Does Kevin Durant Care If You Don't Think He's The GOAT? l Boardroom Cover Story

When you talk about the gold conversation, for instance, right. I actually think that people don't think, you know, that everyone has an asterisk next to your championships. Yeah. And I almost say that stuff to challenge people's thinking on why do you either put, why do you have a goat list for one and what does it actually mean in the grass game with this, and to also highlight that it's such a subject or such a subjective thing that I can ask 20 people that you may not ever know or talk to who they go and they may save me. They may say tracing with radio, Paul George, but what does it matter? Like at the end of the day, what truly matters in this thing? You know what I'm saying? And so like, yeah, I've, I've heard people come up to me and passionately tell me I'm the greatest they ever seen. And I feel like I've accomplished things on the court and been in situations that the greatest have seen. So I feel like I can have a conversation about basketball with the Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, not about bragging about how much we've done, but like, what did you see out there? And did I see the same things? I feel like I can have those conversations with the greatest to ever play. And they will feel comfortable knowing that I understand where they're coming from and their perspective on the game of basketball, because I'm well-traveled and I'm truly a student of the game. On top of me experiencing the same things they did. So when I say this GOAT day, it's more so like, can I have a real basketball conversations with some of the best that's ever played basketball or walked those sidelines? And I believe so. And, and, and what I'm saying is bigger than just me. It's just the overall effect of what's going on in the NBA and in the storytelling around the NBA, it should be based off facts more so than whoever's writing this personal bias. Yeah. Well, sadly they're, they're, they're space for both most networks, you know, lean towards one version of it and, and pound for pound, the people that are talking about it really do know the game. A lot of them, they do game, but you know, we know what sells. And I think what's unfortunate is that like, let's look at your body of work. And that's not even look at the accolades that are accumulated. Just look at the seasons. Oh, we're going to get to that. You know what I'm saying? And how long are those seasons and those numbers, how consistent those numbers are, that to me is a career and don't matter how many accolades you accumulate. Like I have high level of respect for Stefan Marbury and he has no accolades or no real stake in any of these conversations, but you look at it, but you look at the nine or 10 seasons that he played, you know what I'm saying? Well, but that's the thing. So then when you talk about the gold conversation, right. And I'm not here advocating for you to be in it or not be in it. I'm saying that. And me either. Right. No, I know you're not. I'm just, I'm just questioning just the whole conversation itself. I hear you. Cause what, cause what I was saying is if you do two championships, two finals, MVPs and MVP, four scoring titles, three Olympic gold medals, all time Olympic score, then you talk about 17 years in the league, 16 years playing cause you missed an entire year for what the craziest injury ever, which is never spoken about. I can say this and also another year of your season where you miss 50 games, 60 games with an injury that people didn't realize missed the whole season. Really? You, you, you play like 12 games or 18 games, 27. But if I would have did the last surgery we did, we did that first, then I would have missed the whole year. Can we spend a little time on the fact that you are 10th all time in scoring. You missed two full seasons, your fourth all time or third all time in scoring average. You've played 16 years in the NBA. You, like you said, one of those seasons, you only played 27 games. And every year you're averaging 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, shooting over 50%. That conversation, whether you want to put it in the gold, you want to put it in the best Hooper ever. That conversation is important. It's important for me to have out there. And it's one of the things I wanted to get across in this interview, because when I was hearing you talk about it the other day, everyone went right to your decision, like, cool. Take the decision. Yeah. But also seeing this, just see this.