Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant is one of the best players in basketball. Everybody knows it. The problem is, Kevin Durant doesn’t realize that everybody knows it. With the national coverage that guys like LeBron James and Stephen Curry get, Durant feels like the world has forgotten him.
From ESPN’s Royce Young:
“I use just about everything as motivation,” [Durant] says. “I know you say don’t read stuff, don’t check Twitter, who cares. It doesn’t affect me, I don’t go home and not sleep at night, but it makes me go out there and say ‘f— you, I’m going to go out there and be who I am and you can’t deny it.’ Those guys, Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, players that are considered at the top of the league at that moment and right now,” Durant says, “they deserve all of that. It’s nothing taking anything away from them. But I deserve it too.”
“I was definitely pissed,” Durant says.
Durant doesn’t like less proven players being compared to him:
“If a new guy goes out there and has a good game, they compare them to me so easily — when I’ve been doing this for nine years. I looked at that as disrespect and looked at that as criticism and took it as that. And it made me elevate my game and made me want to go out there and show everybody who I am. It’s added a new level of confidence, for one, and put a bigger chip on my shoulder.”
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“If a new guy goes out there and has a good game, they compare them to me so easily — when I’ve been doing this for nine years. I looked at that as disrespect and looked at that as criticism and took it as that. And it made me elevate my game and made me want to go out there and show everybody who I am. It’s added a new level of confidence, for one, and put a bigger chip on my shoulder.”
Even on his own team, Durant has been overshadowed by Russell Westbrook, who notched an absurd 18 triple-doubles this season. Durant feels like the league has forgotten about him, and he doesn’t like it:
“If you talked about the best players,” he says, “my name, still today, is still not in that conversation. And I feel as though I went out there and proved it to you, you know what I mean? If I had a great game, I was supposed to have that. Of course it’s not going to get talked about, but a lot of people are eating their words this season.”
