Just days before the All-Star break earlier this month, Kevin Durant took aim at American-born basketball players for not attempting during the NBA All-Star Game.
“You have to ask the European and world teams if they’re going to compete,” Durant said. “If you look at Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic right now, let’s go back and see what they do in the All-Star Game. Is that competition? So, we haven’t questioned what they’re doing. But we’re going to question the old heads and the Americans.”
The comments sparked a strong conversation, which was an excuse for both American teams to beat Team World in the new All-Star Game format. Now, he’s continuing his campaign against rhetoric he considers unfair to American players and a subtext that isn’t often talked about in the ESPN report about their playing in the 2028 Olympics.
“That’s a lot of bull—with it. I can read between the lines on that. It’s a shot at black Americans. We’re controlling the game. They’re tired of us controlling the game.
He added, “’France is coming for you.’ Really? We beat up those boys.”
Durant is right, as the 2024 version of Team USA defeated the Victor Wembanyama-led French national team at the Olympics. Team USA has won a gold medal in every Summer Olympics since a shocking bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics.
Durant also said he is not ruling out playing in the LA Olympics in the summer of 2028, indicating that the media has planted a narrative that he and Steph Curry will not throw their hat in the ring.
“You guys, the media, have anticipated this,” Durant recently told ESPN. “Where did that narrative, the last dance thing, come from? I didn’t say I wasn’t playing. LeBron said he wasn’t playing. You didn’t hear that from me or Steph.”
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