Kevin Durant made the headlines once again for reasons he’d want to forget, as the public has associated his name with a burner account that made some outrageous comments on Durant’s current and former teammates, as well as colleagues in the league like Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic.
During the NBA’s All-Star weekend, a burner account went viral that allegedly belongs to Kevin Durant. It disparaged several of Durant’s current and former colleagues as well; if true, it could be a major scandal in the NBA. Bill Simmons, the renowned analyst, recently spoke his mind on the burner account controversy that has suddenly surrounded Durant.
“I think we have to acknowledge that this is happening in real time. That there is a burner account allegedly tied to KD,” said Simmons as he brought up the topic on the latest episode of his podcast with ESPN’s Zach Lowe.
“I thought it was a Twitter account, but it’s an account, and it’s allegedly him, and there are a lot of signs that it’s him. And it’s sh**-talking a bunch of people that he’s either played with or played against,” Simmons further added.
“If you go anywhere on social media, you’ll find a lot of examples, and there’s a video of him in the warmup line looking at his phone and typing, which is also weird.”
“I assume there’s probably some smoke with the fire on this one. If this is all true and he’s talking about guys he’s playing with right now, I don’t know if we’ve ever been in a situation like this. A social media scandal of revealed tweets/texts of somebody disparaging people on his team, that he then has to play with. I think we’ve made new ground on this,” concluded Simmons.
Simmons seemed open to the possibility that it could be Durant. He was appalled at the state of the NBA if teammates are doing this to each other now. But Max Kellerman, another renowned NBA voice, felt that people do not have enough evidence to jump to the conclusion that it is him.
On the recent episode of his podcast ‘Game Over’ with Rich Paul, Kellerman spoke about the incident and explained how easy it is to convince people that it is Durant, which makes it more likely that it is not.
“There is a story out there that I have not seen compelling evidence to verify. Like, people are like, ‘Oh, this is Kevin Durant’s burner account because someone claims they were in a chat with Kevin Durant and they saw some avatars, whatever. But it doesn’t sound like they have something concrete.”
“However, does it sound credible to people? Because Kevin Durant’s admitted he has burner accounts, so it becomes a situation where it doesn’t take much to convince people that he’s talking sh** about guys, right?” said Kellerman.
One of the most compelling fallacies here is that Durant has publicly admitted to using burner accounts before. Thus, people are jumping to the conclusion that it is him, even when it is not proven.
Rich Paul tried to humanize the situation from Durant’s perspective, saying that having burner accounts is justified for people who need to worry about their public image.
“I don’t know that to be true, but what I do know is that these guys have to always be on. They never get to be themselves in terms of what people want them to be,” said Paul to Kellerman.
If it is true that this burner account belongs to Durant, does being yourself come at the cost of others around you? While I also believe that it is likely not Durant, it is scary to see how easily people can be convinced to believe what they want to believe.
People close to Durant have vouched that this is not him. But it will be interesting to see if Durant ever breaks the silence on this.
