has been on the role of the media on chronicling and reporting on his career. The 2014 league MVP feels that the media thrives of his life and he wants to take the narrative into his own hands.
Following from NBC Sports,
“They need me,” Durant recently told NBC Sports Bay Area. “If I wasn’t a free agent, none of this s–t would go on, right? None of this speculation about who I am, what’s wrong with my mental, why I’m miserable, why I ain’t happy with life. Nothing.”
It can be argued that Durant, along with the Lakers’ LeBron James, has lead the charge on taking on the media landscape and inserted himself into how his narrative his being weaved.
Durant is looking to push back on the “traditional” way of players getting their message and image out to the public, even when dealing with his looming free agency.
“I think a lot of media companies are sad about that,” Durant said. “Which is causing a strain between the players and the media because obviously they all want to keep their jobs. They all want to tell their stories, but the players are telling it better. …
“I’ve never been a traditional-way type of dude. I never did anything [the] traditional way in my life. I don’t even know what that means. That’s just a program that people before us kind of had a template on how they live life and expect us to do the same thing. I never really had a traditional way of anything.”
