Kevin Durant's response to being picked for Team LeBron: memeing himself
We now know the full rosters for next month’s 2018 NBA All-Star Game, but we still don’t know the specific order in which LeBron James and Stephen Curry picked their squads. We do know, though, that James used the first overall pick he got for earning the most All-Star votes on Kevin Durant — KD confirmed as much on Thursday evening — and that Curry’s Golden State Warriors teammate felt like having a little fun with the fact that he’ll be a member of Team LeBron:
The reference, for those who’ve been under a Basketball Internet rock for the past year and a half: when Durant announced his decision to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder and join the Warriors in the summer of 2016 via an essay on The Players Tribune, this art and headline that ran with the piece. The image became an almost instant meme, with fans racing to Photoshop every time the Warriors lost to plaster the logo of whichever team beat them on Durant’s plain white T-shirt — their way of clowning him for choosing to jump ship after blowing a 3-1 lead in the Western Conference Finals to join up with the team that had just beaten them.
Now, some 18 months after making the choice that launched a million memes, Durant’s decided to get in on the joke. On one hand, you’d figure it’d be easier to laugh at yourself after it had been proven you made the right choice. On the other, KD’s pretty famously had some issues with the criticism he takes, and he hasn’t always shown the most self-awareness in certain situations. Let’s chalk it up to growth and maturity, enjoy some legitimately solid self-deprecation, and cross our fingers in hopes that KD’s a man of his word on coming for Curry; it’d be wonderful for Steph to think he avoided posterization just because he successfully landed Giannis Antetokounmpo, only to find himself on the receiving end of some not-so-friendly fire from Team LeBron’s No. 1 pick.
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Dan Devine is a writer and editor for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@oath.com or follow him on Twitter!
