Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports
I regret to inform you that Kevin Durant is doing stuff on social media again, liking posts that call out Klay Thompson and Draymond Green as ‘fake tough guys.’
The Warriors are embroiled in a new beef and you can be forgiven if you need an explainer on this one. As Golden State was in the midst of throttling the Pistons, Rodney McGruder apparently said some stuff. Then after the game, he maybe said some more stuff. And then it sounds like he might have kept talking in the tunnel on the way to the locker room?
Klay Thompson and Draymond Green both called out the Pistons wing for his trash-talk — the former during the television broadcast as we was doing a guest spot and the latter during his postgame press conference. It seems silly to add insult to the injury of a 27-point loss but McGruder used to play for the Los Angeles Clippers and there’s likely some simmering animosity here because of that.
How did Kevin Durant get involved in the Warriors’ latest beef?
The McGruder-Warriors beef simmered on social media after the game with McGruder’s teammate Wayne Ellington speaking up in his defense, calling Klay and Draymond ‘unprofessional’ and ‘not classy.’ And, thanks to one eagle-eyed NBA Redditor, we know that Kevin Durant smashed the like button on an aggregation of Ellington’s comments.
Whether Durant is holding onto grudges from his time with the Warriors’ or simply poking the bear, he knows exactly what his doing. Durant’s social-media presence sometimes presents as chaotic but he’s smart enough to know that this would be noticed by somehow, and smart enough to know that it would get aggregated and make it’s way back to the Warriors, and smart enough to know that we all know what kind of effect that would have. Gamesmanship or petty for the sake of petty, Kevin Durant is definitely playing games.