Durant is More MJ Than LeBron Will Ever Be.
Let me get this out of the way before I wake up with a bloody Raptor head in my bed — the following column has nothing to do with basketball talent. This is not a LeBron versus Durant ‘Greatest Player in the World’ debate, nor does it pertain to skill, styles of play, winning percentages, number of rings, lengths of dominance, or MVP Awards.
There, that should keep the Twitter Mafia at bay. Or not. Because people never make it this far before commenting, sharing, and going off like James Dolan at a Knicks alumni night. So for the 90% of you we’ve already lost, I hope your favourite team gets fleeced in a deal for Chandler Parsons.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to our main topic:
A comparison between Durant and LeBron!
Or more appropriately, a comparison between KD and MJ.
Because while we’ve been infatuated with simming Jordan/LeBron 2K matchups, we’ve been ignoring an even greater narrative: The emergence of Kevin Durant as the Air Apparent.
Sure, LeBron has been chasing ‘The ghost that played in Chicago’ and Kobe did everything short of Buffalo Billing his idol (By the way, well done global James marketing machine. Can’t wait to see ‘Chasing the Ghost in Chicago’ on the NYT Best Seller list). But Durant’s been busy too. He’s been sitting in the corner, individually licking the stamps to mail a series of mysterious and foul-smelling brown paper bags, addressed to all his enemies, both real and perceived. If the past year has shown the world anything, it’s that Durant is personality-wise, the second coming of MJ.
And isn’t that what we’ve wanted all along? Someone to come and take over Jordan’s mantle as an easy to despise, angry, vindictive, a — hole of a charmingly-infuriating winner that you simple love but also hate? Isn’t that what the league has been truly missing, especially since Kobe stopped winning about a decade ago? And if you, like I, think that it is, then great. I’m here to tell you that KD is ready to assume the role. Let’s examine the evidence.
EXHIBIT A: Durant is just as savage as Jordan.
Sure, his savagery is still in its infancy. It’ll take some time to maturate. But the ‘Everyone Hates KD, and He Hates Them Back’ summer tour is now in full-swing. And for those that think KD’s savagery started when he dribbled out the clock in Game 5, clearly you haven’t been paying attention. Let’s take a quick retrospective through the 2016–17 Durant Yearbook of Taking A Sick Enjoyment in the Suffering of Others, shall we?
Our retrospective begins with the cocky Nuggets fan who made the mistake of telling Durant ‘See you in the playoffs’:
Durant’s reply? ‘Yeah, we’ll sweep your ass’.
That retort came after a 20-point regular season loss to the Nuggets, and Durant managed it without even breaking stride.
Now, let’s move to the playoffs. In the second round against Utah, Durant decided to start beef with the ‘He’s Just Happy to Be Gainfully Employed’ Utah Jazz Bear, mouthing the words ‘Get the Fuck off the court’. While not particularly clever, ripping into something as fun, innocent and child-like as a mascot is on the Jordan-esque level of savagery.
Then, later in that same game, Durant decided that the mascot and Jazz players weren’t putting up enough of a fight, so he decided to go toe-to-toe with a fan:
If you didn’t catch that, Durant says ‘You know who I am, but I don’t know you’.
And finally, still in that same game, Durant savagely ripped out and trampled all over Gordon Hayward’s soul in front of all those poor ol’ Mormon folks, before Jordan-shrugging the entire length of the court.
Backwards.
If you’re keeping score at home, Durant’s victim list at this point includes players, fans, life-sized plush animals, and an entire states of polygamists. And while that might be enough for mere mortal savages, Durant decided to add ‘International R&B Sensation/Star of Some of My Least Repeatable Dreams’ Rihanna to his list of of vanquished foes.
To be fair to Durant, Rihanna started it by rooting for The King. But Durant sure as hell ended it.
Watch the staredown, in all its glory:
After the game, Durant claimed he didn’t remember the exchange. Right. Like anyone would forget whipping it out in front of Drake’s boo, and leaving her speechless.
