Kevin Durant’s media feuds are inevitable

Kevin Durant latest fight with media exposed just how dehumanizing superstar culture can be for everyone involved.

The morning after Kevin Durant went off on the media for being too concerned about his pending free agency in a press conference, LeBron James was asked whether he was trying to force the Lakers to make moves before the trade deadline. James gave a routine non-answer:

James’ answer is clearly not the truth: his power to force teams to make moves that benefit him and another chase for a championship has been well-documented. But a lot of the criticism about Durant after his comments against the media has been that he should be more like James. That Durant needs to know how to play the media game better — to give non-answers, to lie, to not be so bothered by speculation, rumors, or even negative articles online.

Durant called out coverage by The Athletic reporter Ethan Strauss by name. In response, Strauss wrote:

“If KD plans to return, this question is easy enough for him to answer. If he’s undecided or even if he plans to leave, this question is still easy enough for him to answer. A LeBron James-style, “I’ll answer questions about our team, but not other teams,” effectively, blandly, dispatches the query while delivering nothing of substance. This is how James and other superstars have handled such questions in contract seasons. Durant isn’t “damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” on this subject. There’s a very clear, well-trod, easy road he’s choosing to avoid for whatever reason.”

That criticism of Durant is valid. The media and fans of the NBA are concerned about his future for obvious reasons. He’s one of the best basketball players on the planet, playing for the best team in the league — one of the best teams in history before he joined it and turned it into the NBA version of the Legion of Doom. His decision this summer will have league-wide repercussions. Multiple teams are creating cap space in hopes that they can land him. The attention is the burden of his greatness, as it is with James.

But criticizing Durant also ignores an odious part of his job. Keeping the public informed of his job prospects isn’t his primary function as a basketball player, and who wouldn’t be exhausted and frustrated by constant scrutiny. What his anger illustrates above all is how unnatural the relationship between media and players really is.

Durant has had disdain for NBA media for a long time now. He has made it clear that he doesn’t think the media knows anything, and he doesn’t want to be bothered by anything that’s not purely about basketball. Before his recent comments, he had gone a week without talking to media, which meant that the particular article from Strauss that he was angry at had to be written without his input. He was angry about that too: that Strauss did not talk to him for the article, even though he wasn’t talking to anyone.

That’s the contradiction facing Durant: He wants to be lauded as the best player in the world, but he is easily bothered by the attention and criticism that comes with that territory. At the same time, he orchestrates the media himself. He chose to become a free agent this summer, then made comments before the season suggesting that teams other than the Warriors had a chance at him. That’s what caused the rift between him and Draymond Green. And now it’s ultimately why he’s so frustrated about having to speak about potential suitors.

Still, we can have sympathy for Durant. Playing coy with media or ignoring online criticisms simply isn’t the person who he is. He’s sensitive to negativity and the ownership that others take in his life. There’s nothing he can do if others write about his future, and denigrate and twist his words. He can stop talking to the media, but his stories will still be written. James has learned how to manipulate and mitigate the noise because he knows he can’t stop it, but even someone as savvy as him has had public outbursts at the media, too.

Durant’s constant battles with media and fans exposes the debasing conditions of being a superstar athlete. Because he doesn’t handle his PR well, the awful nature of the media makes itself more obvious.

Everyone, from owners to media, make money off of these athletes because they happen to be good at their sport. The athletes get their cut, but they’re also exploited. Someone like Durant not only has to do his job, but he’s contractually obligated to be assessed every single day, often by people he doesn’t know, down to the smallest detail about his performance, his future, and his personal life.

Even when Durant is completely earnest in front of the world, he gets cut down. Durant made a heartfelt speech about his mother’s role in his life and it turned into a meme. That transformation happens so often and so casually to so many athletes that it’s easy to forget how cruel it can be for the people involved. It’s easy to say that Durant should have thicker skin because most other players who approach his status do, but that ignores the fact that most human beings aren’t, and don’t want to be, this exposed to the public.

Durant isn’t the first athlete or public figure to be angry with the media. Backlash is an inevitable part of writers writing about people who don’t, and shouldn’t, get to determine what is written about them. He can participate, or he can not talk to anyone. That is his right. But articles about him shouldn’t be written simply so that he can be happy.

Yet, just because someone like James has mastered how to talk to media doesn’t mean that every other athlete is capable of doing so. This incapability is also not a failure. Criticisms against Durant’s behavior are justified, but so is Durant’s anger and confusion about how to navigate the superstar landscape.

Media, meanwhile, have jobs, too, that they have to do even when when players are antagonistic or distrustful towards them, under deadlines, and also while facing the public on a daily basis thanks to social media. Both athletes and media play roles that inevitably lead to finger pointing at one another, when the culprit for their tense relationship is a chaotic environment.

There’s often no one to blame when athletes and media clash. The better answer is that celebrity maybe isn’t very healthy — for athletes like Durant, nor the people who cover them.