What in the hell am I talking about, you ask? If you haven’t heard, Phil Jackson told the press that Kevin Durant gets too many calls, and the 21-year-old responded by saying that he felt disrespected.
Rumors & Rants says that Durant fell into the Zen Master’s trap.
Look man, I know you’re a great player, hell the whole world knows you’re a great player and Phil Jackson is definitely aware of the kind of player you are. You think he just tossed that line out there to be disrespectful? Dude, the guy is the Zen master. He’s won 10 championships. He didn’t do that by just randomly disrespecting opponents. He’s planting a line in the media to get you to respond and you allowed yourself to be played. You jumped right in to his game.
What you should have done was respond with something like this: “Well that’s his opinion. He’s a great coach, he’s earned the right to express his opinion.” Bingo, end of discussion. Instead of a throw-away story that would have died after a day or two, now this is going to balloon up and become THE story of the Thunder’s first round matchup with the defending champions.
Now it’s on your shoulders to prove him wrong. Now everyone will be focused on how you play and how you respond if the officials don’t give you the kind of calls you’ve become accustomed to. And now the officials are going to be in the spotlight and will be criticized one way or the other for how they call the games.
Instead of just disappearing this has become a full-fledged incident. Jackson knew exactly what he was doing and you became his latest patsy.
No arguments here. We’ll see if Durant plays better, worse or the same now that he and Jackson are at odds.
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