But Durant’s savagery wasn’t reserved for the court. A week after adding ‘NBA Champion’ to his resume, Durant decided he would ether the 76ers and their new self-proclaimed nickname. This, more than anything else, is pure Jordan. It’s one thing to rip into legitimate competitors. It’s another level entirely to go after a team whose only real meaningful contribution to the basketball zeitgeist in the past decade is a no-longer-employed-cult-hero-GM and the saying he coined to pacify a fanbase while tanking.
KD couldn’t even let a 28-win team enjoy a nice moment of off-season camaraderie. He needed to curb-stomp their hopes and dreams into dust.
EXHIBIT B: Durant is just as pathologically petty as MJ.
Stories of MJ’s pettiness might be the thing of legends, but Durant is quickly closing the gap.
Since winning his first NBA title, KD has:
- Worn a hat with a cupcake and a ring on it, a not-so-subtle jab at former BFF Russell Westbrook/all of OKC.
- Gone through his entire Twitter history, and ripped to shreds everyone who so much as hashtagged him poorly, in what only can be described as Batman level of Twitter vigilante justice.
- Went through Twitter a second time, to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone.
- Replied to what was clearly a fun tongue-in-cheek jab from Peyton Manning at the ESPYs with a death stare and subsequent emoji two hours later showing that he still wasn’t amused, in case anyone was wondering.
It’s worth reminding everyone that at this time last year, Kyrie was busy celebrating his first championship with a yacht full of scantily-clad women (oh how quickly things change), while J.R. Smith was doing his best Tracy Jordan impression, and dancing his way shirtless across America. They celebratory and jovial, and revelling in their special moment, as all first-time champions should.
Not Durant though.
No, he decided to hole up in what I assume was the darkness of his parents’ basement, and troll his Twitter haters. He could be doing literally anything in the world with his combination of wealth/status/recent championship glow, and he decided his time was best spent finding and telling Murray from Wisconsin that his life is pathetic, and he should shut his face. If that’s not pathologically petty, I don’t know what is.
And sure, Durant still has a long way to go. Jordan’s pettiness magnus opus was a 27-minute diatribe at his Hall-of-Fame Induction, where he literally called-out every person he thought slighted him, since birth. But let me pose a hypothetical. Is it really that hard to imagine Durant showing up at his own Hall-of-Fame Ceremony a decade from now, wearing a suit patterned with little mini crying Westbrook heads?
And I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t KD just congratulate Westbrook on winning MVP? Doesn’t that mean that he’s ready to move on? Not so fast. If you really examine what Durant said and how he said it, like we did here, you can make a case that the congratulation was a thinly-veiled dig at Westbrook, one that nobody would notice, but would really get under his skin. And if that was the case, Durant’s best work may still be yet to come.
EXHIBIT C: Durant will do whatever it takes to win.
When Durant left the Thunder, it was a pure MJ move. Durant wanted to win, so he did everything in his power to do so. Critics and other peoples opinions be damned.
And yes, I hear the frantic typing of all the MJ supporters about to argue that Jordan would have never pulled the move that Durant did. They’ll say that Jordan was the ultimate competitor, and was motivated by a need to beat the best in order to become the best.
And while we’ll never know how Jordan would have handled Durant’s situation, we do know that Jordan was absolutely obsessed with beating other people at any cost. This was the guy who once tried to cheat to beat Buzz Peterson’s grandma in a casual game of cards with absolutely nothing at stake except winning. This is also the guy that was so infuriated by losing a round a golf to Chuck Daly, he slammed on his door at the Barcelona Olympics, until he was granted a rematch. And finally, Jordan was the same guy that would show up early to games to find out what the in-game Jumbotron race results would be, just so that he could bet with and beat Pippen in a friendly wager. Jordan didn’t care what critics or fans or social behaviour norms said about his tactics. Above everything else, he needed to win. Every single time. At whatever the cost to his reputation or soul. No exceptions.
And that’s where Durant fits the Jordan mold perfectly. Every rule and piece of rhetoric about team-building says you can’t join the team that beat you. (Plus that added weight of the team that beat you having just won the most games in NBA history). And yet, here is Durant, a year older, with a ring, on a potential half-decade dynasty. More than anything else on this list, a willingness to do anything to win — regardless of how frowned upon it is — is pure Jordan. And Durant is playing the role of heir perfectly.
Oh, and before we go.
Have we mentioned his pettiness yet?
