Warriors GM Bob Myers Says Kevin Durant Is ‘Misunderstood’
Written by SOURCE on April 22, 2020
Kevin Durant takes a lot of shit for somebody who just plays basketball and has never really done anything bad to anybody. But he has at least one backer (he probably actually has like millions, just trying to segue here) in Golden State Warriors general manager Bob Myers, despite the fact that KD left Myers’ club to sign a deal with the Nets last year.
On an episode of The Boardroom that was posted Tuesday, Myers had nothing but nice things to say about the MVP, including saying that he has “one of the purest hearts,” that he’s “a fascinating guy,” and also that he’s “misunderstood.”
Myers made his comments when speaking with Durant’s business partner, Rich Kleiman. You should watch it below if you have the time. If you’re locked down in your house you probably do. Still, to save you some, the relevant portions begin around the 21:00 mark (and the way more relevant comments come around 25:10):
In addition to Kleiman bringing up anecdotes from a recently released book by a team beat writer, Durant is back in the headlines because he got and recovered from the coronavirus Draymond Green mentioned him after watching the first two episodes of The Last Dance, the ESPN docu-series on the 1997-98 Bulls, on Sunday.
Talking about how Phil Jackson acknowledged “the elephant in the room” at the start of the season by stating that that year would be the last time Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman would all be teammates, Green says things were different when the Warriors were faced with a similar reality.
“I think Phil did what was great, which is acknowledge the elephant in the room,” Green said. “If Phil doesn’t do that, all year everyone else is dealing with that somewhere. So now once you get these questions from the media, we’ve already addressed that as a team. We really don’t need to talk about that.”
Talking about the parallels with the 2018-19 Warriors, Green said “Our situation was a little different from the standpoint of it was contracts, but it was on players. It wasn’t necessarily the organization. For instance, Kevin [Durant] took the one-year deal on his own, so that was kinda the elephant in the room.
“Although Steve [Kerr] would kinda hit on it, like ‘Let’s just enjoy this year for what it is because we don’t know what next year holds,’ it didn’t necessarily carry the same weight because what should have happened was Kevin come out and say, ‘Hey man, like, this is it. So let’s do this. Or, this isn’t it, but you can’t just leave the elephant in the room.”
Green also referenced the questions he and Klay Thompson had to answer as a result of Durant playing things close to the vest.
“Then you kinda had Kevin, like ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do next year, and it don’t matter.’ But it does matter because you’re not the only one that has to answer that question,” Green added.
“And to be quite frank with you, you’re honestly the last person that has to answer the question because you don’t really say shit. You don’t say much to the media. If anything, you tell them to shut the fuck up. Well, I don’t tell them to shut the fuck up. I kinda have a conversation, and so I’m stuck answering that question all the time, and due to that, there was always an elephant in the room amongst us, as opposed to them [the ‘Last Dance’ Bulls].”
