After missing the last six games for the Golden State Warriors, Kevin Durant’s return from injury was cut short when he got himself ejected against the Milwaukee Bucks. At the very least, however, he got his money’s worth on the ejection. We’re not going to transcribe this audio, only because there isn’t one word of it fit for publishing, but if you listen closely, Durant can be heard laying into the referee with some bad-language words.
Believing he was fouled on a drive, Durant quickly walks over to the referee. Around ten seconds into the video is when the cameras begin to pick up his words, and boy, those are some choice words. The relationship between players and referees has deteriorated this season, but whatever the case, it doesn’t really justify the tongue-lashing by Durant.
With five ejections on the season, Durant is tied for the most ejections in a season of any player in the last 15 years (Larry Sanders, in 2012-13, also had five ejections), and he’s almost on the Rasheed Wallace pace:
(What was Rasheed Wallace even doing in the 1999-00 and 2000-01 seasons, to be ejected 14 times over two seasons? Legendary.)
Although he doesn’t have the same reputation as Wallace, Durant has been noticeably outspoken as of late. In a recent appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, he ripped into -- among other things -- analytics and “blog boys.” Of course, that controversy doesn’t even compare to the (unconfirmed, to be fair) revelation that he was using a burner account to argue with fans on Twitter.
It’s a bit refreshing, honestly. Not many athletes feel that they have the latitude to mad online like your average social media user, but Durant keeps it real. Everybody gets mad online sometimes. Maybe don’t step up to somebody’s actual physical face and unload obscenities, though -- and try to avoid getting ejected at record paces, too.
