Kendrick Perkins: Kobe Bryant was ‘real, real important’ to Kevin Durant

The death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, struck the hearts of the entire basketball world on Sunday. Although NBA games were still played, it was clear that players’ minds were elsewhere throughout the day, as was the case with coaches, media and others who cherish the game of basketball.

Unfortunate occurrences like these warrant varying responses from everyone. Kyrie Irving was unable to play for the Nets in their game against the New York Knicks on Sunday after hearing the news. Spencer Dinwiddie did play, but he was emotional after the game when talking about his childhood hero, much like many other players across the league.

After learning the news of Bryant’s passing, one of Kevin Duran’s old teammates, Kendrick Perkins, felt compelled to apologize for a Twitter fight the two had recently:

My new motto with everything is, What Would Kobe do? He’d want us to focus more on the loss of his daughter. He’d want us to get past differences with our brothers and move on. He’d never want the game to be cancelled or be stopped. He’d want us to keep going! #RIPKOBE🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾

— Kendrick Perkins (@KendrickPerkins) January 27, 2020

During an appearance on 93.7 WEEI “Dale and Keefe” in Boston, Perkins explained how Bryant’s passing led to the public apology:

Yeah, sometimes, you know, God works in mysterious ways. And that’s how I felt. That’s how I feel right now. Sometimes you beef with loved ones or beef with brothers over the simple, craziest things that you shouldn’t even have done. Sometimes — I hate that it had to be with the death of the great Kobe Bryant for me to open my eyes to see that the relationship that me and Kevin had, or have, as far as a brotherhood, is bigger than that little Twitter war that we had, and I’m past it. I would rather not go another day without me nipping that in the bud and us working on our relationship to where it used to be, and that’s how I felt. And the reason that I took it to Twitter is because our beef was on Twitter. So, just like the beef was on Twitter, I was going to end it on Twitter in the public to let him know ‘This is how I feel, and I’m gonna let the world know. I’m not going to hide and just send you a text and leave the beef up in the air. And also, you want to set the example for everybody in the world that tomorrow is not promised. So you might wanna re-evaluate the people who you [are] beefing with, loved ones ’cause it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it at all.

Perkins has yet to hear back from Durant, though he understands because “Kobe was real, real important to KD.”