Ethan Sherwood Strauss released an excerpt of his new Golden State Warriors book The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty to HoopsHype on Tuesday.
The book, also released Tuesday, reviews the culture and rise and fall of the Warriors dynasty.
This particular excerpt was about forward Kevin Durant’s explosive reaction to an article Strauss wrote about the Warriors apparently trying to make their star soon-to-be free agent happy.
Here are some particular striking moments of the excerpt.
“You don’t know what makes me happy!”
The article in question was published to The Athletic on Jan. 4, 2019 with the headline “Can the Warriors win and keep Kevin Durant happy at the same time?”
It was written after a one-point loss to the Houston Rockets.
The theme of the story was generally that the Warriors needed to involve Durant more, which head coach Steve Kerr said in a press conference Strauss referenced.
But based on the eye test and statistics, Strauss noticed, Durant wasn’t getting himself involved.
“It often appears that many of these plays are called to make Durant happier, much as nobody with the Warriors would admit that Durant must be made happy at the occasional cost of efficient play. Perhaps not so incidentally, Durant now registers about half as many off-ball cuts to the basket as he averaged in his first Warriors season. Basically, if the offense isn’t directly involving KD, KD is not so inclined as to involve himself in the offense.”
One of Durant’s main gripes: Strauss hadn’t included anything from his postgame press conference. He didn’t know what makes him happy because he wasn’t there to hear it.
Strauss’ explanation is that he typically goes to the locker room instead of players’ post game conferences because there’s better moments to report on there.
Strauss wrote this: “I didn’t know what made him happy, but I was getting a sense of what could make him obsessively pissed.”
Durant’s beef with Curry’s treatment
Still fuming in a near-empty locker room, Durant called Strauss over.
As they spoke, Strauss’ voice began to rise, and Durant shushed him. “Everybody don’t need to be hearing this.”
It was clear Durant wanted to keep this private, where even teammates wouldn’t hear.
The reason was shown explained a paragraph later, where Strauss was accused of trying to “rile up Steph’s fans.”
“He expressed that this was a constant theme in the Bay. All of us local guys just wanted to kiss Steph’s (expletive) at his expense. This was KD’s consistent lament.”
On social media, Durant would get into arguments with fans who he believed were “favoring Steph at his expense.”
At one point on social media, he was asked who was better between Curry and Kyrie Irving. Durant didn’t say his teammate the way players are typically automatic about. Instead, he replied “I gotta really sit down and analyze it.”
They’d shown anger, but betrayed no obsession.
Quite a bit of the excerpt centers around how different Durant’s reaction was to other players who had gotten upset at Strauss about an article.
Most of the time, a player airs out his grievances and then it’s over.
“Guys had gotten mad at me before, but not like this. They’d shown anger, but betrayed no obsession. Generally, you get a blast of scorn, but the underlying idea is that you’re a pissant who, after the initial transgression, isn’t worth a further thought.”
Durant internalized the article and criticisms and did not let it go.
“KD made you feel as though he thought more about you than the other way around. He almost flattered you with his spite. Or, it would be flattering if the spite wasn’t so KD-focused. You were only hated insofar as how you reflected on him.”