Kevin Durant lauds NBA fan for clip showing his gravity helping Stephen Curry and vice versa

Kevin Durant, who has been rumored to be a trade target for other teams, reminisces his time alongside Stephen Curry in Golden State.

Kevin Durant lauds NBA fan for clip showing his gravity helping Stephen Curry and vice versa

Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry

It would hardly be a stretch to call the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors the greatest NBA team of all time. A team that had won 73 games in 2015-16 replaced two outgoing starters with Kevin Durant. While losing Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut reduced the team’s versatility, adding an MVP alongside Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green made such a team that most NBA fans lost all their interest.

This team had small adjustments to make. The squad ended up losing their first game against the San Antonio Spurs 129-100. However, over the course of the next few months, fans could see exactly what they had dreaded. The Warriors became the kind of juggernaut no team in league history would want to go up against. Despite the Warriors’ Christmas loss to Cleveland, they entered the playoffs as favorites.

The team ended up winning 15 games on the trot – the longest unbeaten streak in a single playoff run. It took a night when the Cleveland Cavaliers made 24 3-pointers to hold them off from a 16th straight win. The Warriors ended the season with a 67-15 record in the regular season and went 16-1 in the playoffs. This led to them becoming the roster with one of the highest win percentages in history for a single season.

Players, fans and media alike look back at the team in a different light now compared to those days. While those Warriors demonstrated exemplary ball movement and beautiful offensive coordination a lot of revisionism has since taken place. The place of Kevin Durant in the dynasty Warriors has repeatedly been undermined by Warriors fans in media.

In particular, a prevalent notion among basketball fans has been that Durant benefited a lot more from Stephen Curry being on his team. One of the reasons cited for this is Curry’s ‘gravity’ – where players cheat towards him off the ball despite being assigned to defend other players. Yet, it has been proven over and over again that the arrangement was mutually beneficial.

One such clip has been doing the rounds on NBA Twitter recently.

Kevin Durant chanced upon this clip and gave a nod to the poster for spreading the good word.

Great footage. Great basketball in these clips. #gravity has been alive n well for a long time.

Kevin Durant tweeted

Kevin Durant roasts another fan for interjecting on the same post

Durant, who has been rumored to be on the move this summer away from Phoenix, has also been responding to NBA Twitter trolls with a lot more regularity this year. The four-time NBA scoring champion was accosted by a few of them on this post as well.

A fan lamented that Durant had permanently damaged the league with his move to the Warriors.

While what was said to him was par for the course, Durant had a cheeky reply of his own.

I was born to be a disruption

Kevin Durant replied

The interaction shows that Kevin Durant is completely comfortable in his own skin. While people like to twist the situation around from an all-time great engaging with fans on the Internet, the fact that KD is ready and willing to speak to fans on a one-to-one basis online is commendable and something other athletes admire.

Durant will be honored with a statue in the Bay Area when he retires from the game, as confirmed by former Warriors GM Bob MYers himself. Although his legacy is tarnished in some people’s eyes, all that matters is how he played on the court and conducted himself. And Durant has set extremely high standards on both counts during his extraordinary career.

Also Read: Russell Westbrook’s LeBron James comment spurs NBA Twitter roast of Lakers star