Kevin Durant is exactly who he doesn't want you to think he is
Kevin Durant apologized for the messages he sent Michael Rapoport, but it's just the most recent evidence that he can't hide who he really is.
It’s become well-known, and almost a farce, that Kevin Durant is as soft as he is talented as a basketball player. Burner Twitter accounts? Sure. Conflicts with teammates who questioned his commitment? Sure. That made he and Kyrie Irving, who’s similarly world-weary and full of conflict under the surface, a perfectly dysfunctional marriage with the Brooklyn Nets.
I won’t dive deeply into the details of the messages Durant sent to Michael Rapaport. Whether Rapaport should have made them public is a separate conversation, but given what Durant wrote it’s hard to blame him in a broader sense. Check out the details, if you wish, via The Big Lead.
Durant spoke to the media on Thursday, and here’s what he had to say when asked about the recently outed social media messages.
“I’m sorry that people seen that language I used, that’s not really what I want people to hear and see from me.”
Not trying to say he was hacked or it otherwise wasn’t him is commendable by Durant in some way. But he didn’t apologize for using that language in a public forum (not that it’d be right in a non-public forum either), and he did not take an opportunity to apologize to Rapaport. The only apology he had was that people saw the words he used. Not that he used them, or attacked someone on social media with them. I don’t buy into words being taken out of context, since his most direct response/apology seems to have been confined to that one long sentence.
I forget who it’s credited to, it might be Maya Angelou or Mother Teresa, but it goes like this (pardon any paraphrase license I’ve taken): “If someone shows you who they really are, believe them.” Durant continues to show us who he really is-a talented basketball player, when he’s healthy enough to play of course, and a toxic person.