Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were the dynamic duo everyone loved. It was the tall, herky-jerky wingman who could knock down a shot from seemingly anywhere and the locomotive point guard who feared no defender and didn’t see a rim he didn’t like to dunk on. Beyond James Harden, Serge Ibaka, and even Steven Adams, Durant and Westbrook were supposed to be that next duo. And they were for a little bit. Until Durant decided to leave and then we got a better look at their relationship.
When KD left, he said that he and Russ were ‘still cool’. Russ responded by saying the two have yet to talk. It’s only gotten worse from there. Their relationship has seemingly deteriorated to the point of no return. Westbrook was the one to fire the latest shot, saying Durant’s recent comments about the comradery of the Warriors was ‘cute’ and he didn’t want to talk about Durant anymore.
It appears Russ’ brash nature on the topic of Durant might have been for a legitimate reason. According to Durant, the two were never more than ‘work friends’.
The following comes from Paul Solotaroff of Rolling Stone.
Meanwhile, Durant studied the body language of the players at his table. “They just liked each other so much and were so relaxed,” he says. “I thought, ‘These are some chill-ass dudes I wouldn’t mind hooping with.’ I wasn’t even asking, ‘How do we play together?’ I was asking, ‘Where do y’all go eat, do y’all hang out together?'” These were salient questions for Durant. As close as people presumed he and Westbrook had been, they were never much more than work friends, he says. “We had our own cliques that we hung with on the road. Russell had his guys, I had mine. It was never a bad thing. Just how it was.” For the guy who’d grown up friendless through grade school and preps, the pull of those stars and their shared affection must have felt like a welcome banner. All his life, he’d been walking alone, a party of one in the desert. Now, at last, his tribe called out to him. Who among us could have said no?
That’s it. It’s over. There’s no coming back from this. The duo is officially done. There’s too much dirty laundry out there. All the years of everyone depicting Russ and KD as the best of friends were pointless. They were just pretty amazing co-workers. It just goes to show, two people can possibly not like each other but perform at a high level together. If Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook did it for all those years, anything is possible.
