In the end it all worked out well for Kevin Durant, but at the beginning he had some buyer’s remorse and frankly by having ghost social media accounts to defend himself you get the feeling he still isn’t fully comfortable with the decision to leave Thunder.
In a story about how he plans to take over silicon Valley, KD and his agent recall the days right after signing with the Warriors and how Kevin was having a nervous breakdown.
Take this story about the days after Durant decided to sign with the Warriors, a time when he was feeling the full brunt of the Internet’s fury about his perceived betrayal of Oklahoma. He and Kleiman were in China for a weeklong tour of the country sponsored by Nike Basketball, and the flak he was taking from people in Oklahoma City who had once professed deep affection for him was overwhelming. “To have so many people just say, ‘Fuck you,’ that really does it to you,” Durant tells me, still clearly anguished. “Because I truly had invested everything I had into the people I played for…. And for those people that I know and love and trust to turn their back on me after I was fully invested in them, it was just…more than I could take. I was upset.”
“You were fucked up in China,” Kleiman, looking up from his phone, offers from his plane seat across the aisle from Durant and me.
“That was before I met anybody from the Warriors and dove into the culture. I was basically on my own,” Durant says.
“It was like you were in between two teams.”
“I’m telling you, I was fucked up for a while!”
“We were all messed up on jet lag,” Kleiman says, turning to me, “and I was up at 6 a.m. and he calls me and says, ‘Yo, are you up?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ And he’s like [yelling], ‘Why the fuck did you let me do this to my life?’ And I’m like, ‘Ohh shit, I’m coming over to your room.’”
“That hotel was rock bottom,” says Durant.
Eventually after hanging out with the Warriors and having some of his peers tell him it was ok he got over it. Once again maybe he hasn’t fully gotten over it, but the championship ring has to make it feel like he made the right decision.