“All my life, I’ve been a pleaser,” he says, “put everyone else ahead of me.” He’d been a “basketball robot” in a “basketball trance,” trudging head-down with his hoodie cinched tight, never asking for what he wanted or even asking himself that question for fear of hurting teammates and fans. And why all this hatred for a guy who did things right, carried a franchise on his back for nine years while it tried to win a championship on the cheap? Because, for the first time in his life, Durant prioritized himself, chose to pursue his own joy, not his sense of obligation to millions of strangers.
In so doing, he’s knowingly placed in jeopardy his richly earned brand as the game’s kindest star, opening himself up to a barrage of criticism usually lobbed by alt-right trolls. It is this model he’s taking, with his inimitable talents, to the Golden State Warriors this fall, leaving behind the team he built from splinters into a perennial title contender, the Oklahoma City Thunder. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kevin Durant 2.0: the world’s-my-oyster, body-adorning, liberated upgrade. Rick James, whose face now graces his knee? “Grew up listening to him while Grandma cleaned the house.” Tupac and Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes, who share his calf? “Their music takes me to my happy place.” And Aaliyah, who died too young, at 22, to be widely reverenced now? “Man, that was my first big crush as a kid. For the past month, Durant has turned that long leg into a shrine of his dead heroes. With his left thigh numb from a Lidocaine wrap and a couple of neat shots of Scotch, he talked drowsily of his childhood while the inker worked, sketching a portrait of Aaliyah. Maybe he’s just punchy from lack of sleep: The night before, he’d called me to his hotel room to grill him long past midnight while he got tatted. Moments earlier, he’d displaced a cashier, ringing up people’s lunches and dispensing change.
#Kd wingspan free#
For five minutes, the free world’s tallest barista takes orders, foams soy milk and whistles while he works, getting off on the squeals of giddy staffers. At a meet-and-greet downstairs in the employee mess hall, he suddenly steps behind the coffee bar and starts doling out mochaccinos. (Nike is paying him a reported $300 million over the course of a decade.) But high finance doesn’t stop Durant, who just turned 28, from pranking and delighting the bright young things who work here. He’s flown into Portland on serious business: two long days of meetings with product planners to review his worldwide realm of court apparel.