Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant has apologized for comments he made on Twitter over the weekend when he smack-talke his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and coach Billy Donovan, calling his words “childish” and “idiotic.”
But let’s rewind.
On Sunday, Twitter user @harrisonmc15 spotted a reply from Durant’s verified account trashing his former coach and team — in the third person, which seemed weird. @harrisonmc15 took this to mean that Durant created secret accounts to defend himself, and forgot to switch over to one of these anonymous accounts before defending himself in the third person to another user who asked for “one legitimate reason for leaving okc other than getting a championship.”
“He didn’t like the organization or playing for Billy Donovan. His roster wasn’t good, it was just him and russ,” Durant tweeted back (“russ” referring to Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook).
KD has secret accounts that he uses to defend himself and forgot to switch to them when he was replying to this guy I'm actually speechless pic.twitter.com/9245gnpa3c
— idk (@harrisonmc15) September 18, 2017
Sports news outlets jumped on the Twitter drama, and Durant ended up deleting the tweet.
no, I just deleted it.
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) September 16, 2017
But further digging revealed an account called “quiresultan” on Instagram, a private and since-deleted account that Durant apparently used for friends and family — and to argue with his haters.
The account was discovered after Durant’s brother posted a photo tagging the “quiresultan” handle, which, before it was deleted, was followed by several other NBA players, Durant’s stylist and friend Big Sean, as SB Nation pointed out. The profile photo was a still from “Goodfellas,” one of Durant’s favorite movies, and Quire Avenue and Sultan Avenue are both streets in Durant’s hometown of Capitol Heights, Maryland, both clues that are pointed to as evidence proving “quiresultan” is really KD.
Durant apologized for his comments on Twitter Tuesday, explaining he has an Instagram account he uses just for friends and family.
“I wouldn’t say I was using it to clap back at anyone,” Durant said at the Tech Crunch conference in San Fransisco. “I use Twitter to engage with fans.”
He admitted he took it “a little too far” in this case, and said his remarks were “childish” and “idiotic.”
“I don’t regret clapping back at anybody or talking to my fans on Twitter,” he said. “I do regret using my former coach’s name and the former organization I played for. That was childish. That was idiotic, all those types of words. I apologize for that.”
While Durant said he won’t stop engaging with fans, he will “scale back a little bit right now and just focus on playing basketball.”
It’s clear Durant doesn’t want the narrative to continue: “I’ll move on from [social media engagement], it was tough to deal with [Monday]. I was pretty mad at myself. Definitely want to move on and keep playing basketball.”
Full Kevin Durant comment on his tweets yesterday regarding Donovan, OKC pic.twitter.com/wtfocllp3s
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) September 19, 2017
Durant didn’t address his third-person clap back or whether he engages with fans on anonymous Twitter accounts, but either way, he has probably learned his lesson.