Kevin Durant Explains Why He Stopped Clapping Back at Angry Opposing Fans

Kevin Durant got into the habit of yelling back at fans who heckled him during games earlier this season. Here's why he stopped.

Kevin Durant enters the arena wearing headphones.
USA Today Sports

Image via USA TODAY Sports/Soobum Im

Kevin Durant enters the arena wearing headphones.

At the start of the 2016-17 NBA regular season, there were a lot of NBA fans outside of Oakland who were not happy about Kevin Durant playing for the Warriors. Those fans gave KD a lot of grief during games, and initially, he struggled to deal with the heckling he faced. Who can forget the time he worked out in front of a group of reporters while yelling things like "They called me a coward!" as he shot jumpers?

KD has since figured out a way to deal with the haters, and he doesn’t care how mad people are about him going to the NBA Finals with the Warriors. But during a recent interview with USA Today Sports, KD talked about what his early days with Golden State were like. Specifically, he talked about how he was surprised to hear so many opposing fans outside of Oklahoma City heckle him. He talked about one time when a young fan got on his case during a preseason game against the Nuggets, which prompted a response from him.

"A kid was behind the bench, and he was like, 'You sold everybody out! You’re a coward! You’re a p*ssy, a b*tch!'" KD said. "I was just like, 'Why are you this upset?' That’s what I was thinking, and that’s why I was talking back. I was like, 'Why are you so mad again? What’s so important about this that you want to call me all these disrespectful names?' That sh*t doesn’t fly where I’m from, where any one of us are from. If he walked up onto you, and said that to you, you would confront him. I’m like, 'Where is this coming from?'"

KD said that he started to realize that responding to every fan who said something nasty to him wasn’t worth his time, so eventually, he stopped doing it. But it doesn’t sound like it stopped fans from firing shots at him during games.

"After a while, I just—it just became so normal, that it was just, 'What am I even worried about?'" he said. "Because I know it’s not real. 'Why am I even responding to this?'"

Elsewhere in the interview, KD also addressed those who say that him going to Golden State killed the NBA’s competitive balance. KD doesn’t necessarily see things that way—and he let off a few shots of his own at some of the bad teams in the NBA to try and prove his point.

"I’m the reason why f*cking Orlando couldn’t make the playoffs for five, six years in a row?" he said. "Am I the reason that Brooklyn gave all their picks to Boston? Like, am I the reason that they’re not that good? I can’t play for every team, so the truth of the matter is I left one team. It’s one more team that you probably would’ve thought would’ve been a contender. One more team. I couldn’t have made the [entire] East better. I couldn’t have made everybody [else] in the West better."

You can check out the rest of KD’s interview with USA Today Sportshere.

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