Exclusive: Kevin Durant’s epiphany about being black in America

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Kevin Durant walked into the north entrance of Oracle Arena ahead of Game 1 of the 2017 Western Conference finals with a subtle message etched across his T-shirt.

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For Durant, the two-word phrase acts not only as a reminder of his identity but a manifesto of the spiritual journey the 10-year veteran has embarked upon over the last year and a half.

The journey, which has taken Durant from Oklahoma City to the Bay Area, combined with a distinct political climate was inspired by a series of events during the 2016 offseason, including a community summit organized by Carmelo Anthony in Los Angeles and the on-field protests of former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

Images of Durant’s evolution are etched onto his right leg as prominent black figures Tupac Shakur and Rick James are immortalized in tattoos. The ink of Shakur holds a special meaning for the forward. On the eve of Team USA activities in 2016, Durant came across a 1992 MTV interview of the slain rapper on YouTube, in which Shakur expressed anger about the disproportions in wealth across economic classes.

Shakur’s stance, along with a year-and-a-half soul searching, reminds Durant of the road traveled and what he hopes to learn going forward.

LOGAN MURDOCK: So, a couple weeks ago you told me about this epiphany, about you finding more of an identity since you arrived in the Bay Area…

KEVIN DURANT: Well, I was just trying to simplify everything. What I feel is complicated as far as business, as far as people, as far as basketball. I try to simplify as much as I can. I think that makes my life easier and I think that’s what life is all about: trying to make it as easy as possible.

LM: Where did this change of identity come from?

KD: Finally waking up, to be honest. Just kind of seeing how rough it is for an average black man, you know what I’m saying? And on top of that, a black man makes one mistake…I see how far we get pushed down. For me, I kind of grew up in this basketball world, whereas my talent kind of overrides what I look like.

I didn’t have it as rough when it comes to that, as far as social or systematic oppression or any social issues. They didn’t really apply to me because I could put a ball in a basket. Just me saying that kind of woke me up a little bit, like “Damn, that’s all I’m good for?” Like, if I wasn’t a basketball player, what kind of man would they look at me as, you know what I’m saying?

In terms of what value can I bring to you outside of playing basketball. I bring a lot of value to people as far as how I treat them, how I encourage them, how I just try to be a good person to them. I feel there’s like a lot of black men that have those traits, but they often just get stereotyped or judged off of one incident or not given a second chance.

So if I find something that’s empowering to people that look like me, I just try to send a subtle message that I got your back and I hear you and I try to inspire you as much as I can from just being in this world as a black man coming up, even though I was looked at and viewed a little differently for it. But I’m still a black man. I understand where you’re coming from.

LM: When you first signed here, you sat down on the Bill Simmons Show and talked about how people only see you for one thing.

KD: Anything involving basketball with us is such a huge, huge deal, and then you hear stories of how players want to stand up for what they believe in, stand up for social justice, systematic oppression. You see what’s going on with Meek Mill right now, which is f-ing ridiculous, and he’s actually doing something great with himself. He’s helping people, he’s building a better life, he’s putting on a better life for him and his family, and you see how people do him. I started to pay attention to more and more things like that.

Then I hear my friends talk about what it’s like in the corporate world for black folks. You automatically just get viewed as something that you’re not or something that somebody else may have been, may have done. A lot of feelings get projected on you because of what you look like or how you present yourself. It’s like, so much sh-t that goes on that I see now that I didn’t see before.

***

Born in 1988, Durant’s entrance into the world came during the height of the crack epidemic in his hometown of Washington, D.C. While circulation of the drug hit major black hubs such as Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York, D.C. found itself in a particular peril, as its homicide rate rose to 372 in 1988 — an estimated 60 percent of those being drug-related. Famously, Mayor Marion Barry couldn’t even resist the drug’s power, as he ultimately succumbed to both the drug and the law when he was arrested for drug possession in 1990. The time had a profound impact on his view of the world.

***

LM: You were born in the height of the crack epidemic in D.C. How was that for you, just seeing all that?

KD: Man, as a basketball player, it’s a thing in my neighborhood. Like, East Coast, if you’re a basketball player, people know you as that, they know you’re focusing on basketball. Nobody really tried to get me to be in the street life because I was either always walking to the gym or I was always in the gym. I had friends that got into bad sh-t, as far as drugs, as far as hanging around the wrong crowds, as far as just trying to make money some way, because we’re stuck. It’s not necessarily a fact that we’re so in love with the bad sh-t, or the stuff that’s illegal, it’s just like, our people are taught to survive. So if you put us in a neighborhood, no resources, no help, nobody to just be there for us … what else can we do but make us some easy sh-t to make us some money? My mom grew up on that, my brother grew up on that… Getty Images

LM: It’s survivor’s remorse in that aspect for you, right?

KD: Yeah, man, yeah. I mean … you feel for those people who don’t know what they’re passionate about, don’t have any true inspiration around them, true role models to look at. That’s why I feel like it’s so important for me to represent where I come from because for kids, just to say, you know, “He walked on the same streets I walked on, he playing on TV. He on the cover of GQ. People know who he is. He out there actually doing something he love every day, in front of millions of people.” I know for sure that it inspired somebody. Even if they don’t play ball, even if they’re just trying to look for a way to get out of Maryland or get out of PG County. Well, we got somebody who did it, we’re seeing it every day, and it makes me just walk around with pride.

