Kevin Durant was on Bill Simmons’ HBO show Any Given Wednesday last night along with Nas and when Simmons wasn’t awkwardly trying to act like a hip-hop head, they talked basketball.
Durant, of course, left Oklahoma City in free agency earlier this summer and his chosen destination, the 71-win Golden State Warriors, resulted in a lot of fans calling him out for being a weak-willed bandwagon jumper. No where was the hate stronger than OKC, where former fans took their KD jerseys and set them on fire. Some were so mad, and so delusional, they ate their number 35 jerseys.
While Durant admitted that the city’s reaction hurt him (perhaps he was expecting a parade after leaving for a conference rival?), he ultimately concluded that he wasn’t so worried about what fans think of him because they don’t care about him as a person.
“Nobody cares about what I want as a person. It’s all about what I can do on the basketball court. … Nobody cares as long as I can shoot that ball into the hoop. Why should I care what they think if they don’t really care about me as a whole?”
That’s pretty much spot on. Most fans don’t care about their favorite athletes beyond how they perform. It’s why they can so easily overlook a player’s criminal record and cheer him on. Or call a players soft for trying to avoid head injuries. Or hate him the second he leaves their team.
In fact, if KD’s former fans were only fans when he was wearing a Thunder jersey and never cared what KD the man wanted, then maybe they were never fans at all.