Nike rolled out a massive ad campaign, built on the question, “Am I a bad person?”. The 90-second commercial features almost all of Nike's most popular athletes, including LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Wembanyama, Serena Williams, A'ja Wilson, and Kylian Mbappé. But there was one notable exclusion: Phoenix Suns superstar Kevin Durant. And KD did not fail to notice being left out.
Durant, who will be competing in his fourth Olympic Games with Team USA, seemingly called out Nike on Instagram for not including him in the commercial.
“@nike tell me, Am I a bad person?????” Durant wrote on his Instagram Stories under a photo of himself in a Nike USA Basketball t-shirt. He followed it up with two more Stories directed toward Nike, the iconic logo of which can be clearly seen in each photo.
“Been wit yall every step of the way @nike,” Durant wrote under a photo from 2012 of himself, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, and Kobe Bryant with their Olympic gold medals.
“Even during the quarantine Olympics @nike,” Durant wrote in the third post with a photo from 2016 of himself, Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green, and Harrison Barnes.
Kevin Durant's long relationship with Nike
Nike excluding Kevin Durant, whether purposeful or accidental, is curious either way considering the long-term relationship between the two parties. While LeBron James and Kobe Bryant, the latter of whom died in January 2020, was prominently featured in the commercial, Durant, who has been one of Nike's biggest and most popular athletes for more than a decade, was not.
Shortly after being drafted by the Seattle Supersonics in 2007, Durant signed a seven-year, $60 million contract with Nike that included a $10 million signing bonus and was at the time the second-largest NBA rookie shoe endorsement deal ever (only behind James's seven-year, $90 million contract in 2003). Since then, Durant has served as one of the faces of Nike and his KD shoes have become one of the most popular sneaker lines for the company.
He was apparently valuable enough to the company that Nike inked him to a new, more lucrative deal in 2014 — he reportedly agreed to a 10-year deal worth up to $300 million as Under Armour tried to pry him away from Nike. And in 2023, Durant and Nike agreed to a lifetime contract, making KD one of just three players with a lifetime Nike deal.
“When I first signed with Nike, I couldn't have dreamed of how far we'd go in this partnership,” Durant said at the time. “We've done amazing work creatively and philanthropically. We've traveled the world together and built a business that will now last forever. I'm excited for the future and honored to be in rare company with this deal.”
If Team USA wins gold in Paris this summer, Durant, who has won gold in 2012, 2016, and 2021, will become the all-time Olympic basketball leader in gold medals at four. He has been sidelined with a calf injury in the lead-up to the Summer Games.
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