The Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook saga didn’t appear to actually be one three weeks ago. On July 4, Durant announced that he’d be joining Golden State, and Westbrook spent the day posting pictures of himself and his friends looking pretty happy. Durant had made a basketball decision that Westbrook wouldn’t shade his 8-year running mate for. The NBA is a business, and the focus would be shifted to the guys that were still on the Thunder roster.
However, that didn’t last long. Though Westbrook himself has yet to speak on the situation, several reports from widely-respected beat writers from Bleacher Report and ESPN have indicated that he isn’t very happy about Durant’s decision. On ESPN, Thunder beat writer Royce Young went a step further, and declared that Westbrook wasn’t just upset with the fact that KD departed, but he wasn’t happy with the way he went about it. According to the report, Westbrook wasn’t personally told by Durant about his decision. He learned of it through The Player’s Tribune like we all did.
To make matters worse, during a recent True Hoop podcast, Young made a hypothetical statement, and it was taken as fact by media outlets all over the country. Here’s what happened.
On the podcast, Young stated, “Three weeks ago, Kevin Durant’s sitting there at dinner, telling him, ‘Hey, I’m coming back, man. Don’t worry about it. And now, Russell Westbrook has been kind of thrown into this in having to decide his future a summer earlier than expected.”
What Young was really trying to do was to paint the picture of a flip-flop situation where Westbrook would be understandably peeved. However, the rough-around-the-edges nature of how he framed it left the sports world pointing at him as the guy that had unveiled quite the bombshell.
Naturally, as Team USA prepares for its tour at this summer’s Rio Olympics, Durant caught wind of the reports, and vehemently denied that he ever told Westbrook such a thing.
It’s false. I didn’t say that—words about me telling Russell or Nick that I would stay or leave never came out of my mouth. We met as teammates, but no promises came out of it. In this day and age, I can’t control anything people claim out there. Someone can go out and say something random right now, and people will believe it. I never told Russell or Nick, ‘All right, guys, I’m coming back to the Thunder’—and then a week later, I decide not to. Never happened. I don’t operate like that. I heard people say that story, but it’s not the truth.
So far, everyone has spoken about the situation except Westbrook. It might be time for Russell to clear the air.
