While running through the usual daydream fantasy about being a world-class athlete, or even just a famous person of some sort, I can’t help but strain my mind wondering what kind of social media presence I would keep up as my career progresses. On the surface, I’d like to believe that I’d be one of the coolest tweeters out there: interacting with the fans, shooting some clever jabs at teammates, analysts, and hall-of-famers alike, ruffling some feathers while never taking anything too seriously and avoiding being #madonline.

But I really have no idea. I’m not famous, I don’t go out in the world everyday or log onto my favorite site knowing that people are constantly worrying about my business and wondering about my comings and goings. I can get on twitter and be myself and really not worry about what anyone thinks of it because at the end of the day I’m just another guy and nobody cares that much about the stuff I have to say.

When I’m doing this whole daydream/psychological exercise, I used to always think of Kevin Durant. Coming up as part of the first generation of famous people to really get social media, his first few years in the league were full of absolute gems. Tweets that would be solid content coming from regular folks were outstanding coming from the fingers of the #2 pick and the NBA’s new, budding superstar. Following the life and mind of a goofy 20-25 year-old with newfound money, fame, and influence was all I could’ve asked for when I first logged onto twitter in 2011.

No lies to be seen here. From Scar-Jo to Amber Rose to Erykah Badu, a young KD was doing what he knew best and putting up shots, like any sane man would do with that kind of platform.

I can’t imagine a single better way to spend a night than critiquing history channel docs in the club with KD

Maybe the realest tweet ever. I guess shit sucks for famous people too sometimes.

 

But that every-man, young-kid-in-a-big-world persona couldn’t last, especially as his career continued to progress on the upward trajectory from making his first finals, to being scoring champion and MVP, to developing into a player expected to bring his team a championship. Twitter also became less fun and lawless in the meantime. Celebrities couldn’t slip in tweets under the radar anymore, everything was starting to become oversaturated, and I’m sure KD saw the writing on the wall and knew that his time as a twitter-cool-guy had run it’s course. I probably would’ve done the same thing and pulled back the reigns (likely after trying the waters with a lewd comment that set off think-piece America), I mean I’m rich, fuck what these people think I have way better stuff to be doing. He was getting towards the infamous crossroads in his career, where he of all people would fully understand the ramifications of his decision on his public appearance.

Full disclosure, as a guy who hopes the Warriors lose every game on their schedule: I would’ve absolutely done the same thing as KD. At the time, I was saying that I would’ve joined the Spurs, my best chance to win while avoiding most of the backlash, but after watching that Warriors team play together for a year, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was the perfect decision for him. As far as I’m concerned, any respectable NBA fan who watched KD’s Warriors beautifully dominate the league with ease should understand exactly why he landed there, and his individual finals should’ve dealt with all of the “Durant can’t handle the pressure/needs to hide behind superstars” takes.

When Durant finally won his first title this summer, I saw him hopping back into the twitter game and couldn’t have been more excited. I figured that he had nothing left to prove to people, his finals performance did the talking, and he could swiftly transition back to being a twitter-chill-guy. That wasn’t completely the case, but I respected it nonetheless, shooting back at some of the classic KD chirps, getting chippy with the trolls, and getting into regular NBA twitter arguments.

Even when I would see something and think “alright man, you could’ve just ignored that nonsense” I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Working your ass off your entire life to make your dreams a reality, putting in 9 fantastic years of work for a team that doesn’t fully appreciate you, having things line up perfectly to make an ideal career move (for the sake of winning!!!) and hearing endless shit for a year because of it. I really can’t imagine anything more annoying, and as a person who likes to brush things off and act like he’s not phased to seem cool, I’d reach my breaking point pretty quickly.

However, my breaking point would likely consist of a couple obnoxious podium rants, some petty shade-throwing, and at the very worst a whiny little thread of tweets telling people to get over themselves.

Things I wouldn’t do:

1. Create a burner account to hop in some tweet replies and justify my OKC departure by trashing Billy Donovan and the Thunder roster.
2. Forget to switch to said burner account (that I wouldn’t have made) before sending said tweets about my former team.

 

When I woke up to the news spreading twitter this morning it had me beyond rattled. Over the past few weeks I’d been all in with KD’s twitter movements, defending LaMelo Ball, fighting against TMac slander, and insightfully praising guys like Wall and McCollum. NBA twitter KD is awesome, he’s a student of the game that’ll engage anyone with good points and dismiss anyone that doesn’t know their shit. That’s the kind of attitude I hoped he’d take into the other facets of his life, mainly in terms of dismissing criticism from people who just don’t matter.

I don’t really know if he actually has another account(s) that he meant to send the tweets from, that’s for the next round of twitter sleuths to uncover, but it certainly seemed like it. And if that’s the case (and even if it’s not), KD has a legit problem. As an NBA fan who understands and participates in the surrounding culture, it’s definitely harder for him to put that stuff aside and forget about it, as he sees and understands the kind of slander surrounding him, probably envisioning it before he even made the move. But that makes the continued behavior of justification-seeking even more mind-boggling. A person like him should know fully well that the opinions of random internet sports fans are based in poor, emotional arguments, mixed with unrealistic expectations of athletes that are as human as the rest of us.

KD, the guy who showed us for years how human he is, should absolutely understand the type of humans he’s dealing with, and therefore should know to give their garbage opinions as little mind as possible. Poking fun at a troll that asks about you joining Cleveland is one thing, but feeling the need to still reason with people who don’t respect his OKC departure is pretty troubling behavior.

Of course I can’t gauge how much he really still cares about the “KD is a snake” crowd, but to me, him still giving them any sort of serious attention really makes me feel bad for him. If asked, any of these “NBA fans” would admit that KD is at least a top-50 player of all time, top 2 player in the world today, and maybe the best scorer that they’d ever seen. I’m as insecure as the next guy, and if random people hated me it would absolutely mess with me mentally, but having a resume like that would make it infinitely easier to tune out the noise.

I’m not trying to act like I can get inside the mind of an NBA superstar and understand what’s going on, but I do think I understand the people he’s trying to justify himself to, and they’re just simply not worth the time and effort. They’re ESPN-watching hot-takers who make snap judgements based on nothing, and cement themselves in their dumb opinions forever. Unfortunately, I’ve come to expect nothing more from these people, but I still expect more of KD, the hall-of-famer with a hall-of-fame twitter game to match.

 

PS: I was thinking about writing something along these lines when pictures of these came out, because they almost made me puke . Maybe he engages with all of this trash because it motivates him, and I really hope that’s the case because that’s the only excusable reason for an almost-30 year old finals MVP to be concerning himself with these type of opinions. YOU WON! THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE WILL REMEMBER IN 20 YEARS, JUST KEEP WINNING AND PLEASE STOP RUINING YOUR FUN WITH THIS CRAP. To spare myself from another 1,500 word rabbit hole, I’m just going to leave it there.