Kevin Durant has said he cannot compare the Golden State Warriors having a 3-1 lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers this year versus the exact same situation last year for one simple reason — he did not watch the 2016 NBA Finals.
Or did he?
ESPN’s Dave McMenamin recently asked Durant what was going through his mind when the Warriors had a 3-1 series lead over the Cavs in last year’s Finals. Dan Feldman of Pro Basketball Talk transcribed the conversation, and Durant was adamant that he did not watch the series.
Durant: “I didn’t watch it.”
McMenamin: “You didn’t watch any of the Finals? Do you normally do that, not watch the Finals?”
Durant: “Yup. If I’m not in them, I don’t watch them.”
McMenamin: “So you’ve only watched 2012 and this year?”
Durant: “Well, I mean, before then, I was on teams that, we weren’t contenders. So, it’s a little different when you’re a contender, I guess. But I didn’t watch. But you kind of know the pulse of the game, a team being up 3-1. Obviously, if you’re up 3-1 in a series, as a fan – and you’re coming home – you feel as though that the away team got to have a spectacular game in order for you to win. So, last year, I didn’t put it past Cleveland to have a rest of a spectacular series. And that’s what they did.”
Simply put, Durant is either lying now or he was lying when he spoke about last year’s Finals after signing with the Warriors. In October, K.D. recalled how he knew he wanted to join Golden State after he watched Game 7 of Cavs-Warriors.
“I was telling one of my friends, Rich (Kleiman, his agent), who’s here, we were watching Game 7. Well, as it started to unfold, it was, ‘No question, no way could you go to this team,’” Durant told Anthony Slater of The Mercury News. “And I was just like a kid, like, in a candy shop. I’d get wide open 3s, I could just run up and down the court, get wide open layups. I was basically begging him. I was like, yo, this would be nice. So as I was thinking about my decision and who I was gonna play for, this team came to mind.”
But wait, there’s more. As a Reddit user highlighted, there’s also a portion of Durant’s documentary that shows him watching the 2014 Finals between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs. The Oklahoma City Thunder lost in the Western Conference Finals that year, so that should have been one of those years where it hurt too much for Durant to tune into the Finals.
Durant is probably just trying to downplay Golden State’s collapse from last year, and what better way to do that than to pretend he didn’t watch it? He may have been taking the same approach when asked about an alleged phone call he head with Draymond Green after Game 7 last year.
All that said, you’d think Durant would know he mentioned watching the Finals in the past. At some point, he’s going to get called out over it. It’ll be interesting to see what he comes up with for a response then.
