Rehabbing star Kevin Durant dismissed the narrative that he picked the Nets over the Knicks. He said he was always all-in on Brooklyn, and never even considered the Garden.
“That’s the media hyping that (crap) up. I never came out and said anything about me wanting to play for the Knicks, ever. Ever,” Durant said in an interview on Showtime’s “All the Smoke.” “Then when we came here last year, they had the billboards up and somebody asked me about it, and I wasn’t too excited about it, because I didn’t like it.
“It wasn’t like I had something against the Knicks. I just didn’t like all that attention when I was playing for another team. I never really was big on that New York thing. It was just everybody else, the media, the fans. The Knick fans, they wanted a superstar to come play for them finally. I never promised anybody I was playing for the Knicks.”
In truth, all the noise about Durant and Kyrie Irving going to the Garden was coming from the Knicks, not from them. But both came to Brooklyn on June 30, and brought DeAndre Jordan with them. And in a lengthy interview with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Durant said he never even really considered anywhere else.
“Not really. I looked at other places — the Clippers, I took a peek at the Knicks just to do my due diligence — but I really wanted to play for the black and white,” said Durant. “I liked the brand. Brooklyn was an up-and-coming city that needed some new flair, a new basketball injection.
“Because being in Oklahoma City, I knew what that was like, having a new franchise around. I was excited about hopefully doing something like that again in Brooklyn with a new team. Playing with Kyrie Irving, who’s from Jersey and got that tie with the Jersey side of things, so I’m like, ‘We could bring in so many fans.’ So we had a solid thing going. You know what I’m saying?
“We had Sean Marks, a young GM who’s up-and-coming, a young team that has some, a little bit of experience in the playoffs. It all worked out. And then having a couple of trainers and coaches who I worked with in Oklahoma City, worked with during my time in the league, felt like they migrated to the Nets. It just felt like it was perfect.”
Durant’s relationship with assistant Adam Harrington and trainer Sebastian Poirier — both of whom had been with him in OKC — has been well-documented. But the bond that helped bring him to Brooklyn was largely that with Irving, and it deepened over a glass (or two) of vino.
“I’ve been having conversations with Kyrie for the last two years,” Durant said. “Not even about playing together, as just brothers. We didn’t plan on playing together. We played against each other in my second year with the Warriors and we had a mutual friend. We had some wine together and just bonded together and we bonded on life in general and basketball in general. That just formed over time.
“He didn’t like where his situation was at and me either in Golden State. And it was just like, ‘Hey, man, just to see how this will work, let’s try it out.’ And DJ wanted to play with us and be that center for us that can hold it down and play for something really, play for a team that’s going somewhere and not just bouncing around the league. We knew he’d be a vital piece for us going forward, not just as a star, but being a good teammate. So it just worked out.”
Durant called Irving a “pure artist of the game” and his Game 7 winner in the 2016 NBA Finals “the biggest shot of all time.” He gave no timeline for a return from his Achilles injury, but did tease title expectations when he’s finally back.
“At this point, these guys understand what’s coming, what the expectation is as a group. We’ve got that championship mentality,” Durant said. “I’m not saying we’re guaranteeing no ‘chip or we’ll get there easy. But we know when we step on that court, we’ve got to come with that DNA.”