Russell Westbrook 'likes' those Thunder cats Kevin Durant dubbed 'not that good'
By now, you’ve surely heard how Golden State Warriors superstar Kevin Durant took to Twitter over the weekend to chide the Oklahoma City Thunder from top to bottom, save for Russell Westbrook.
“He didn’t like the organization or playing for Billy Donovan,” Durant wrote in the third person. “His roster wasn’t that good, it was just him and Russ. … Imagine taking Russ off that team, see how bad they were. KD can’t win a championship with those cats.”
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Naturally, his ex-teammates didn’t take too kindly to being called “not that good” and, in fact, “bad.” Enes Kanter, who averaged 13 points and eight rebounds off the bench for the Durant-led Thunder team that took a 3-1 lead over the Warriors in the 2016 Western Conference finals, was the most vocal:
Okla-Home pic.twitter.com/54JqtM4c5S
— Enes Kanter (@Enes_Kanter) September 19, 2017
In a clear shot at Durant for comments even the reigning Finals MVP has admitted were idiotic, Kanter praised the Thunder organization and his teammates. “And those cats,” he said, “I call them FAMILY.”
Kanter went even further in an appearance on CBS Radio on Wednesday:
“He never complained about Billy, never complained about us, and he never complained about the organization,” Kanter said. “But we learned how he felt from Twitter. I’ll say it again: It made the whole organization really sad. It was disrespectful.”
[…]
“You just won a championship. You were the Finals MVP,” Kanter said. “I understand interacting with fans, but having a fake account and just answering back and trying to have a conversation with them and stuff, come on, man. If you’re Kevin Durant, you don’t do that. He is one of the top five players in the league. Come on, man. Just go do your thing. Play basketball and try to be the best. When he’s doing all these little things to all those people who sit on their laptop and just writing comments — they got no life. Come on, man. You don’t do that.”
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If Durant thought he would get off easy with Westbrook, the only Thunder player to escape KD’s Twitter wrath, think again. Unsurprisingly, the reigning regular-season MVP, whose beef with Durant has been well-documented, sided with Kanter, liking his teammate’s comments on Instagram:
Like Westbrook before him, Kanter has given KD the business before, most notably from the bench in their first meeting after Durant left Oklahoma City for Golden State — a game the Warriors won by 26:
Durant, being Durant, clapped back at Kanter in his postgame news conference this past November: “How many minutes did he play? Three minutes. I’m trying to focus on whoever’s on the court. He trying to talk to me from the sideline. But I’m sure he’s going to put something on Twitter tonight.”
Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think.
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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
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