LM: You came here in July of 2016. A month later, Kaepernick begins his protest, right here in the Bay Area? Did that put you in a different place? Want Warriors news in your inbox? Sign up for the free DubsDaily newsletter.

KD: It definitely put me in a different place because we just started talking about stuff that’s always been going on. You tend to just focus on what you know, or focus on what you do every day, and sometimes you can be so far removed from where you grew up or from home that you don’t realize what’s going on back there. That’s not because you’re not woke, or you’re not involved. You want to set that aside because you see a better life and you want to focus on that, but you also have to realize that you left home for a reason. So you kind of bring something back so you can help elevate where you come from.

LM: How was the summit for you?

KD: It was amazing because so many people told stories, so many young kids as well who live it every day. They have so many experiences that as a kid I probably went through half of what they went through. It’s just like, now, especially with social media and so much access to everything, you’re seeing what’s going on in your neighborhoods now, whereas I could avoid all of that when I was a kid, I didn’t have to worry about all that, I didn’t have to see it every day, scroll it on my phone, see somebody get shot by police, or somebody getting brutally murdered. I didn’t have to see that sh-t if I didn’t want to. They living a rougher life but, throughout that summit, it was more like, “Let’s come to a solution. How can we make this police-citizen relationship better?”

LM: What first intrigued you about Kaepernick?

KD: I just love how he just did it. It was really out of nowhere. For the casual person, casual fan … I’m sure people that he was close to kind of seen it coming but for us, it was just like, “Whoa.” He shocked everybody by doing that. The backlash he got from it immediately…

LM: What did you think when you saw it?

KD: You just see he touched something in people that we didn’t know was there. I posted a picture of him on my Instagram, and the comments under that were ridiculous. The stuff that people were saying about him over that was ridiculous. He brought something out of people that they’d been hiding for a long, long time that needed to be revealed. I’d rather you tell me that you don’t like me because of my skin than hide that sh-t. So he kind of touched a nerve and the outrage from it made me a fan of him just because he decided to take all that on, but also tell a message of, “Yo man. Just treat us fair, treat us equal, we’re people too. We’re not less than you because we don’t look like you.”

LM: When you were coming here, did you know much about the Bay Area’s history of political activism?

KD: I just knew about the Black Panthers, and I knew about so many great, great, intelligent minds always influenced by the Bay. Influenced by Oakland, influenced by Vallejo, San Francisco. Every part of the Bay, from hip-hop culture, music culture, rock and roll, to athletes, to politicians, everything is influenced by the Bay. It has its own style. I knew that, but as far as just coming out here and really feeling free, feeling like you could be yourself, feeling like you can love whatever you want to love and not be judged for it, and not be ridiculed for it, I feel like everybody should want to feel that way, everybody should want to be in that atmosphere. That’s what America is all about. Being out here, it makes me feel that way.

LM: When you signed here and left, you had people disrespecting your name, burning your jersey. As a black man, getting vilified over your personal decision… how did that make you feel?

KD: I really didn’t think it was that serious until I started to see the backlash and see the hateful things that people were saying. It’s just continually bad, it’s just still hate. It is just pure hate.

LM: And they don’t even know you like that.

KD: No, they don’t. I mean, if you’re not around me every day, you don’t know my routine, you don’t know my reaction to sh-t, you don’t know how I view things, you don’t know me. You might see me play every day, but you don’t know me really. That right there … It took me a couple weeks to just be like, “Hold up. This sh-t is not real at all.”

I understand in a basketball sense that you want to be so loyal to your team, and you want to feel like you’re a part of something, because everybody wants to feel like they’re a part of something. So, I understood that part but it’s got to the point now, it’s like, now it’s getting big. Like, come on man, what are we even talking about this for? This is basketball, I’m enjoying myself playing basketball. What you say and what you do is not affecting my work. That’s the most important thing is the work.

Now it’s more so … I’m looking at everybody else like they’re weird and they’re corny now because, it’s been a year straight of you calling me all types of names, telling me this, telling me that because I decided to play basketball in another place. Look how stupid that sounds when we got bigger issues going on, we got people that need help, that need our attention, and we’re focusing on … It’s easy to lose focus as humans, so easy, and we’re focusing on this. I’m going to be here for a long time so you going to be mad for awhile, and you’d rather be mad for awhile than just accept it, that’s on you.

LM: During 2016, you got a tattoo of Rick James and you got a tattoo of Tupac. Talk about that.

KD: Tupac was known for being woke, being politically incorrect, having a voice, and standing up for himself, standing up for what he believes is right. He expressed that in his music, he expressed that in interviews, he expressed that through his movies, through his artistic work. It’s way bigger than him being an artist or making a hot-ass song or having a No. 1 record. It’s that at that age, for you to be thinking about the stuff you were thinking about, at 22, 23 years old, and he died at 25, like … young people don’t think like that.

So for him to have that type of mindset at that age where he’s projected to be around, today would’ve been like Gandhi, you know what I’m saying? Or like Nelson Mandela-type intelligence for our culture, our people, our voice as being from the neighborhood. He meant so much to having me just think a different way. From watching him, following his story, following every interview I can.

Rick James personified freedom. He personified just being you, loving and caring for what you like, what you believe in. On top of that, every black family played the jams on the weekends when you had to clean up … anytime when it’s weekend, moms, grandma, they played the jams, so Rick James was in the rotation. Every time I hear a Rick James song it brings me back to my childhood. He’s a big piece of my life. In a weird-ass, crazy way, Rick James meant so much to me. For complete Warriors coverage

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