One of the reasons some people branded Kevin Durant a hypocrite after he joined the Golden State Warriors was a 2010 tweet in which he seemed to deride LeBron James and Chris Bosh for joining the Miami Heat.
Durant sent the tweet eight days after LeBron James announced his decision to join Miami, and it read as a criticism of the “super-team.”
Now everybody wanna play for the heat and the Lakers? Let's go back to being competitive and going at these peoples!
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) July 16, 2010
Durant was immediately ripped for the tweet upon signing with Golden State, but when asked about it now, the Warriors forward argued that it had nothing to do with James or Bosh.
“Let me clear this up, because a lot of people talk to me about [it and say] ‘I took a shot at [James] on Twitter,'” Durant told The Ringer’s Bill Simmons. “If you go back and look at when I posted that, I posted that later in the month, you want to know why? Penny Hardaway came out and said, ‘I would love to play for the Heat, I think I could help them win the championship.’ And I’m like, ‘Come on, Penny. You’ve been out of the game. I played against you my rookie year, it’s like three years later, man. What are you doing?’ But it was a fake article. So I tweeted that. And now everybody’s like, ‘Well, you was criticizing LeBron.’ I signed an extension right after LeBron decided to go to Miami and a lot of people asked me about that, I said, ‘Cool, for [the Heat]. We play them three times, I can’t wait to play them, it’s going to be cool.’
“I didn’t criticize him, I was criticizing Penny Hardaway in this fake article I read. So a lot of people took that and ran with it.”
Durant’s memory is still a little fuzzy, because it wasn’t a fake article. At the time, Hardaway actually did publicly say he wanted to come back to play for Miami. We’ll give Durant the benefit of the doubt here, as the dates do line up, though that tweet could definitely apply to either of those situations.
