ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Kevin Durant — former media darling — apparently doesn’t like the media now.
“You guys really don’t know s—-,” he told reporters during the NBA all-star weekend.
He is now a follower of the Marshawn Lynch school of media.
“To be honest, man, I’m only here talking to y’all because I have to,” said Durant, D.C. native, last year’s NBA Most Valuable Player, six-time all-star and future Washington Wizard. “So I really don’t care. Y’all not my friends. You’re going to write what you want to write. You’re going to love us one day and hate us the next. That’s a part of it. So I just learn how to deal with y’all.”
Now, to be fair, Durant does like some media — social media, like the tweets he put out recently on his Twitter account.
“Think during this NBA All Star break, I’m going to get my law degree.”
And this one, which included a picture of a law degree from Seat Pleasant University.
“Told y’all I wasn’t playing — it’s KDLaw from here on out.”
It was all part of a Sprint advertising campaign.
Those media, apparently, are Durant’s friends.
Why? Because they put money in his pocket.
Durant and Lynch are freedom fighters, card-carrying members of the spoon-fed generation — stroked from the time they showed enormous talent to do what people will pay to watch them do. For that generation, there are no questions to answer, no criticism to consider.
There are only marketing opportunities — and friends who want to pay them.
Lynch became a media celebrity during the Super Bowl for his refusal to answer questions on the official media day, save for the answer he repeated over and over, “I’m just here so I don’t get fined.”
He did that while wearing one of his Beast Mode hats from the line of clothing he is marketing — the sort of media that Lynch embraces, in Skittles and Progressive insurance commercials.
Later that week, Lynch gave his declaration of independence address in a press conference.
“All week I done told y’all what’s up,” Lynch told reporters. “And for some reason you continue to come back for the same thing. I don’t know what story y’all trying to get out of me. What image you are trying to portray of me. But it don’t matter what y’all think, what y’all say about me. When I go home at night to the same people I look in the face, to my family that I love, that’s all that matters. So y’all go make up whatever you want to make up, because I don’t say nothing for you to make out on. But I’ll come to your event, y’all shove cameras and microphones down my throat. But when I’m at home, in my environment, I don’t see y’all. But y’all mad at me. And if y’all ain’t mad at me, then what’ll y’all here for?
“I don’t have nothing for you,” he continued. “I told y’all that, so you should know that. But y’all sit here and continue to do the same thing. I’m here preparing for a game and y’all want to ask me all these questions, which is understandable, I can get that. But I told y’all I’m not about to say nothing. I’m here. I’m available for y’all. I’m here. I done talked. All of my requirements are fulfilled. So for these next three minutes, I’ll just be looking at y’all the way y’all be looking at me.”
The part he left out was, “Now excuse me while I sell some hats and candy.”
That media, Lynch had plenty for.
Maybe this is just the evolution of sports entertainment, with accountability the casualty. Durant lumped athletes and entertainers in the same statement in his own declaration of independence.
“I am just learning to be myself, not worrying about what everybody else says,” he told reporters. “I am going to make mistakes. I just want to show kids out here that athletes, entertainers, whoever, so-called celebrities, we aren’t robots. We go through emotions and go through feelings and I am just trying to express mine and try to help people along the way. I am not going to sit here and tell you that I am just this guy that is programmed to say the right stuff all the time and politically correct answers. I am done with that.”
Then again, put a script in front of him and some cash in his pocket, and Kevin Durant will say whatever you want — even be a lawyer.
That’s what friends who pay do for each other.
• Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 and espn980.com.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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