Brooklyn Nets superstar forward Kevin Durant wants to win basketball games — and yet part of his job is to field questions from the media even after doing the polar opposite. Durant, who has seen it all, customarily handles these questions with grace and honesty. But it’s no pleasure for either side. Reporters really don’t want to ask questions like “Why did the team play so bad?”
And when you’re on the team that just got beat 153-121, as Durant and the Nets did against the Sacramento Kings, you don’t really want to answer that question.
First of all if you knew, you’d have fixed it while the game was in progress. But Durant still sits and answers, does his job. Here are a few KD quotes that explain how Durant views the Nets situation and just how futile it felt to be in a Nets uniform on Tuesday night:
“It’s tough. It’s tough, you know, on droughts like that,” Durant said about one particular stretch where the Nets were outscored by 20 points.
Asked “why do you think the collective effort was so bad tonight?” Durant defended the team — a little — and gave credit to the opponent.
“I mean we had great intentions, they just made shots,” Durant said. “I mean, that’s demoralizing, when you see teams making shots, it’s not like we didn’t try.”
Some fans and upper management denizens might disagree with KD about the level of the Nets collective effort. But the Kings did make shots, some of them tough ones. The Kings shot nearly 60% from the field, making the Nets more-than-decent 50% FG percentage not nearly good enough.
“They were just better,” Durant said.
The 6-9 Nets sit in 12th place in the Eastern Conference, now with the nagging word “demoralizing” in their laps. The face the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday.
