Kevin Durant stays late at practice, yells at himself while shooting
Kevin Durant is not pleased that he lost his first ever regular season game as a member of the Golden State Warriors, and he appears to already be using it as motivation.
In advance of his team’s upcoming game against the New Orleans Pelicans, Durant stayed late after practice at the Smoothie King Center on Thursday to work on his game. It was there that ESPN’s Ethan Sherwood Strauss witnessed him shouting things like “they say I ain’t hungry!” and “I’m out here!” at himself.
“That’s what I say to myself when I’m working,” Durant later explained. “I hear it all the time. You hear the noise. You hear what they say about you. Everybody hears it. So it’s a little extra motivation when you hear it.
“Nobody in this arena right now, and that’s when you get better. Nobody sees you when you’re doing this stuff right here, but luckily y’all was in here watching.”
Does that mean Durant has read and seen all of the things that have been written and said about him in the past several months? The 28-year-old doesn’t seek them out, but he doesn’t live under a rock, either.
“Obviously you hear everything. Season’s over, the team is worst team in the league, you thought it was going to be easy. It’s one game,” Durant said. “I thought, after losing in the playoffs by 30 or beating someone by 30 in Game 1 of the playoffs and you say it’s only one game.
“It’s one game of 82 and you f—ing guys make me feel like the world’s going to end.”
Getting blown out by the San Antonio Spurs to start the season may have been the best thing for Golden State. Now instead of the overreaction being that they could go 82-0, we’re hearing a lot of “the Warriors were better off without Durant.” Between all of that talk and Russell Westbrook’s new Jordan commercial, Durant’s bulletin board should be overflowing with material.
