Kevin Durant has been going through a really weird patch lately.
His ejection from Golden State’s clash with New Orleans on Monday – following an ill-conceived shouting match with DeMarcus Cousins – was the third time he’d been tossed from a game in 18 days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpKjN_1vuDo
That’s after being ejected just twice in his previous 810 games.
Despite formally having one of the most prominent ‘nice guy’ public personas in the NBA, Durant has gone the other way and now talks about ejections as if they’re a normal, inevitable part of his new NBA life.
“Every time I get ejected I make sure it’s late in the game,” Durant said this week, per ESPN. I’m not messing up like that in the first or second quarter — make sure it’s late in the game if I want to do something.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iulWuQcGvY
Durant’s words and actions almost seem to suggest he’s intentionally kicking up a stink in the dying moments of games, after being thrown out with 1:14 remaining on Monday, 4:52 left on December 1 and 43 seconds remaining on October 7.
KD has since admitted he should probably, perhaps, maybe stop getting kicked out of games.
“”I got to be more focused, I got to be more poised,” Durant said. “I can’t let anybody take me off my game. I’ve been in the league too long. Especially somebody like Cousins, we know that he’s feisty, we know that he’s emotional. We know that he plays that way so I can’t get involved in that. That’s who he is, I got to be me.”
Meanwhile, Warriors coach Steve Kerr believes his players need to get their emotions in check sooner rather than later.
“Yeah, absolutely too much,” Kerr said. “We’re not composed out there. We’re a championship team. We got to be poised and we got to execute out there. We’re getting way too emotional. Myself included. I got to do a better job of that, too. We’ve got to show some poise when things aren’t going our way and stop worrying about everything else and just worry about the game.”
Besides, Durant should know that Draymond Green is the designated hothead on the Warriors, and one hothead is plenty.