Y’see Kevin Durant, you don’t seem to get why you’re apologizing. In one sense, I appreciate how nakedly obtuse you are about the whole thing. It beats the PR department-fueled apologies we usually get from someone like you that are treated as the real thing. You’re making it easy for everyone to see just how off the mark you are, and how little effort you’ve put into understanding why you have to apologize. It seems to be your way about everything. The thing is, Kev, the problem isn’t that people saw your messages to Michael Rappaport (I can’t believe I’m still talking about this guy. He was in True Romance! That was seriously 178 years ago). It’s not that being exposed is what offended anyone (and the sense that I get is that it didn’t offend enough people). It’s that you used the language at all. Do you see the difference? It doesn’t appear that you do. And no one appears to be trying to illustrate the difference.
And the thing is, KD, you act like you’re the one who has to “move past it.” But again, you’re not the one who really pays for this. This might be news to you, but you do have female and gay fans. If you don’t, and you shouldn’t after this, the NBA sure does. And they’re the ones you insulted, if not horrified. They’re the ones who have to move past you saying these things, and the ones who have to move past the much larger obstacle of this kind of language just being accepted in your world. That’s the issue here.
I get that you might not understand the degree of your offenses here. No one’s holding your feet to the fire. ESPN talked about your injury recovery much more. Yahoo didn’t even ask your bosses what they told you. CBS even said you publicly apologized. NBA.com combined it all and painted your “apology” as genuine… and then spent more time talking about your injury recovery. But the thing is, you didn’t really. You apologized for getting caught. Which is what most people do in this spot — so maybe that’s your confusion — but that doesn’t make it right. It’s in the same vein as “I’m sorry if you were offended.”
I won’t sit on a hot stove waiting for a real apology, though. Apparently no one in any level of orbit around you seems to get it.
On to matters on the surface of play. The Islanders get a lot of shit for being a Barry Trotz team, i.e. being war-crime levels of boring at times. The frustration with them stems, partially, from having one of the more exciting players in the league in Mathew Barzal, and not letting him off the leash enough. Because he’s capable of things like last night, scoring perhaps the prettiest hat trick in years:
All of these are art. This is “Hendrix at Woodstock” (pssst… “Live At The Fillmore East” is the better Hendrix live album). The first one is the goal the two dolts in “Letterkenny” are always trying to score, dirty fuckin’ dangles. The second is instincts on the level of being psychic. The third, simply reflexes and coordination that belong to a select few. This is virtuoso stuff, and it’s a real shame it didn’t happen in front of 12,000 ravenous Long Islanders before they returned to the parking lot to finish off the keg while blasting Ratt.
Barzal is a true treasure, and when sucking the joy and soul out of the game doesn’t work for Trotz, Barzal can still rescue the Isles with moments of genius like this.
Opening Day came to a conclusion last night, where in Anaheim the White Sox apparently announced that after Eloy Jimenez’s torn pectoral diagnosis, they had him euthanized.
Guys… he’ll be back in August or September. You can call him any time if you’d like. He’d probably appreciate it!
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