Kevin Durant on Joining Nets: ‘There’s No Madison Square Mecca’
Written by SOURCE on September 11, 2020
Kevin Durant said on the latest episode of The Old Man and the Three podcast with J.J. Redick that he “never planned on going to the Knicks.”
“I didn’t want to be the savior of the Knicks or New York,” Durant said, per Bleacher Report. “I didn’t care about being the king of New York. That never really moved me. I didn’t care about being on Broadway. I just wanted to play ball and go to the crib and chill. And that’s what Brooklyn embodied.”
While reflecting on his time playing for the Knicks, Carmelo Anthony told the New York Daily News last year that every NBA superstar isn’t built to handle the pressure that comes with being on the Knicks.
“I wanted it. It was something I wanted. I wanted to take that challenge on. Whether I failed at it or not I wanted to be able to say that I did it,” Anthony said. “I took it upon myself to say, ‘Get me there.’ I wanted that challenge. Not everybody has that same mentality.”
Durant’s priorities lied elsewhere, and Brooklyn matched up perfectly with what he was looking for at the time.
“Brooklyn was everything I’m about,” Durant said. “Chill, on the low, all black everything, we quiet, just focus on basketball. There’s no show when you come to our games. There’s no Madison Square Mecca, all of that shit. We just going to hoop and build something new over in Brooklyn … I felt that way around February leading up until March [2019], and then once free agency hit, it was time.”
Durant said on Ebro in the Morning last year that he limited his consideration of the Knicks to a “thought,” adding, “I didn’t really do any deep, full analysis.”
