Kendrick Perkins addressed Kevin Durant’s comments toward him, calling him a ‘sellout’. The former Boston Celtic engaged in a war with Skip Bayless on Twitter defending his friendship with LeBron James, but he also promised to talk about Durant on Friday’s edition of First Take, where he got some things off his chest.
“I am fighting for African-Americans, I have been. That don’t make you a sellout. That don’t make me a sell-out because I have a different opinion and disagree with someone else that’s going about it another way. I actually applaud anybody who is fighting a fight, right now, in America,” Perkins said.
The former big man also recalled how he and KD helped each other during hard times, crying, venting, when both were going through personal stuff.
“Don’t tell me nothing about being a sellout, cause that ain’t even for me and you, brother. Let me remind you something. The same sellout that’s sitting right here, I remember it like it was yesterday,” Perkins said.
He continued,
“May 8, 2011, mother’s day. You and I, Memphis, Tennessee, going through some personal problems. You came to my room, we vented, we cried together, we cried some more, vented some more. We didn’t leave that room until we confined in each other.”
“So KD, to call your brother a sellout, man, aye, come on dog. You know my love is for you. You know what my love is, what my heart is for you.”
In the end, he said he and his family, especially his kids, will always have the same love and respect for the 2x NBA champion despite his unfortunate words.
“They used to say ‘hey, what’s up uncle KD’, and you used to play fight with them. They still got love for you today.”
“By the way, this same sellout, this brother, that’s sitting right here on this ESPN platform, talking to you today, I still love you to this day my brother. And imma leave it at that.”
An emotional Kendrick Perkins responds to Kevin Durant calling him a sell out pic.twitter.com/4xmrC1sE5y
— Gifdsports (@gifdsports) June 19, 2020
Stephen A. Smith talked to Perkins about the effect of the word ‘sellout’, with Perkins fighting back tears and try to keep it together while the ESPN veteran analyst explained a lot of people give a bad use of that word.
https://twitter.com/TheNBACentral/status/1274010586528067584
“Kendrick Perkins, welcome to the party, my brother, because I’ve been called that name on many, many occasions,” said Smith. “I’d like to go about the business of re-educating a whole bunch of black folks out there as to exactly what a sellout is.
“A sellout is a very disparaging label handed down to a black person who is believed to be operating against the best interest of his own community as a whole. So when people say this kind of stuff, a lot of times I’m looking at them like ‘what the hell are you talking about? Do you even know what it means.’”
This obviously affected Perkins. This man isn’t afraid of speaking out his mind, but KD’s words were just too much for him.
