Kevin Durant recently had a clear-the-air conversation with Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports to clarify his thought process during a silent stretch since suffering a torn Achilles tendon in the early part of Game 5 of the NBA Finals as a member of the Golden State Warriors. The sit-down interview revealed Durant chose to master his craft to tune out the outside noise regarding his looming free agency, saying he “dove deeper into the game” to keep his focus on the task at hand. On Thursday, Haynes explained that entailed Durant ceased talking to his teammates sometime after the Draymond Green locker room incident.
“There was a point with Kevin Durant when he just stopped talking to his teammates,” Haynes said during an appearance on Fox Sports 1's The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “He was really on an island and didn't have somebody that he was close with on that team. The only person he was close with was Quinn Cook, because they're from the same area. But Quinn is a younger guy that doesn't have much clout within the franchise.”
Haynes didn't point to a specific stretch in which Durant went silent, but noted it was after that infamous Nov. 12 overtime loss to the LA Clippers, when Green and Durant had a flammable argument in the visitors' locker room.
“After the Draymond stuff went down and then the New York Knicks chatter started going haywire, Durant just stopped talking,” Haynes said. “He felt like if he said something, it would give a lot of credence to people saying he's only thinking about free agency. You would see Durant leaving the arena by himself and entering the arena by himself and really not speaking to anyone.”
Noticing this, team officials had told Durant “to liven up his disposition,” according to Haynes — yet the sign alone that he was willing to be this introverted was cause for suspicion.
“There were a lot of things going on and you could tell everybody knew the writing was on the wall early on that it was going to be his last season on the Warriors,” Haynes said.
Many warned that if Durant left the team, many would circle back to his November tiff with Green, even after the two patched things up quickly after the fact. It's not surprising to see this resurface, even if nine months have passed since.
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